Temple Sites October 17th Upgrade

EDIT: Maintenance is complete.

Sites.temple.edu will undergo scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017 from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM. Plugins and themes will be updated. There may be intermittent access during this time.

After the maintenance, Computer Services recommends that site administrators check their site to ensure the plugins and other features are still functioning properly.

For more information please submit a help request to Computer Services.

July 11th WordPress Upgrade

EDIT: The maintenance is complete.

Sites.temple.edu will undergo scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, July 11th, 2017 from 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM. WordPress core, several plugins, and several themes will be upgraded. No action is needed by site administrators. There may be intermittent access during this time.

WordPress Core will be updated to version 4.8. Read more about WordPress version 4.8.

For more information please submit a help request to Computer Services.

May 24 Upgrade

EDIT: Maintenance has been completed!

Sites.temple.edu will undergo scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, May 24th, 2017 from 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM. WordPress core, several plugins, and several themes will be upgraded. All upgrades are minor. No action is needed by site administrators. There may be intermittent access during this time.

For more information please submit a help request to Computer Services.

Gallery Theme Update

Computer Services will be updating the Gallery theme on Sites.temple.edu on Wednesday, May 17 from 6:00 to 6:30 pm.

When the change is made, the Gallery theme will revert to the default settings. Your content will carry over, but any changes you made to the theme’s appearance will not carry over to the new version. Once the theme is updated on Sites.temple.edu, you will need to manually redo any changes to the theme’s appearance that you want to keep.

Users who have sites using the Gallery theme have been notified and given additional instructions via email. For more information on the Gallery theme, see the UpThemes Gallery Knowledge Base.

Thank you for your cooperation and working with us on the upgrade. If you have any questions, please contact the Help Desk through the TUhelp website or call 215-204-8000.

Close Your Browser

Please close your browser after logging out of Temple Sites to ensure your information is safe.

For security reasons, it is important to actually log off when you’re done so others can’t open the browser and get into your accounts.

To avoid putting your information at risk, follow these three steps when you’re finished:

  1. Sign out of sites.temple.edu.
  2. Close the browser.
    AND
  3. Log off the computer.

If you have any questions, please open a TUHelp request.

New Login Screen

On Thursday, April 20th from 6:00 to 7:00 PM, Temple University Sites will be switched to a new login screen. After the change is made, you will log in using the TUgateway screen. Please continue to use your AccessNet username and password to log in.

Screenshot of the TUgateway login page.
Screenshot of the TUgateway login page.

As usual, please open a TUHelp ticket if you have any questions or concerns regarding the new login system.

January WordPress Upgrade

EDIT: Maintenance complete!

Sites.temple.edu will undergo scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, January 25th, 2017 from 6 PM to 7 PM. WordPress core, plugins, and themes will be upgraded. There may be intermittent access during this time.

WordPress core will be upgraded to 4.7. This version of WordPress has video header support, PDF preview, editor improvements, and other updates under the hood. Read more about WordPress 4.7.

All plugins and themes will be updated to their latest stable version. Additionally, the Juicer plugin has been installed.

For more information please submit a help request to Computer Services.

Old Users Cleanup

As mentioned in a previous post, an old users cleanup was executed last night. Users who no longer have an AccessNet account were deleted. If they authored any content (posts or pages), the content was reassigned to another admin on the site. If there were no other admins, the site was deactivated. We always avoid deleting any content if possible.

Here’s some stats from the cleanup process:

Total Users: 11032
Users Deleted: 2063
Sites Deactivated: 31

If there’s any questions or problems, open a ticket!

Old Sites Cleanup

According to the Sites policies, sites that have not been updated in two or more years will be removed. Recently, an old sites cleanup was executed. Sites that had been previously deactivated* were permanently deleted. Sites that had not been updated in two or more years were deactivated and will eventually be permanently deleted. All users of deactivated sites were given several email notifications prior to the cleanup.

Here are some numbers from the cleanup process:

Total Sites Before Cleanup: 2,423
Sites permanently deleted: 302
Sites deactivated: 804
Active Sites: 1317

Another cleanup to delete users who are no longer at the university will be run within a few weeks. Keep an eye out here for details!

* When a site owner deletes their own site, it becomes “deactivated” within WordPress.

If there’s any questions or problems, open a ticket!

Moving to New Servers

Edit: The server move was successful! Please open a ticket if any problems are noticed. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

On Wednesday, November 9th from 6 to 10 PM, the Sites.temple.edu infrastructure will be moved to new servers. The URL will not change and all sites will be moved to the new servers. No action is needed by site administrators or users.

Starting at 6 PM, all logins will be disabled while the data is moved to the new servers. Downtime will be minimal. Please note that any Gravity Forms on your site will be temporarily disabled to prevent any submissions from being lost.

The new servers are more powerful, have an updated operating system, and have the latest version of PHP installed. The site will also automatically use secure HTTPS connections.

In addition to the new server infrastructure, all plugins and themes will be updated to the latest stable versions. The login code will also be updated and, as a result, departmental accounts will no longer be able to login. Please use individual AccessNet accounts instead. Multiple users can be added to a site if required.

As always, if there are any questions or problems, please open a support ticket.

Announcement for Gravity Forms Users

Gravity Forms is a plugin that allows site admins to create contact forms, polls, quizzes, and other types of HTML forms on their site. Learn how to create a form using Gravity Forms.

We strongly recommend that site admins add a CAPTCHA to all forms that are publicly accessible.

A CAPTCHA is a test to determine if a user is a human or not. Automated bots/scripts can submit forms, which can spam your email address with invalid form submissions. A CAPTCHA will prevent this from happening. It can also prevent valid users from accidentally submitting a form multiple times.

To add a CAPTCHA to an existing or a new form:

  1. Navigate to the edit page for the existing or the newly created form.
  2. On the right, select Advanced Fields.
  3. Click the CAPTCHA button.
  4. Click the Update Form button.

captcha-3

Below are images that show an example CAPTCHA.

captcha-1

captcha-2

For any questions or additional support, please open a ticket at TUHelp. Happy blogging!

September Maintenance

EDIT: All maintenance has been completed successfully.

Sites.temple.edu will undergo scheduled maintenance at the following times:

Friday, September 16th, 2016 from 6 PM to 7 PM. No downtime is expected.

Tuesday, September 20th from 7 AM to 8 AM. Brief downtime may occur.

Tuesday, September 27th from 7 AM to 8 AM. Brief downtime may occur.

We will be increasing the size of the disk that stores media uploads (images, documents, etc), making a hardware change on the database server, and upgrading WordPress to the latest version.

For more information please submit a help request to Computer Services.

Site Updates for June 23, 2016

EDIT: The maintenance has been completed successfully.

This site is scheduled to be updated on Thursday, June 23, 2016 from 6pm to 7pm. During that time you may not have access to view or update your websites. For more information please submit a help request to Computer Services.

WordPress 4.5.3
WordPress will also be upgraded to version 4.5.3 (a security update to WordPress 4.5 which provides a number of improvements, such as inline linking, formatting shortcuts, and responsive previews so you can see what your site looks like on various screen sizes – like tablets and phones – all from your desktop). Some of the new features of WordPress 4.5 are described in this video: