Release Notes

🔥Hot Release of the Month🔥

New horizontal rule color & style options in content block  
To up-level the capabilities of the content block, we’ve built 9 new horizontal rule styles for site builders to leverage in the content block.  The horizontal rule now has three new colors (#eee, #333, #cfb87c) and three new thicknesses (1px, 2px, 5px). 

New Features 

Back to top button 
In effort to improve user experience and accessibility, we’ve built a back to top button for Sitefinity pages.  This button will be automatically applied to all pages longer than four screens and will hover on the bottom right of user’s screens, however site builders will have the ability to turn this off or on in the page properties view.  

Enhancements  

Added category classification to Academic Programs  
At the request of the School of Education & Human Development, we’ve added the same classification to academic programs as we have for people so that site builders can better associate these two content types.  

Removed duplicate “written by” in articles  
On our article pages, there was a “written by” blurb in the beginning of the article and at the end.  We’ve removed the one at the end because there was no need to have it twice. Thank you Tonia in SOM for flagging this!

Hide text field if no entry on hero carousel 
Last month we released an enhancement to the hero video and hero image where if a user did not add text to the text field, it would hide the overlay.  We have now released that same enhancement for the hero carousel. 

Added table wizard functionality to content block editor 
We’ve added the table wizard functionality to the content block editor, allowing you to change the design of the table and configure accessibility options.  For more information on how to use this, please see Sitefinity’s guide here.  

Bug fixes 

Academic Program detail view
We fixed two bugs related to Academic Program detail pages: (a) internal links were not working from the detail view, and (2) there was no spacing between “At a Glance” and the “The Details” header.  

Hero carousel Arrows in hero carousel weren’t centered on hover and focus 
We fixed two bugs related to Hero Carousel: (a) arrows weren’t centered on hover and focus, and (2) arrows wouldn’t work if there were multiple hero carousels placed on the same page.  

Featured tabs  
We fixed a bug related to featured tabs where they were expanding in size when you’d swipe up and down on an iPad.  

Global header breaks into two lines on iOS (namely iPad landscape)  
We fixed a bug that was happening in the landscape view on an iPad where the global header was breaking into two lines.  

Hero carousel stuck at 500px  
We deployed a hot fix earlier in the month which addressed the hero carousel being stuck at 500px  

GA Bounce Rate  
We deployed a hot fix in the middle of the month which addressed inaccurate bounce rate %s in Google Analytics.  We found that GA was counting scrolls as interactions, and therefore inflating the bounce rates.  

High priority University projects we’re supporting  

Academic Program data, content type and widget; University-wide Program Finder tool 
At the moment, there is unclear ownership of Academic Program data (where it lives and who is responsible for normalizing it).  We’re working with the Data Infrastructure and Architecture team as well as the Registrar’s Office to determine the best way for the University to maintain this data.  This clarity will immensely push forward the Program Finder implementation.  

Research Administration and the Research Lifecycle Content Type
We are actively working with the Research Admin team and a third-party partner to plan a special content type that will be used to guide researchers through the lifecycle of a research project.  We anticipate that the build out phase will begin next sprint.  

Other Sitefinity features & enhancements in our near-term pipeline  

The following list does not depict all items in discovery or development from our term, but merely ones we know you’d be interested in knowing more about!   

Facts & Figures content type and widget 
This would provide site builders the ability to call out short stats, data points, or highlights in a UI-friendly way, ultimately helping build trust with site visitors. 

Timeline content type and widget 
This would provide site builders the ability to build dynamic visual timelines on pages with applicable use cases for curriculum pathways, admissions/enrollment deadlines, and history of school or colleges.  

Keyword search & filter functionality 
This would provide site users the ability to search and/or filter various dynamic content types – such as people or academic programs.   

Aggregating newsroom items 
This would provide site builders the ability to aggregate news items from other Sitefinity sites, Sharepoint, Wordpress, or Drupal into one consolidated newsroom.  This would also provide the ability to push news items from parent newsrooms to subsite newsrooms.   

People content type/widget revamp 
This re-build of the People content type and widget would include performance enhancements, new filter and display fields, and a re-designed plus SEO-able detail view.  

Site-wide page properties
This would provide site builders the ability to set various page properties at a site-wide level, such as top navigation, website name, footer links, and various others.  

Digital Experience Cloud, Personalization, and A/B testing in Sitefinity
Sitefinity offers an integrated platform called Digital Experience Cloud (DEC), which provides the functionality for collecting user web analytics, optimizing user experiences for targeted conversions, and personalizing content to specific segments.   Our new Product Analyst is evaluating these features and working with the community to discover how we can leverage them.  This work also includes CRM Salesforce and A/B testing.  

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP are a relatively new way to deliver lightning fast web pages to users.  It has been proven that Google will favor AMP pages over normal mobile web pages due to the speed of delivery to the user.  It has also been proven that with AMP pages, you can see a 6x growth in traffic, 23% growth in returning users, and 3x growth in load time.  We’d like to turn on AMP pages for some high-impact pages, such as news or academic programs.  


Sites launched this month 
Congratulations those who launched their new sites in Sitefinity this month!