What's new or currently rolling out

Rich text editor improvements

Our rich text editor has received a major upgrade!

The rich text editor is the formatting toolbar you use to style text, add links, and insert images in areas that allow formatted text. It's also known as a WYSIWYG or "What You See Is What You Get" editor, since the editing screen simulates the final result instead of showing source code. The new editor offers usability improvements and a foundation for integrating AI into the authoring experience.

When editing text in a page's body content, Custom Text/HTML widgets, and other formatted text fields, you'll notice:

• a refreshed toolbar with common styling options
• a more intuitive experience for inserting media, allowing you to easily select sizes, set alignment, and add captions
• a more intuitive experience for inserting links, allowing you to select from existing content and turn links into buttons
• minor changes to the size or position of embedded images

Read our blog post about the rich text editor upgrade for more details about these changes.

Streamlined Slideshow widget editing form

We’ve been reorganizing the fields on each widget form and updating help text and labels to improve usability. We recently released changes for the Slideshow widget, including the ability to change between the widescreen and standard layouts after the widget is initially created. Less commonly used settings are tucked away in an expandable accordion or the secondary Settings tab.

Accordion widget improvements

The display of Accordion widgets has been modernized to use native HTML details elements instead of javascript. This improves performance and the accessibility and usability of those widgets.

Maintenance, security, bug fixes and enhancements

We fixed several bugs and optimized settings to make the platform even more accessible and user-friendly. We updated several software packages, Drupal core, and 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

Keeping the same filename when replacing a file

We’re working on an enhancement that will allow you to replace a file with a new version without changing the filename. This means that direct links to those files will continue to work after they are updated, including links that may be published in documents or shared in places outside of their website.

AI-assisted content generation

Now that the rich text editor upgrade is complete, we plan to introduce AI-assisted content authoring. We expect that the first tools to be added will be generation of alt text for images and content for rich text fields. We are exploring the addition of other features like summarizing content, adjusting tone, and translating into other languages.

New theming system

We are continuing work on a new unified theme that will have a sleek modern design with institutional branding and more configurable options for headers, footers, and widget appearance. This will replace the standard themes that currently offer only minor visual variations and too much inconsistency in headers and footers. Please see the November 2025 Product Update for more details about the changes coming to our theming system.

What’s being retired

Nothing specific this month. 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.

Thanks for reading

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