New administration theme

In mid-December we released a major upgrade to the administration theme. The settings pages and editing modes have a modern appearance that aligns with the experience users expect when they set up a brand new Drupal site (Drupal is the content management system that serves as the foundation for OpenScholar).

The changes improve accessibility and overall usability for content editors. Some changes you may notice:

• Larger fonts and more generous spacing
• New color scheme with higher contrast and dotted lines under links
• Key actions like publish and save are pinned to the top when editing content
• Bulk actions like delete content or apply terms appear at the bottom of content lists
• On/off checkboxes appear like toggle switches
• Forms are more accessible with more obvious focus states

We are in the process of updating screenshots on our help and documentation site to show the new admin theme. If you have any feedback about the new theme, please email us at support@theopenscholar.com.

Maintenance, security, bug fixes and enhancements

As usual, we fixed several bugs and optimized settings to make the platform even more accessible and user-friendly. We updated a few Drupal modules to keep things secure and running smoothly (Drupal is the content management system underlying OpenScholar). We take care of the hosting and software, so you can focus on managing your content.

What’s coming soon

More flexible site categories

The templates available for OpenScholar sites are grouped into three categories: Personal, Project/Lab, and Department. Once you choose a template, the “type” of site is set and cannot be changed. Often site owners choose a template for reasons besides the starter content, or the purpose of a site changes over time. Organizational leaders have also expressed interest in building lists of sites that fall into groupings besides these three main categories.

To provide more flexibility in categorizing sites for filtering and reporting purposes, we will be adding a new Site Category setting to all sites. Organization Administrators and site owners will be able to choose the most appropriate category for each site. They will be more specific than the three starting site “types,” and the category can be changed as needed.

AI-assisted content generation

We continue to work toward incorporating generative AI features like suggestions for image alt text and page titles, drafting text, and adjusting tone (see our AI roadmap). Organizations will need to opt-in to having these AI features enabled, so they may not be available on all sites.

What’s being retired

Reminder that legacy themes are not actively developed and support for them is limited. Users are encouraged to transition to one of the fully supported standard themes. To learn more about the difference between standard and legacy themes, please see our page on Theme Life Cycles.

Since Dataverse widgets are infrequently used, we are going to disable them by default. Site owners will be able to turn them on if they wish to use them. This will shorten the list of available widgets in the Create widget list, which will make it easier to find and choose popular widgets.

Thanks for reading

Questions or comments? Please reach out to our product team at support@theopenscholar.com.