You’ve probably noticed that we’ve made some major changes to the look and feel of Knowledge Commons.
The new look for Knowledge Commons has been a long time coming and we hope you like the new design! However, such a redesign is not merely a lick of paint. It requires deep technical integration and care in the switchover.
For instance, the new theme on the Knowledge Commons site now uses the block editing style of the full site editor in WordPress’s Gutenberg system. This means that content can more quickly be updated and also that there is no intermediary plug-in between the user and the page, as was previously the case when we used Elementor.
The design changes also go further in that we have begun comprehensive mobile testing to ensure that our platform can be used by members on a variety of devices. Given that the vast majority of website visits worldwide are from smartphone devices, it seems increasingly important for us to support this demographic. It is also worth noting that designing a website that works well on both a desktop and a smaller-format device is not entirely straightforward. This will be part of an iterative program going forward, in which we will gradually ensure that all of the network’s pages are up to spec on mobile devices.
Furthermore, we have taken great care in ensuring that the color contrast ratios meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines’s “AA” categorization to ensure that the largest number of people can access our site. But accessibility will, again, be a set of iterative improvements as we work towards an even-higher standard (“AAA”). We hope radically to upscale our accessibility in the next year or so. If a Commons is truly to be for everyone, after all, then it must include those with disabilities or other accessibility needs.
We understand that with this new theme, you may notice some things look a little different and run across some small bugs. Please email us at hello@hcommons.org if there is anything to report to us. As with any new software launch, our small team will be actively working through bugs as they’re reported.