We would like to provide you with an update on our ongoing project to update website libraries. Some of the items completed have been replacing the editor within modules. We are now shifting our attention to moving page content and CivicSend to the new editor. Moving this project along will allow for a variety of enhancements such as bulk actions in the Image Repository.
Once your content has been migrated, you will not see any differences on your pages until you edit your content. This is when the new editor will appear and content appearance may slightly change.
We do know that these two editors are different, and your sites may have custom styles used so it is impossible to predict and account for all scenarios of the transfer of content. We know the appearance of the content may change, but the majority of changes will be additional spacing between headers and paragraphs.
Technical Details
The reason behind the change is that the Legacy Editor did not use a <p> paragraph tag and only contained <span> spans for markup. Span is non-semantic, and therefore has no meaning, and serves merely as an element for cosmetic effects. <span> is used to apply a CSS style and/or class(es) to an arbitrary section of text and inline elements.
The New Editor uses <p> tags, which have semantic meanings. They tell a machine (like a browser or a screen reader) that the content they encapsulate is a block of text and has the same meaning as a paragraph of text in a book. Semantically, you use <p> tags to indicate paragraphs.
Note: Additional spacing in content and the inability to reuse CivicSend templates without fixing specific sections is expected and will not be addressed by Support.
CivicSend
Please Note: The update of CivicSend editors has been completed as of January 7, 2023. As a reminder, once we update this, not only will you have the new editor with all the improvements, there is an added bonus that the font and color styles will be set to match your site styles!
For those using CivicSend, we want to call out that templates will not be reusable. They will need to be rebuilt after the new editor is enabled for your site. During testing, it was found that some elements caused a break in the templates. Due to the differences in the editors, there is no way for our developers to resolve this. We want to apologize in advance for any inconvenience.
Tips for the New Editor
- When you access the editor of newly migrated page content, you will see the updated editor and be asked to save your page changes at that time
- Enter will create a <p> tag with additional spacing
- Shift + Enter will create a <br> tag and not move to the next paragraph.
- If you see large spaces in content, look at HTML (code) view and remove any empty lines of <br> surrounded by <p> tags
FAQs
How do I know what pages will be affected on my site?
It is possible that all pages will be affected. After the conversion, there will be no apparent changes to your content until you click into an editor. At that time, the new editor appears and you can save changes, cancel or update your content in the editor.
Will I be receiving a report of the affected pages?
There will not be a report on the pages containing the legacy editor as changes can be addressed on a page-by-page basis while editing content.
Will there be additional training provided?
Training is not needed as the new editor has been released and used since April 2021.
Migration Schedule is Complete!
The schedule for each state is as follows. Please note that if the schedule needs to change for any reason it will be communicated via updates to this article. Please follow this article to receive these updates via email.
Week of October 10, 2022 (Complete)
- Alabama
- Alaska
- American Samoa
- Arkansas
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Iowa
- Idaho
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
Week of October 17, 2022
- Pause for retrospective
Week of October 24, 2022 (Complete)
- Indiana
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Mississippi
- Nevada
Week of October 31, 2022 (Complete)
- Illinois
- Michigan
- New Mexico
- New York
Week of November 7, 2022 (Complete)
- Connecticut
- Florida
- Minnesota
- New Hampshire
- Utah
- West Virginia
- Wyoming
Week of November 14, 2022 (Complete)
- Colorado
- Montana
- New Jersey
- Oklahoma
Week of November 21, 2022 (Complete)
- Arizona
- Missouri
- Nebraska
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
Week of November 28, 2022 (Complete)
- California
- Wisconsin
Week of December 5, 2022 (Complete)
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
Week of December 12, 2022 (Complete)
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Saskatchewan
- Texas
Week of December 19, 2022 (Complete)
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
Feedback About the Article
Let us know what was helpful or not helpful about the article below.6 comments
"We will be looking for feedback on anything that breaks a page or drastically alters content."
Will sites be provided with a list of pages that contain the legacy editor so we know where to look afterward? Our site has thousands of pages overseen by dozens of departments. We will need something to guide us to the right places to look.
Rick, we will not be providing a list of all pages that contain a legacy editor. Nothing will visually change until an editor is clicked into for editing, so there are no concerns with any changes occurring to the website that an editor would not be aware of.
Thank you.
Ok. The way this note is written, it sounds like you'll be requesting feedback immediately after the change which would be difficult to provide without knowing where to look.
The legacy editor will look like this if your site has not been converted.
Just wondering if we could get an update on this. Looking at the note above, it appears that no work has been completed since Nov. 21. Has there been a delay. Should we in Washington still expect ours to be done during the week of Dec. 19?
Rick Anderson Yes, we are still making progress on this and the state of Washington will still be completed during the week of Dec 19th. I apologize for the delay in updating the article. I am working with our teams to make sure it is kept up to date.
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