Data Observatory WordPress Theme Summer 2025 Update – Release Notes

Overview

This update of the Data Observatory WordPress theme incudes enhancements to the Quick Ward Profile search and the statistics chart widgets on the homepage. We also used this release to tidy page templates and address several bugs.

Important: We will roll out these changes to individual customer websites over the coming weeks. Hence the changes might not be immediately visible in your site.

Please note that the enhancements and bug fixes listed below apply to the standard setup of our Data Observatory offering. If your site has been customised, it might be that not all of the described changes are visible.

Key enhancements

Quick Ward Profile search

  • On the home page, the Quick Ward Profile search field has gained a search button to improve user experience and accessibility.
  • It is now possible to search by Ward names as well as postcodes to create a Quick Ward Profile.
  • A filter can be applied to ensure that only postcodes or Ward names that fall within a particular area (usually the Local Authority) will be accepted before loading the report.

Other enhancements

  • Categories pages (created by WordPress on-the-fly, showing all posts or pages assigned to a specific category)  have gained a more pleasing default layout. This can be further adjusted using custom CSS.
  • Page templates we added to the theme have been renamed to replace ‘InstantAtlas’ with ‘Esri UK Data Observatory’ in line with the New Branding for National Data Service and Data Observatory.
  • The padding around the statistics charts on the homepage has been reduced to create a more pleasing look-and-feel.
  • It is now possible to apply a linear scale to the y-axis of the statistics charts on the homepage. If you are interested in this being applied to your site, please log a case using My Esri.
  • Obsolete EditURI / xmlrpc.php links have been removed from page heads in the HTML.

Key bug fixes

  • Map pop-ups have been disabled for the homepage map. They used to show after certain user workflows, covering most of the map.
  • The ‘InstantAtlas – Sub-Level – Blank’ page template  (now called ‘Esri UK Data Observatory – Sub-Level – Blank’) no longer causes content located after headings formatted as ‘Heading 2’ to collapse in an accordion style.
  • The ‘InstantAtlas – Sub-Level – Content’ page template (now called ‘Esri UK Data Observatory – Sub-Level – Content’) no longer causes long URLs and slow page loads when the page is a child of one of our core themes.
  • Accessibility issues related to ARIA attributes and ARIA landmarks the have been addressed.

New Branding for National Data Service and Data Observatory

Esri UK will be dropping the InstantAtlas branding associated with our National Data Service (NDS) and Data Observatory products.

The products and services under the InstantAtlas brand will continue to be supported and developed as normal by Esri UK, however, over the coming weeks and months you will notice a gradual phasing out of the InstantAtlas brand name across our documentation and other web pages. You may also notice that the National Data Service and Data Observatory will get logos for the first time!

If you have any questions about the upcoming changes, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

To find out more about these products please visit the NDS and Data Observatory webpages.

How to embed InstantAtlas apps into your website

The purpose of this post is to provide the necessary information for embedding InstantAtlas apps into a website. Colour is used to explain the code below – if you have difficulty distinguishing the colours used please contact support@instantatlas.com and we will find an alternative. The actual creation of the apps in the first place is not covered in this post.

Data Explorer

InstantAtlas Data explorer apps connect directly to an InstantAtlas Data Catalog in ArcGIS Online and allow your web site users to browse and download data and create graphics for documents and presentations.

Add this code to a web page to embed a data explorer app.


<link href="https://hub.instantatlas.com/data-catalog-explorer/static/css/main.css" rel="stylesheet">
<div id="root"></div>
<script src="https://hub.instantatlas.com/data-catalog-explorer/static/js/main.js"></script>
<script>window.dataCatalogExplorer.launch({ "appid": "e3d83edc76bd45548ddd0e2ee4fe4bdf", "container": "root" })</script>‎

e3d83edc76bd45548ddd0e2ee4fe4bdf – this is the app ID (from ArcGIS Online) of the data explorer app you wish to embed.

An example of embedding a data explorer app can be seen on this page of the Suffolk Observatory.

Map Explorer

Map Explorer apps are simple-to-use apps that that allows a user to select from a pre-defined set of indicators from an InstantAtlas Data Catalog and visualize them as thematic maps.


<div id="ia-map-panel" style="width: 100%; min-height: 500px; height: calc(100vh - 300px);">
<script src="https://hub.instantatlas.com/map-explorer/embed?c=ia-map-panel&appid=917b1891e5934d6baeeff23cdb0e9f38"></script>
</div>

917b1891e5934d6baeeff23cdb0e9f38 – this is the app ID (from ArcGIS Online) of the map explorer app you wish to embed.

Custom Area Reporter

The Custom Area Reporter is an app that allows users to make a custom selection of areas to be viewed in an aggregated or disaggregated form in a report published using Report Builder for ArcGIS. Users select areas from a map using a range of selection tools. Once the areas have been selected, the user can choose from a list of reports – this list is defined in the app configuration.

Add this code to a web page to embed a custom area reporter app.


<link href="https://www.reports.esriuk.com/custom-area-reporter/static/css/car.css" rel="stylesheet">
<div id="car-container" style="width: 100%; height: 500px; border: 1px solid #ccc; position: relative;"></div>
<script src="https://www.reports.esriuk.com/custom-area-reporter/static/js/car.js"></script>
<script defer="defer">window.customAreaReporter.launch({ appid: '1a451d1bbe3544849585ab2745c25f5d', container: 'car-container' });</script>

1a451d1bbe3544849585ab2745c25f5d – this is the app ID (from ArcGIS Online) of the custom area reporter app you wish to embed. The code above contains some styling of the container for the app that you can obviously change if you wish e.g. width, height, border. An example of embedding a custom area reporter app can be seen on this page of the Suffolk Observatory.

Reports

The embedding of reports created using Report Builder for ArcGIS is covered here.