Big Update to RED 6/11/19

With the latest update to RED (6/11/19), we made some massive updates and squashed many bugs within the theme.  Read more about them below:

Yeost Plugin has been removed

After receiving several complaints about the inefficiency and confusion created by the Yoast Plugin, mostly revolving around keyword implementation/reliance and site maps, we decided to remove Yoast for it’s misleading nature.  Too many users were not utilizing the formatting (Heading formats vs. paragraph) of text or creating SEO specific content on the page, instead relying upon the manual insertion of keywords through the Yoast plugin.  This is an antiquated way of attempting SEO and lulls a false sense of SEO implementation.  Based upon industry insight and research, Google (and other search engine) spiders are concerned less and less with meta tags and are more interested with actual content and how it is formatted on a page.  The age old adage of “Content is King” rings true here.  Yoast was creating a false sense of SEO influence through meta tags that were no longer generating any specific results within the search engines algorithms.  Also, just a side note, internal linking to pages within your site is helpful to SEO, alongside legitimate external links linking to your site.  So, to satiate the needs of what Yoast did accomplish successfully (indexing sites with Search engines and creating a SiteMap), we have added the following plugin to make up for the removal of Yoast:

• Google XML Sitemaps:  To create site maps of your site, you can now use the Google XML Sitemap plugin that is located in your dashboard under Settings > XML-Sitemap.  Within the plugin you will be able to generate sitemaps specifically based upon your criteria and then submit them to the different search engines via Webmaster tools to improve search rankings/up-to-date indexing.  More information on the XML-Sitemap plugin can be found here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

New Post Expirator Plugin

With the addition of the Post Expirator plugin, you can now set pages and posts to expire at a certain date and time without having to manually update the page/post.  This is done on a page/post by page/post basis.  Within the edit screen of a page or post, you will see a new Post Expirator sub-menu on the right hand side of the edit screen.  Within that sub-menu, you can select a checkbox next to “Enable Post Expiration,” will will allow you to select a date/time and how you want the page/post to expire (i.e. Draft, Delete, Trash, etc).  We strongly suggest that you select to have the Post/Page turn to a Draft instead of simply deleting it so that you can easily re-access if you want to set the page/post live again.

New Countdown Post available

The Countdown Post is available for implementation on the Homepage as well as Landing and Default template pages.  This post will create a Countdown timer on whatever pages it is attached to, enabling users to visually display the end of an event or application.  Similar to Billboard posts, users will need to first go into Post Types and create a new Countdown post.  After adding in the relevant information and clicking Publish, the Countdown post can then be added when editing/creating new pages.  It can be found in the page edit screen under “Attach Countdown” and after a user selects the checkbox next to “Include a Countdown.”  The users will then be able to select from the different Countdown Posts already created so that it is added to that specific page.

• It is important to note that when a Countdown post expires, it will appear as “Expired” on the page, so make sure to either manually remove it from the page back-end and update the page OR set the Page Expirator (new plugin mentioned above) on the actual Countdown Post itself, to return to “Draft” form at the end date.

New Notification Post available

A new Notification post is now available for use across all page types (Homepage included).  Similar to the Billboard Post and Countdown Post, you will need to first create a Notification Post (via the “Notification” post area in the left sidebar menu of the dashboard), before you can assign it on a page by page basis.  Although a feature NOT similar to the other posts is that the scope of each Notification post can be set to “Global” (will appear across the entire site without assigning on a page by page basis) OR “Local” (will only appear on pages that you manually set to have display the notification post).  Also, built into the Notification post is an expiration date/time so it should not need to be manually removed or set to draft.

Bug Fixes/Updates:

• Video Component Text Area now underlines hyperlinks within the text.
• Role permission issues have been fixed for viewing Post types.  One caveat is that Contributor roles will need to access the different posts via the sub-menu on the left sidebar of the dashboard and not through the interface presented on the center of the screen after clicking on “Post Types.”
• Slate Form components are now available on Landing and Default template pages, as well as Event posts.
• The Hours component is now available on Contact and Landing page templates.
• The Text Block w/Map component now properly access the Google Maps API and displays the Map on the front-end.

Side note, we have received the complaints about the Accordion component changing colors and the Tab component that was affected by this update.  The developers are aware of these issues and are working to have them resolved ASAP.  We greatly appreciate your patience in the matter.

As always, Happy Editing!