CUNY Academic Commons

Thanks for your great work on this, Boone. It looks really good.

My understanding from our previous discussions was that people would have the option to use a template or not. I think I see the reasoning behind your suggestion that we make the template a required field instead, but I do think that we'll need to add some additional language making it clear that people can change the template/theme at a later date (in addition to adding further customizations within whatever template they choose). Somehow, we need to convey that the Commons has hundreds of themes and that they still have lots of flexibility if they want it.

I do think that the most basic version should just be called the "Default" template.

Part of the confusion here may be the word "template". A "template", as I intend it here, is a "default configuration for a WP site". In this sense, we already have a single "template" on the Commons, and it doesn't make sense that you could opt out of one. There's probably a way to rename that kinda skirts the issue - "starter package" or something like that. A different name may also help to avoid the "theme" confusion.

In any case, the language and interface I've chosen is really just the first thing I thought of, and I'd be glad for someone else to step in with thoughts about how it might work better.

At the last commons meeting, I was asked to start working on language that could be used on the Layout Picker page. I'm afraid that enough time has elapsed that I'm not sure I remember exactly what we're striving for, but I've made some suggestions here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JnQhKJF6LGz4EYwP32L98rjkGA4i-H9ZOGFSIq9L_QI/edit?usp=sharing

Best,
Lisa

Ray, I've added some integration with cac-plugin-packages: https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac-site-templates/commit/7be6fc8c8fc8da489d5b7cdbd190f378b1a6f421 The activated plugins themselves are copied as part of the options table, but I added extra stuff for the cac_site_templates option (it's not autoloaded, so it doesn't get moved over by default) and for the blogmeta stuff. I figured it made sense to update the "activated" date to the timestamp of cloning, since it's kinda silly to have "activated" dates that are prior to the creation of the site. Let me know if you think there's a better way to do this.

I've confirmed the activity behavior and fixed it in https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac-site-templates/commit/afcecd4394e94db4abcd549a72421808b12aff0b. Note that "Steve created a site" activity items are still generated, but the "new post" activity items are not.

Regarding your ability to access your recently created sites - I cannot reproduce. My guess is that you did not add the new domain names (eg purplemoose.commons.gc.cuny.edu) to the proper line in /etc/hosts. Could you confirm and try again?

Boone,
Your theory about the Hosts file is correct. I added one of the new sites to the Hosts file and Chrome started working. Odd that Safari did not need that entry to get to the site.

Jetpack was the only plugin that was automatically activated when I tested the Academic portfolio. Not sure if an issue or not. Everything worked fine otherwise.

Thanks, Scott! The behavior is expected - the academic portfolio template currently on cdev only has Jetpack activated. Presumably the final version will have more than that, but the spec is not yet finalized.

Just an update on where we are with this process; Boone, please let us know if you see any red flags.

Paul and I aim to finalize layout and settings on the Teaching Template and Academic Portfolio Template on the production server by Thursday. We'll then request that these templates be cloned to http://default-template-demo.commons.gc.cuny.edu and https://teaching-template-demo.commons.gc.cuny.edu so that we can plug in dummy content.

We have not touched the Default template, and were not planning to do so.

One new wrinkle that we've not discussed is that we've asked Ryan to design some custom headers to use with the Teaching Template... we realize that this may add a layer to the cloning process, so wanted to let Boone know that was coming.

Luke, thanks very much for the update.

Your plan sounds good to me. To be clear, I assume you mean that each of 'teaching-template.', 'academic-portfolio-template', and 'default-template' will be cloned to the corresponding '-demo' versions.

I assume by "custom headers" you mean uploaded images that can then be selected at Dashboard > Appearance. If so, then no, it shouldn't pose a problem, though your comment did remind me that I'd forgotten to build a cloning routine for theme mods. I've resolved this in https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac-site-templates/commit/36e3853cfd9a2f0c73b9d55983f812dcd63f12a7. It dawns on me that this is going to be a problem for CBOX-OL as well, so I've opened a ticket there to port the fix. https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/commons-in-a-box/issues/156

Once the template sites are fully configured and the demo sites populated, I'll take screenshots of the demo sites to populate the template-picker during site creation. I think this will round out the feature set.

Your plan sounds good to me. To be clear, I assume you mean that each of 'teaching-template.', 'academic-portfolio-template', and 'default-template' will be cloned to the corresponding '-demo' versions.

I assume by "custom headers" you mean uploaded images that can then be selected at Dashboard > Appearance. 

Correct on both accounts. Will let you know when we're ready to clone!

Boone-- https://academic-portfolio-template.commons.gc.cuny.edu is ready for cloning to https://academic-portfolio-template-demo.commons.gc.cuny.edu.

Still need a bit of time on the Teaching template, but hopefully tomorrow.

Thx-

Ok, Teaching Template is done. Please clone https://teaching-template.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ to https://teaching-template-demo.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.

Note that after the release, we're going to have to go in an manually add the Campus Branding and One Search widgets to both the template and and demo site.

Thanks!

Thanks, Luke.

I've cloned all content and settings in the following cases:
teaching-template -> teaching-template.demo
default-template -> default-template.demo
academic-portfolio-template -> academic-portfolio-template

Please set up the demo sites as you'd like them, and then provide me with screenshots.

Note with the Campus Branding and One Search widgets that the template sites shouldn't have a campus selected, as it's not possible at the moment for us to determine the proper campus at the time of template cloning. This is a future enhancement, once more of the course infrastructure is in place.

Boone: Scott is reporting that though he's an admin on https://academic-portfolio-template-demo.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ he's still getting a permissions error "You need a higher level of permission." when he tries to edit that site; can you please advise?

Thx-

Luke/Scott - Can you please let me know what you mean by "edit"? Exactly what are you doing, and exactly what are you seeing? I've got to have URLs in order to debug.

Quick follow-up - there may have been a cloning issue with roles not being copied properly - please give another quick try

One more post-release todo for me that I forgot to mention: changing the privacy level of the demo sites, so that they can be viewed. I'll be changing them to "Discourage search engines...", which will keep them from search engines but will allow anyone to view them.

Boone-- did we discuss opening links to Demo sites via the Site Template picker in a new window? Might make sense in the site creation flow to do that.

Luke - I've opened #10712 to discuss it.