February 2022 Drupalite Digest

Welcome to your February Drupal Newsletter - we've got a few updates for you:

Ready, Set, Edit? Login Screen Will Look Different

Drupalites, please know that your Drupal login screen will look different and require adjusted login credentials, effective Feb. 27. This modification enhances security and will affect logging in to Drupal and many other systems. The difference is minimal. You will be required to log in with your full email address (username@kent.edu) and your FlashLine password.

The Need for Speed

Many of our webmasters reported delays when uploading or editing images in Drupal, as well as when saving edits to a webpage. We noticed it too. During the past month, our Information Technology web presence team invested time to research, diagnose and minimize these pain points.

By optimizing how images were being uploaded and the way the system was saving content, they were able to introduce changes to speed up the entire process. They're happy to say that on average, uploading a new image now only takes a few seconds, whereas just last week that same process could have taken 20 seconds or more.

While they believe they've eliminated much of the slowness that our webmasters were experiencing, they have also identified other opportunities to improve image upload and content editing speed next quarter. Stay tuned.

Editing Functionality Restored

Another improvement our Information Technology partners introduced this month was restoration of the ability to strip formatting and hidden code during the copy and paste process. Please remember when you copy and paste text from Microsoft Word or a Google doc to click the Remove Text Formatting button (Tx) icon to the left of the numbered bullet icon in the second row of your Drupal editing toolbar. While you will have to reapply any bold, italics, headers and possibly proper paragraph spacing, your links will be retained. This minor inconvenience, reapplying your formatting but removing hidden code, ensures that hidden code does not negatively impact the look or performance of your web page.

Under Repair: Customize This Page Button

For those of you who rely on the “Customize This Page” button, it recently stopped working on some pages. Apologies for the inconvenience; we are working on a fix. In the meantime, there is a workaround listed in the accordions on our Web Support page.

Web Accessibility Training Now Offered as Part of Beyond Compliance Classes

Making a webpage “accessible” means making sure all users who visit your websites have the same access to your information, regardless of potential disability.

Now you can fulfill your annual HR Beyond Compliance requirement while learning to improve the health of your website. It’s a win-win opportunity offered in partnership by the Division of Information Technology and the Division of University Communication and Marketing’s Web Team.

Consider signing up to participate in the next “Accessibility for Webmasters," scheduled for March 3. Here are the details:

• After completing three 75-minute sessions (1 per month) and strategically employing what you’ve learned, you’ll receive 3 hours of Beyond Compliance credit. You are also welcome to participate in an open lab session during which we’ll be standing by to assist you in your remediation efforts.
• Our teams will provide bite-sized but thorough training on Siteimprove, Drupal and Google Analytics.
• Using these tools, you’ll learn how to:
  • Scan your sites, looking for ways to improve accessibility and user satisfaction
  • Use that information to triage what you’ll improve first
• Set a strategy for how to make those improvements You’ll apply the teaching immediately - IN the sessions. And we’ll be there to help.

Friendly Reminder

We have recently had quite a few webmasters emailing us directly for support. To prevent your issue or request from getting lost in a sea of email and to get it prioritized, we’d like to remind you to submit a ticket for assistance. You can do so from www.kent.edu/websupport. The “Submit a Support Ticket” button from that page drops your request directly into our ticket queue. This removes the bottleneck that occurs when only one person on the team is contacted directly through email.

Additionally, mobilizing a support request through the ticketing system enables your friendly webteam with the ability to share the value we offer to our Drupalite community via our end of year reporting. You might be surprised to know that we were able to confidently report that we resolved 546 support requests that came throught the ticketing system last year. Unfortunately, we know that number is significantly higher because of the fact that we do directly respond to help requests by way of emails which bypass the ticketing system. Please help us make our numbers and our team shine!

Please email Lin Danes with any questions. She can help triage your inquiry with the team to find the answer you need.

Thank you for your continued contributions to your Drupal website,

Web team

Jared Boehm, Lead Application Developer
Ayla Danes, Student Web Support Specialist
Lin Danes, Director of Web Services
Rob DiVincenzo, Sr. Applications Developer
Doug Flower, Digital Accessibility Specialist, DoIT
Tyrone Fontaine, Web Designer
Alison Haynes, Digital Accessibility Compliance Coordinator, DoIT
Alex Herbers, Web Designer
Tim Priester, Web Designer & Services Lead
Sara Smith, Digital Strategist and Technologist
Jaden Spicer, Student Web Support Specialist