New website features

Our UMS IT developers have been hard at work making some important updates to our website in 2021, and this month we roll out two new features:

People list content block

The People list content block now allows for adding more people to a single list. The limit had previously been 25 people per list, this has been increased to 90. That should allow most websites to list all of the people they need to display within a single people list. As before, if you do have more people than will fit in one list, we recommend you “stack” the lists atop one another to display additional people.

There are also two new visible changes to the people list. If a person is added to the list but they do not have a photograph, a silhouette image will appear where the photo normally would. There is also an optional setting that will display the people in three columns instead of only two when the people list content block spans the entire page width.

Gutenberg editor

Our WordPress website currently uses a page builder system called “Content blocks” which was not compatible with the newer “Gutenberg” page editor provided by WordPress. We will still use the content blocks feature for the near future, but eventually we do plan to transition to the newer Gutenberg editor. To help prepare for this transition, we have adjusted our system so that a website can use both content blocks and the gutenberg editor on a page-to-page basis. After Commencement we will be reaching out to those who have expressed interest in using Gutenberg, and by June 1 we should be able to support those who are interested in trying out the new system. If you would like to work with the new Gutenberg editor (or want to remind us that you have asked about this in the past), please email us at um.weboffice@maine.edu.

In the coming months, look for a new WordPress training option focused on the Gutenberg editor and how it works.