New and Improved Features

Site Search

With this new feature, site visitors can search the site for topics that interest them the most. This is v1 and we are already working on updates to improve the search capabilities. Right now the search looks for exact words or phrases. For instance, if someone searches "install solar" and you wrote "solar installation", it will return no results. But if they search "solar install" it will work. In v2 we hope to be able to return results regardless of the order of the phrase. We are also working to be able to collect all of the search terms per site and present this in a dashboard like we do the site analytics. This will help the content writers know what to focus on and how people are looking for information.

In the meantime, keep this in mind when you are creating content. Think about what people might search for and making sure that you have those terms in the body of your content. Consider different variations of words too like "recycle" and "recycling" in the same component.

Not seeing the new feature yet? Just publish your site and you'll get the new search bar at the top of the page.

Saving Posts

If you click off of a post in the middle of editing it, you will get prompted whether you want to save or discard all changes. This reduced the risk of losing all of your work if you mistakenly click outside of the post creation dialog box in the middle of your work.

News, Events, and Blogs and Hyperlink Default Colors

We continue to make updates to our platform to ensure all site visitors are able to interact with the content equitably. On the Posts page, we have changed the colors for the News, Blogs, and Events so that they pass the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 contrast ratio Level AA requirements.

We also updated the default colors in the Event post. The information was previously displayed using a light blue but is now the same green that is used for Events on the Posts page.

Similarly, we realized that the default blue hyperlink color throughout the site did not pass the WCAG 2.1 Level AA contrast requirements against white or the light grey we use. We bumped up the hue so that all links now pass the contrast ratio as well.

Bugs and Maintenance Items

Default Alt Text on Posts

An error in the code was replacing the alt text for post thumbnails with "cover image" or "post image" or similar. We've removed this error so that the alt text uses the text that was input when the image was uploaded. This is a good reminder to go through and check your images to make sure they have alt text or are marked decorative as applicable.