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Web Platforms and Documentation

NC State Web Platform Release 3.7

June 3, 2021
A crowd of hands holding up wolfies.

With the release of version 3.7 of the NC State Web Platform our team’s primary goal was to support the enhanced functionality of several existing blocks while also introducing a new block. Content maintainers now have the opportunity to try the new Buttons block which introduces new features and design flexibility that the previous Button block did not have.

This update also covers improvements to our platform’s support of the most recent version of the Events Calendar. These updates are part of our team’s ongoing effort to provide users with the tools that they need to effectively create and manage their web content in WordPress.

Release Highlights

Many of the changes introduced in 3.7 take place behind the scenes, but below are some of the more noticeable updates that users can expect to see.

Button Block now Buttons Block

The new Buttons block now allows content maintainers to display multiple buttons in a row. Button blocks (which only allowed for the display of a single button) that are currently in use remain unaffected but can be transformed to the new Buttons block.

Other Updates Introduced With the Buttons block

  • Multiple button support for other blocks like the Big Fact, Image Statement, Mini Story, and Accordions.
  • Accessibility issues with the earlier Button block have now been addressed.
  • Preexisting Button blocks can be transformed into the new Buttons block.

Updates to Events Calendar Styling

Many of the changes that happened to the Events Calendar occurred behind the scenes, but content maintainers will notice the styling changes that occurred to its appearance. There is also now a feature that allows for sorting events by category.

Updates to Mini Story Block

The Mini Story block saw several improvements to its functionality. Video images are now supported along with the block itself being more customizable, featuring a changeable text column, buttons, and a media block.

Additional Features

These are smaller updates that should improve user’s experiences as they use the platform. Some of them will be obvious, while others may go unnoticed behind the scenes.

Platform Enhancements

  • Improves support for Reusable blocks, resulting in fewer error messages when attempting to edit.
  • Updates Accordion Item blocks to use Buttons block.
  • Add preload and preconnect support for Univers font files.

Code Quality Improvements

  • Adds transform for singular Button or multi-selected groups of singular Button blocks for conversion to Buttons block.
  • Updates editor link button styling to better match Gutenberg standards.
  • Adds deprecations for Button, Arrow Decorator, and Wolficon components to address block validation errors resulting from aria attribute updates in v3.5 and 3.6.
  • Adds transform for converting between Image and Video Image blocks (and vice versa).

Bug Fixes

If these items are news to you — great! If they aren’t — they should now be fixed.

  • Prevent anchor target offset from affecting editor.
  • Exclude The Events Calendar views from NC State Stories’s is_news() tree, except when Stories is set to Full Site Mode.

Need Help? Want to Report a Bug?

Submit questions and concerns to the UCOMM web team at go.ncsu.edu/ucomm-dev-request.