Institute Communications has released an update for the Georgia Tech theme for Drupal 7.

GT Theme 7.x-3.4

• Fixed bug in which in-page ajax actions caused duplicate menu items.

• Reinforced heading styles and accessible color.

• Cleaned up some color, padding, and alignment issues.

• Changed GT logo links to point to site homepage rather than TLW.

PHP.net will end support for PHP 7.1 in December 2019. OIT Web Hosting will be ending support for PHP 7.1 on December 2nd, 2019. In preparation for this upgrade, Web Hosting will be making the following changes:

1. From today Aug 26th, all newly provisioned sites will be created with PHP 7.3.
2. On October 1st, any site on Plesk21 still running on PHP 7.1 will be transitioned to PHP 7.2
3. On October 8th, all site on all remaining servers still running PHP 7.1 will be transitioned to PHP 7.2

To minimize the impact, we are updating existing sites to PHP 7.2, while we will provision a new site to the most current version of PHP (PHP 7.3). We strongly encourage the testing and early transition to PHP 7.2 or PHP 7.3 (preferred) before our major update in October.

Dates to Know

• Monday, August 26 - new site requests will provision with PHP of 7.3. 

• Tuesday, October 1 - convert all sites on Plesk21 on PHP 7.1 to PHP 7.2.

• Tuesday, October 8 – convert all remaining sites on all Plesk servers on PHP 7.1 to PHP 7.2.

Please Note: You will be able to revert back to PHP 7.1 while testing PHP 7.2 and 7.3 between October 1st and December 2nd. The December 2nd transition deadline cannot be extended; it is critical that your application be upgraded to ensure its continued security.

Actions

We strongly recommend appropriate testing and moving to PHP 7.2 or 7.3 as soon as possible. Before October, if one or more of your application environments is currently using PHP 7.1, we encourage you to request the upgrade by submitting the hosting plan upgrade form to avoid a forced upgrade. 

Note: Even if you will be able to select PHP 7.2 subscription on the form, we strongly encourage you to choose PHP 7.3. Since PHP 7.3 will have a longer support.

Questions?

For more information about this PHP upgrade, please see the PHP 7.2 release notes and the PHP 7.3 release notes.

If you have questions or would like additional information, please submit a Web Hosting ticket.

Georgia Tech Information Technology and Georgia Tech Institute Communications have released their recommendations for planning any migration to Drupal 8.

If you have been thinking about Drupal 8 for your campus website, please review their recommendations and take them into consideration as you begin or continue your planning process.

We have received numerous questions about Drupal 8 and Georgia Tech websites in the past few months. To help facilitate discussion and timelines for Drupal 8, here are some helpful dates, links, and resources to guide your planning, strategy, and timelines for Drupal 8 on campus!

Drupal 8 Theme Development

Georgia Tech's central Drupal 8 theme and associated plugins are managed via Institute Communications, which has posted a rough Drupal 8 theme development timeline. 

Of note from the timeline:

• Georgia Tech's A theme handles the display of header, footer Georgia Tech elements. 
• Georgia Tech's B theme handles configurations and display of body styling, editor improvements, and Views styling. 

Drupal 8 Hosting and Composer

Drupal 8 brings some changes to web development best practices with the adoption and proliferation of composer.

For campus units looking to use composer on OIT Web Hosting, we strongly recommend metroplus. Metroplus is a command-line interface (CLI) tool allowing tools such as drush, composer, and git on webhosting.

To learn more and join metroplus, please contact Michael Sheldon in the College of Sciences.

Drupal 8 Migration Planning

While it is still a bit early for most site owner to begin building new sites in Drupal 8, you may want to start your strategic planning so that you're ready to go when the right theming resources become available.  A guide to migrating Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 is available, as is a more specific guide to planning for migrating Drupal Express sites to Drupal 8.

What about Drupal 7?

The Georgia Tech Drupal 7 theme will be updated to the new 2018 "Tech Gold" (metalic gold) design in late winter 2019, per Institute Communications' Drupal 8 timeline.