"This theme is the baseline not the finish line."
The most exciting aspect of this deploy is the introduction of the "Admin Theme". With the Administrative theme, various entities of the University, in particular Administrative entities, can quickly have a nice looking website. The content for these sites still need to be written. We also understand that this is a template, and each site may need some customization of the visual elements; This theme is the baseline not the finish line.
"Your Conductor search will include any KeyMatches."
Another change is the incorporation of "KeyMatch" in search results. So if your site makes use of the Google Search Appliance and you have specified certain key words that are associated with a site (i.e. Search on "Shakespeare" and there is a "KeyMatch" for http://shakespeare.nd.edu/) your Conductor search will include any KeyMatches.
"You are using Google Analytics? Right?"
Lastly, we are tweaking how URLs resolve. Prior to 1.5.8, if you type http://conductor.nd.edu/news and http://conductor.nd.edu/news/ (note the trailing slash) you would get the same page, but Google Analytics would treat those as different pages. Google Analytics is doing the right thing according to Internet protocols, but it certainly muddies the results. With 1.5.8, if you type http://conductor.nd.edu/news you will be automatically redirected to http://conductor.nd.edu/news/. In doing so Google Analytics will group the two URLs as one, and your results will be more clear. Which leads to the question "You are using Google Analytics? Right?"