The USI website has been refreshed as of 24 March 2021 at 21.35.  In the interim period (first week) we would expect the site to have some minor problems which could manifest as:

  • Slower performance than recently
  • Some pages being at different locations, resulting in dead links or 404 Errors
  • Context display anomalies (stuff not looking like it was designed to).

Inside Baseball:

The core of the site has been updated and the taxonomical framework has been revised.  We’ve moved from the theme ‘Extra’ to the Divi framework and moved the site to a faster host.  Under the bonnet we’re trying to optimise images and load times, generate caches of regularly accessed files and purge old non-display data which was probably very useful at some point but now is just slowing things down.  The security of the site has been improved and backups are now being fully automated.  In the back end a synchronised version of the site is in a development mode so that we can keep the site fresh.

Visual nonsense

In fact the display framework we’re using is shorter and therefore theoretically faster than before.  Your computer is handling the visual stuff now, and the stuff being served should (should) degrade gracefully with the type of device.  Importantly, the site was always device responsive but now specifically targets, in order:

  1. Screens at 1280 W
  2. Mobile Phones (iOS and Android)