Release planning: November 2024

The WordPress core release of version 6.7 (Rollins) introduced changes in the HTML_Tag_Processor class which produced a fatal PHP error when used with existing versions of the Pitchfork theme or Pitchfork Blocks plugin. The November 2024 release for all Pitchfork products addresses this critical issue and also delivers a handful of improvements and bug fixes that were slated for release in December.

Pitchfork users should update both the Pitchfork theme and Pitchfork Blocks plugin prior to running the WP core update to the latest version of WordPress to avoid any downtime caused by the error described below.

Updates

• Pitchfork v2.3.0 · Release Notes
• Pitchfork Blocks v2.2.0 · Release Notes
• Pitchfork People v1.5.1 · Release Notes

Updated packages

The update to the Pitchfork theme contains the updates to the UDS Bootstrap package as well as the header and footer improvements. Pitchfork People enqueues the Web Directory UI components when activated.

• unity-bootstrap-package from 1.9.15 ➡️ 1.15.3 (latest)
• component-header from 2.2.5 ➡️ 2.3.3 (latest)
• component-footer from 2.2.0 ➡️ 2.2.2 (latest)
• app-webdir-ui from 3.5.0 ➡️ 3.6.3 (latest)

Things to know

PHP Fatal Error

The fatal error experienced when updating core WordPress files to the 6.7 release stems from an changes in the HTML_Tag_Processor functionality. WordPress Trac ticket #62290 mentions an outstanding issue when using the included set_bookmark method of the processor class. As of the publication date of these release notes, the bug is unpatched and awaiting a review for the next minor WP release.

This class was in use in two different processes within the Pitchfork theme and plugins:

• The method was used to parse the UDS Card v2 blocks to add appropriate classes to the individual card components on page render.
• The method was also included in a script that added appropriate CSS classes for the internal WordPress pagination block.

Both issues were resolved by rewriting the functions within Pitchfork which used this class to simply remove it and restructure the tag processing. That resulted in the elimination of the issue and also made things more efficient.

Web Directory

The Pitchfork People plugin contained performance updates and additional options for both the web-directory and profile-data blocks. The additional options were provided to allow site users more flexibility in constructing a list of people from the ASU Search appliance.

The web-directory block now supports an ad-hoc configuration to add unrelated profiles from ASU Search into the component. In addition, the block also allows for the selection of a preferred title for added profiles. If you provide both an ASURITE ID and department number in the provided field, the profile displayed should reflect the appropriate department name and title for the given department ID.

Many thanks to the Knowledge Enterprise Web Services team and @jkcox specifically for the web directory ad-hoc configuration development. 🎉

Profiles and profile-data blocks

Improvements in the way that data from the ASU Search appliance was processed within WordPress resulted in performance gains for pages constructed using the manual profile-data blocks and the corresponding block wrapper.

• Individual profile-data blocks no longer ping the Search API a second time for the status of the included profile image.
• The block will now missing or withheld images automatically by either delivering the profile image as expected or by delivering the “missing man” placeholder image directly from the API.

A preferred department selection field was added to the wrapping profiles block to allow all child profile-data blocks to display the corresponding department name and affiliated title if available. Profiles not belonging to the selected department will default to using their “working” title.

The profile-data blocks also now include options to optionally show/hide social media links, the profile phone number and location details.