"Ryder" Release Notes

The Ryder release was deployed to Sites@Duke Pro throughout the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 and first quarter of FY 2025 (April – October 2024). Ryder is named for the mighty pup of Richard Outten, a founding member of the Sites Pro team and director of OIT's Enterprise Services and Support.

Under the Hood updates

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Ryder's first challenge was to upgrade the infrastructure of every Sites Pro site by July 1, which made for a very busy fourth quarter! After successfully completing that task, Ryder switched focus to additional updates to underlying systems, including:

• Upgrading Drupal 10 core and select Drupal modules to the latest, most secure versions
• Improvements to the code deployment process to further optimize releases
• Infrastructure changes to resolve user-reported publishing delays, browser issues, and reduced file upload sizes

Grid Layouts for list blocks

Ryder introduced a new feature requested by our customers – an optional grid view for several list content blocks, similar to the existing People List grid view. Users can now select list or grid views for the following content blocks, and look for the News List block to get this upgrade in a future release!

• Blog Post List
• Page List
• Project List
• Resource List

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Cloning Content

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Ryder also resolved a long-standing incompatibility issue with the Clone Content feature. Now, site editors can easily duplicate an existing piece of content to use as a starting point for a new content item. This saves time and effort when replicating complex layouts or needing to create near-identical pieces of content.

To demonstrate the cloning process, Ryder has created four equally adorable copies of himself. Can you identify the original Ryder? (One of these clones should look familiar, and the others will have their own releases some day!)

Removing deleted files from the system

There are two steps required to delete a media item from the website: 

1. Delete the file from the Media Library.
2. Delete the file from the system.

This second step is crucial if the deleted file contains misleading or sensitive information. However, until now, users had to contact the Sites Pro team for assistance completing step #2. 

Thanks to Ryder, users with the Site Admin role can now complete step #2 themselves, by deleting media files from the File Management Tab. Learn more on our User Guide – and remember, deleting files cannot be undone!

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filtering on list pages and search results

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Content Type List Pages and search results can be filtered by a number of taxonomies and terms, as seen in the left-hand sidebar on those pages. Based on user feedback, Ryder has updated these filters to make the results easier for users to understand.

Previously, each taxonomy term displayed the number of available results – but, these numbers were often misinterpreted and caused confusion, so they have been removed. Further, the terms within each taxonomy are now listed in alphabetical order for better findability.

Additionally, Ryder includes accessibility adjustments to ensure the total number of results displays consistently throughout a user's journey on the list/results page.

More improvements to the filtering and search experience are coming soon!

Bug Fixes

Ryder resolved a number of minor functional issues – including LinkedIn and email sharing not working as expected, and various error messages reported by customers. Here are details on the two most significant bugs we squashed:

1.) Media Library Issues

Two recurring issues – incorrect media items being inserted into content, and certain media items missing a select checkbox – were both traced to a bug involving unpublished media. As a result, we have removed the ability to unpublish media items. Moving forward, existing and new media items can no longer be marked as unpublished.

2.) FAQs in search results

FAQ items have been reformatted in search results, to avoid issues with them pointing users to broken links.  

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User experience improvements

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Accessibility, styling, and usability all contribute to a user's experience on your website. Ryder's contributions include:

• Headings style adjustments, particularly so those with anchors (for anchor links) do not display as clickable links
• Populating the summary field for imported news items
• Updated help text for site editors, and more intuitive formatting of field data that cannot be edited
• Accessibility improvements for screen readers and slideshows
• Styling updates for better display and consistency across various screen sizes and devices

Overall, Ryder has been a very good boy and fetched us a number of important updates that help site editors and end users alike!

Updated training documentation for these features is available on our User Guide. Please reach out if you have any questions about Ryder, and feel free to submit any new feature ideas through our New Feature Request process.