CUNY Academic Commons

Thanks for the report, and sorry for the troubles.

On Tuesday morning, I deployed one of our twice-monthly scheduled updates to themes and plugins on the site. See https://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/release-schedule-and-procedures/ for more info. This release included an update to the Dante theme. This update to the Dante theme included some major changes, where much of the theme's functionality was moved into a required standalone plugin (Dante Framework) as well as a required utility plugin from the wordpress.org repo (Meta Box). I didn't know that these changes were happening, so I didn't add the plugins as part of the release. And even if I'd added them, they would've needed some manual intervention (plugin activation, at least; see below) in order for the sites to work properly.

I've added the plugins and deployed them to the production site:
- dante-framework https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/81e4b71a93f1ea6c32b11e8c85e5b56a9e5299e0
- meta-box https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/a0fc413a2e625fba4d6fee0a5b0d085df9479f6c

I activated the plugin on digitalfellows.commons.gc.cuny.edu. This appears to have addressed the unrendered shortcodes ("HTML presenting") and other layout issues.

The 'Dante' logo is still present in the header. I did a brief examination of the changes in the recent version of Dante, and as far as I can see, the header functionality was totally rewritten. It now expects there to be a logo - there doesn't appear to be a way to disable the logo, in favor of showing a text version of the site title. (I could be wrong about this - please feel free to look through the theme settings to see if I'm overlooking someone.) As such, it may be necessary for you to upload a logo, if only an image containing the text 'GC Digital Fellows'. Could I ask your team to look through this and let me know whether I'm missing something?

I scanned the Commons for other themes running Dante and ran a command to activate the plugins there as well:

wp --url=2015lacunyinst.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=asaminnyc.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=bacchustemple.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=buildingaas.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=clara.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=cvdh4.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=digitalfellows.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=fashionmock3.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=imendel000.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=imendelwfe.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=importantsite.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=javo01.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=kallewesterling.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=katiahenrys.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=kccenglish.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=laurakane.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=locus.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=miniguide.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=momentsthings.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=pcpdev.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=psrg.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=tarquinia.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=templeofbacchus.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=testasamsummer.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=testingmals.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=vianny.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box && wp --url=videomock.commons.gc.cuny.edu plugin activate dante-framework meta-box

Aside from the specifics of this update, there's a more general question about how to avoid these sorts of problems in the future. These kinds of massive changes between theme and plugin versions, especially those that require manual intervention from end users, are uncommon, but not unheard of. The Commons has many dozens of available themes and hundreds of available plugins, and so it's impossible for us to do a deep examination and testing of changelogs for each update. (Changes in a theme like Dante are even harder to track because it's a commercial theme purchased through ThemeForest.) Our team will take every reasonable effort to learn in advance about important changes in plugins/themes, especially those that are most widely used on the Commons; and when we know about these changes in advance, we'll do our best to automate the update/migration process for end users. But we must depend for this process on the cooperation of "hosting partners", who are the best equipped to understand when major changes to Commons software will directly affect the specific way in which their site works. See https://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/hosting-partner-handbook/ for more info, and especially the "Proprietary..." section. But the gist is: hosting partners should, if possible, keep an eye on upcoming updates as announced at https://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu; test upcoming changes that are critical to site operation in your own development/staging environments, particularly in the case of proprietary tools; report issues to the Commons team, ideally before the scheduled release, but afterward (like in this ticket!) is also good. I realize that many hosting partners are not staffed with the kind of resources and expertise to do all of this in advance, so it's likely that we'll sometimes have cases like this one where the issue is not identified until after the problem has cropped up. This is probably the best we can do, and I think you in advance for your patience as we work through it together.

Thanks, Kristen!

Boone Gorges wrote:

Thanks, Kristen!

Hi Boone! Just reporting that the issue is occurring again on the same website. It's happening in most pages (e.g., https://digitalfellows.commons.gc.cuny.edu/about/ ; https://digitalfellows.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ ), but it doesn't seem to be an issue with posts ( e.g., https://digitalfellows.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2019/09/19/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-office-hours/)

Perhaps this time it has something to do with either an outdated plugin (LayerSlider WP), or, some other issue with the Dante theme, following the latest maintenance update?