Agenda
- Plugin Inventory – Sylvia Bass
- Theme development – pre-built versus custom themes – Tabby Chapman
- WordPress 4.7
Files
Attendees
- Sylvia Bass
- Tabby Chapman
- Albert Chi
- Allison Emery
- Patty Furukawa
- Amalia Herrmann
- Mike Huang
- Eva Maida
- Chris Walsh
- Victor Pham
Plugin Inventory
Sylvia gave an overview of how she keeps track of the plugins installed on the sites she manages. This includes keeping a spreadsheet listing all of the plugins, how they are used, when they were updated, links to the code, alternatives and ranking them as to their importance.
Over time, some plugins (and themes) are abandoned by the developers. No updates are made to make sure they are secure and will work with current versions of WordPress core. She discussed strategies to keep on top of the updates and finding replacements when needed. Ranking provides an easy way to see which plugins can be disabled or replaced when either they stop being maintained or they are causing conflict with other code.
Theme Development – Pre-Built versus Custom Themes
Tabby talked about making the choice between using a pre-built theme (WordPress.org or commercial) and creating a custom theme. As a developer, Tabby generally builds her own theme based on the site’s needs. However, there are times when a site’s needs are more basic in which a pre-built theme is a better solution. She said a good question to ask when choosing what type of theme to use is what resources are available to maintain the theme going forward. If resources are tight, pre-built with good support can be a better choice.
She gave an example of a site she’s working on, Anteaters Against Alzheimers (aaa.uci.edu) in which she used the Divi theme for the first time. She said she was initially frustrated with the theme as she is used to hand coding any changes. Using the theme’s built in tools was a new way to develop the theme. In the end, she found that she really liked the functionality and would now recommend it. She showed a few features and will come back at a later meeting to dive into it in more detail. She also stressed the importance of looking at the accessibility of a theme before using one or creating one. This is particularly important on campus.
WordPress 4.7
Tabby briefly touched on the updates to WordPress 4.7. This is a feature update and will need to be updated manually. She recommends waiting a week or more after a feature update as there is generally a security patch quickly after the release. Maintenance and security patches are backwards compatible, so the prior version of WordPress will be patched as well.
Some of the new features of WordPress 4.7 are:
- New theme – Twenty Seventeen with customizable front page with multiple sections. Has video header support.
- Theme starter content
- Edit shortcuts (pencil icon) in the customizer
- Smoother menu building – ability to add new pages from the menu builder
- Built in Custom CSS
- PDF Thumbnail Previews
- More information from the Codex
Future Meetings
Sylvia will set up the next meeting for February. She will ask Kyle Kurr, manager of EUS in OIT, to come speak about hosting options including staging environments.
Other Discussion Topics
- We talked about having a running list of some of the nice pre-built themes that people on campus are using
- if they have been vetted, if they seemed to be kept up to date, if they appear to be “accessible”.
- Might be helpful to also have a plugin list of those that appear to be well used and updated.