Oct. 1, 2026

V.143 Release Notes

This release includes bug fixes, security and maintenance updates, further UCDS integration planning, design and development, and continued tech debt cleanup.

Release Highlights

  • Security and platform stability: Updated Drupal core to 10.6.17, upgraded Webform to 6.2.12 to address multiple security advisories, and removed obsolete Drupal dependencies.
  • Content and editorial reliability: Improved related-story handling, corrected profile and content-filter behavior, resolved image and taxonomy warnings, and fixed several Drupal administration issues.
  • Funding Opportunities: Improved handling of empty deadline values and added support for searching by PeopleSoft Funding Opportunity ID.
  • Media and integrations: Updated Content Security Policy settings so TAP videos play correctly in Grad site feeds.
  • UCDS readiness and performance: Audited Drupal blocks, established a Lighthouse performance-testing approach, and completed foundational work for UCDS integration.

Bug fixes

  • Funding Opportunity date mismatch: Added validation to prevent empty JSON values from rendering incorrect current dates and improved handling of PeopleSoft funding opportunity data. Work also supports searching by PeopleSoft Funding Opportunity ID. 
  • Hero CTA block cleanup: Investigated pages containing duplicate or hidden Hero CTA blocks and added inspection and cleanup tooling. 
  • News related stories: Added guidance for the Related Stories Maximum field and corrected cases where related stories existed while the maximum value was zero. 
  • Legacy Profiles: Prevented undefined array-key warnings when profile images are unavailable. 
  • TAP video playback: Added the required media-src Content Security Policy directive so embedded videos and captions load correctly on Grad site feeds. 
  • News permissions and metatags: Added defensive checks for metatag data and moved required block-content permission handling into the Web Services block module. 
  • ImageMagick file handling: Corrected an invalid file-existence replacement constant. 

Improvements

  • Content administration filters: Removed unnecessary Article and Event landing-page options from content filters and results where those types are not available to site users. 
  • Webform email handlers: Added filtered HTML support to custom email-handler body fields, allowing editors to apply formatting and links. 

Maintenance

  • Drupal core: Updated Drupal from 10.6.14 to 10.6.17, including security fixes for a CKEditor vulnerability and other core maintenance updates. 
  • Webform security: Updated Webform from 6.2.9 to 6.2.12 to address reported access-bypass, cross-site-scripting, denial-of-service, server-side request-forgery, and remote-code-execution vulnerabilities.
  • Schema updates: Added centralized migration handling for updated Image Gallery and Masonry Gallery field schemas. 
  • Code quality: Completed a PHPCS sweep and added Drupal 10 and Drupal 11 installation prerequisites. 
  • Legacy module removal: Removed the unused CKEditor Liststyle module. 
  • Block permissions: Removed the obsolete contributed block-content-permissions dependency and retained the required core-compatible permissions. 

Tasks and planning audits

  • Performance measurement: Established a Lighthouse-based approach for regular front-end performance testing and baseline comparison. 
  • Rounded blocks: Reviewed the legacy rounded-block implementation and assessed opportunities to simplify JavaScript and improve front-end performance as part of UCDS integration work. 
  • Block audits: Audited Cards, Image, Image Gallery, Masonry, Minimal Accordion, and Streaming Media blocks to identify future UCDS design and authoring considerations. 
  • Figma block template: Defined a baseline Figma template for Drupal blocks covering responsive layouts and common block variations. 
  • Performance validation: Ran and stored the Mount Revelstoke Lighthouse performance test as part of pre-release validation. 

Automated testing

  • Added VisualCeption regression coverage for News and Profiles content as part of UCDS integration testing. 
  • Standardized regression-test viewport configuration and corrected related local and pre-release image discrepancies.
  • Updated Marketо block test coverage and corrected the expected block list. 

In Progress

  • Improve large taxonomy database queries and related caching to reduce database load and idle connections, particularly on News pages.
  • Add safeguards to the script that disables one-off reusable blocks so it does not disable blocks still needed on pages.
  • Verify that Alberta’s time-zone change does not shift site times by an hour, especially for systems using PHP’s America/Edmonton setting.
  • Remove the unreliable dynamic News header and footer functionality and associated code to reduce maintenance and potentially improve performance.
  • Investigate why orphaned Streaming Media blocks remain in the system while the Custom Block Library’s unattached-block filter shows inconsistent results.
  • Remove the block_content_permissions module from Composer dependencies after its permissions are moved.

 

Looking Ahead

We'd like to share a few upcoming improvements planned for release on the evening of Oct. 29.

News Header and Footer Updates

As noted in our previous release notes, we have identified an opportunity to improve the performance and stability of the News platform by retiring the dynamic header and footer functionality currently used in News articles. Work on this change is underway and is expected to be completed over the coming month.

Marketo Decommissioning

Our long-standing partnership with Marketo officially ended on June 30. As part of the final phase of that transition, we will begin removing the Marketo block from Drupal pages where it is still in use. This work will help streamline the platform and remove components that are no longer supported.

Improved Site Performance

Since the early days of Drupal 8, content authors have had the option to apply rounded corners to several block types: Banner, Checklist, More Info, Testimonial, Trio CTA, and Text blocks.

While visually appealing, this feature relies on a relatively complex combination of JavaScript and CSS behind the scenes. Following a recent review, we found that removing this functionality will provide measurable performance improvements across the platform. We also discovered that the feature has been used on only about 5% of eligible blocks, making its overall impact relatively limited.

Design System Integration

We're also continuing our work to bring the UCalgary Design System into Drupal. Most users will not notice any significant visual changes, but this initial integration represents an important milestone in our efforts to create a more consistent, scalable, and maintainable digital experience across UCalgary websites.

Key benefits include:

  • Improved performance and faster page delivery
  • Greater visual consistency across websites and applications
  • Easier maintenance and future enhancements
  • Reduced technical complexity behind the scenes
  • A stronger foundation for accessibility and user experience improvements

These updates are part of our ongoing commitment to improving the reliability, performance, and long-term sustainability of the web platform.

 

For more information on the UCalgary Web System, visit https://web.ucalgary.ca/. 

If you have questions or need to report a bug or issue, let us know: https://web.ucalgary.ca/contact-us 

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