Theme Update 1.4.0

By Kevin Vess
April 16, 2024, 12:16 pm EDT

Updates to the UUA WordPress theme are now available!
Theme update (Version 1.4.0) fixes a few bugs reported by users, improves the UUA Bookstore Widget functionality, and updates the included library toolkits the theme relies upon (full release notes).

Update Instructions
Before you run the update, backup your site files and database.
Simply log in to your WordPress admin panel and the updates will be there for you to install.

Need Help?
Join the conversation on the UU Website Lab Facebook group. Fellow theme users often provide friendly advice and are willing to help troubleshoot common issues.

If you continue to experience technical problems with no workarounds, please contact us at app.support@uua.org.

Kevin Vess, Bright Light Media (https://brightlightmedia.co)

Comments (17)

I wish we would not use Facebook so much; not all of us are on it; it mines data almost as much as Google (or at least a good amount; Google is much worse; if you have a G-mail account, you are basically always tracked). I’d either use this discussion forum or, if possible, a WordPress support page (is the UUA theme registered with WordPress.org?). WP support pages are really helpful, as one can search a history of support requests going back years.

The UUA Theme is not available on wordpress.org because the theme is only offered for purchase through the UUA.

Users of this theme are more likely to find support through this forum, the Websters listserv or the Facebook Group; whichever communication platform they prefer.

For what it’s worth, the Facebook post announcing the theme update promotes the UUA.org support forum as an option for requesting help.

The UUA Theme used to include functionality which overwrites the default WordPress excerpt functionality to allow certain HTML tags within the generated excerpt text.

As a result, this caused more problems than it was worth. For example, sometimes the auto-generated excerpt will break a page layout because the closing tag is cutoff from the except when it reached the word count limit.

We polled UU webmasters through Facebook about removing this functionality to rely on the default WordPress excerpt; the majority of respondents agreed with our assessment of reverting to the default WordPress excerpt functionality.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/uuwebsitelab/permalink/3317227821647936/

If you want your site to allow HTML tags in the Featured Service widget on the homepage, you may use the the_excerpt hook to filter the displayed text on your site. If you apply custom coding, I recommend that you use a child theme or add it as a plugin to avoid losing your custom changes with the next released versions.

Thanks!

Understood. Yeah, there were bugs with this functionality before (if you had an open tag but no closing tag in the excerpt, it would update the styling for a bunch of other stuff on the page, etc.) but overall I would say it was ‘better’ than having no formatting at all. I don’t particularly feel like customizing the theme for this, though, so we’ll probably deal with it as-is.

We polled UU webmasters through Facebook about removing this functionality to rely on the default WordPress excerpt;

All well and good, but was the question asked on this forum? Some of us (well, I) have been banned from Facebook, or simply do not keep an active account there. I am so tired of organizations, UUA and others, doing things on Facebook, using Facebook for comments, etc., when it is a proprietary, for-profit entity that scrapes up so much of our data without consent. Let it be a second, add-on platform, fine—I am not trying to limit, but to ensure that people are not left out of the discussion.

I too agree with Sally’s points. The discussion with Sally last year was about the 1.4.0 UUA Theme update, released in April 2024. However, the recent theme feedback survey was distributed by the UUA directly to their email list.

Regarding the Facebook Group, it’s not regularly monitored, and the UUA doesn’t administer or maintain it. As Susan mentioned, the Facebook Group is a secondary, add-on platform that was established many years ago, before I became involved.

I apologize for the delay in getting you approved for the group. It’s strictly a volunteer activity with only one (possibly inactive) admin and myself as a “Moderator” with limited capabilities.

Since the default Services excerpt is unformatted, the workaround to get the old behavior is to put the text in BOTH the default location and in the box labelled “Excerpt” on the Edit page. Then the Excerpt appears on the Home page, and when the title is selected, it appears on the Service page as well. And thus the text shows when Upcoming and Archived Services are viewed.

Hi Kevin, we are planning to make website updates soon using the UUA theme. But we wanted to see if any new theme updates are in the works for the near future. If so we can hold off until they are available. Thanks in advance for any updates.

Hi Kevin!

Can you share how the process will work for developing the 2.0 UUA Theme?

Do you already have requirements or objectives identified for this update?

What sort of community engagement is going on?

Is there anything you can share with us?

Thanks!

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

In the Winter of 2024, we partnered with the UUA to collect feedback from hundreds of UU site users to plan for this future 2.0 release. During the Spring and Summer of 2025, we established our requirements and objectives based on that community feedback.

The development is still in its early stages, and we will share more details about the new release as soon as they are available.

Best,
Kevin

As Kevin mentioned, the UUA is working with Bright Light Media on a new theme for congregations running WP sites. Additional details will be provided in the coming months. The theme is intended to serve as a foundation to build from so that congregations can weave their own branding and identity into it.

Given it’s been 10 years since the previous theme was released, this release is long overdue. Stay tuned for more details and until then, thank you for your patience!