WordPress 7 is the first major release in four years, and it brings a number of changes to Aurora, particularly for sites running Cynder, our most recent Aurora theme. If you’re interested in creating a new site with Cynder or migrating an existing site to Cynder, fill out the Aurora account request form.

While some features have been removed for the sake of Aurora stability, the following features are now available.

• Admin Dashboard Command Palette
• Breadcrumbs Block
• Custom CSS for blocks
• Icon block
• Responsive Block Visibility — show/hide blocks based on device
• Style and Transition Update for Admin Dashboard
• Visual Revisions for the block editor

While you may see the following changes listed in WordPress’s field guide for the release, they have been purposefully removed from Aurora.

• Connector functionality, used to attach third-party AI services (this may be enabled in the future)
• Font library, due to branding standards
• Improvements to full site editing, since FSE is disabled on Aurora
• Navigation Block Overlay, since the Navigation Block has been removed from Aurora

Update 18 was released (3/27/2025). All central third party plugins were updated to the latest version. A new theme, Cynder, and the new block editor is now available for all new sites. Learn more about the block editor and how the editing experience will differ.

Update 17.7 was released (12/19/2024). WordPress Core was upgraded to 6.7.1 and all central third party plugins were updated to the latest version.

Update 17.6 was released (8/15/2024). WordPress Core was upgraded to 6.6.1 and all central third party plugins were updated to the latest version.

Update 17.5 was released (6/20/2024). WordPress Core was upgraded to 6.5.4 and all central third party plugins were updated to the latest version. 

Each site’s media library storage limit has been increased to 10GB.

Update 17.4 was released (3/21/2024). WordPress Core was upgraded to 6.4.3 and all central third party plugins were updated to the latest version. 

A new calendar plugin has been released with an easy to use interface and advanced display options. For more information go to Events Calendar.

Instagram Feed

Please ignore the email with Subject “There has been a problem with your Instagram Feed.”

“This is a courtesy email sent from the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin on your website to alert you when there is an issue with one of your Instagram feeds.”

 

YouTube Feed

Ignore the link within the Dashboard for YouTube Feed as shown below.  Do Not add license key.

The message states in the blue banner, “Your license key is inactive. Please add license key to enable PRO features.” 

Please send an email to webdev@uconn.edu if you have any questions.