We recently changed the search mechanism on the main website on Faculty Websites to search all publicly available websites hosted on the service.
Now, when you use the Search, which is available prominently on the header of each page, you will see results from all Faculty Websites that allow search engines. We’ve also added searching the Faculty Profile system to help viewers trying to find faculty based on search terms. The Faculty Profile system is a separate system run by the Office of Research.
How to enable or disable your Faculty Website being searched
By default, all new sites have search engine access disabled. This is intentional. We want to give you time to work on your site before making it searchable by Google and other search engines.
Ready to make your site searchable?
Change your Site Visibility settings. However, be aware it may take Google some time to find your site. The help page has some tips to speed things up.
As part of our Jetpack features series, learn how to configure widgets to only appear on certain posts or pages. By enabling this feature, you can show or hide widgets based on the criteria you choose.
Go to the Widgets panel and toggle ON “Enable widget visibility controls…”
Using Widget Visibility
What are some examples of when to use widget visibility?
You want to show an author bio, but only for posts by that author.
You want to show or hide a widget on the homepage.
You want a widget to show for a particular post category or tag.
You want to show a widget only for people who are logged into your site.
Visibility
Visibility is controlled by five things: page type, category (posts), tag (posts), date, and author. You can also hide widgets based on the same criteria. Each rule is handled separately.
How to use Widget Visibility
When adding or editing a widget, you should now see a button called “Visibility”.
Add or edit an existing widget using the Customizer so you can see the changes in real-time.
Click the Visibility button.
Toggle Show or Hide and choose your criteria.
For example, if I only want to show a widget on the home page (or front page), I would choose Show if Page is Front page.
This would only show the widget on the home page and hide it everywhere else.
You can add more criteria by clicking the plus icon.
When you are satisfied with the results, click the Publish button in the Customizer to save your settings.
There are a lot of variables. Try it out so you can display widgets in different parts of your website.
As part of our Jetpack features series, learn how to view how many people are visiting your site and what content is most popular. Google Analytics is set up on all of our sites and you can see these stats on your dashboard. However, if you want more data, you can also see additional WordPress.com’s stats using Jetpack.
This feature should be ON by default when you set up Jetpack. If you don’t see Jetpack stats in your dashboard, check to see if it is enabled.
Go to Jetpack > Settings
Go to the Traffic settings
Click the down arrow in the Site stats box to expand the settings.
Check to see if “Include a small chart in your admin bar with 48-hour traffic snapshot” is ON.
You can also choose if your logged-in views get counted and who can see the stats based on their role on your site.
Stats by Jetpack on your Dashboard
You should now see a chart with data about visits to your site including the top posts and search terms people used to find your site. This includes today’s traffic. Stats are updated every 30 minutes.
View All Stats
Do you want to see even more? Click the View All Stats button in the Stats panel. This will take you to WordPress.com where you can see more details on your site’s traffic including how people are finding your site (referrers), your top posts and pages, the search terms people are using to find your content, and the countries your visitors are coming from.
How to Deactivate Site Stats
Website tracker tools are no longer allowed on UCI Health and School of Medicine websites. You can deactivate Site Stats by using the instructions below.
Go to the Jetpack > Dashboard menu in the left sidebar of your Dashboard.
At the bottom of the page, look for Modules in the list of Jetpack links.
Click Deactivate in the Site Stats row.
Site Stats in Jetpack will now be deactivated. The site will no longer track visitors using Jetpack, nor will the Site Stats module be displayed on the dashboard.
As part of our Jetpack features series, learn how to enable the Related Posts feature to display contextual posts your readers may be interested in reading. Jetpack does the analysis for you to display other posts from your website or blog that are similar in content. This can help increase your site’s traffic by keeping your readers engaged.
Toggle ON “Show related content after posts” and optionally “Highlight related content with a heading” and “Show a thumbnail image where available”.
You can also use the Customizer to adjust some of the settings. Click the “Configure related posts in the Customizer” link. There are a few more options there.
That’s it! Related posts should start appearing at the end of each post. If they do not, see the “Keep in Mind” section below.
Related Post Blocks
You also have the option of adding a Related Post Block to any post. You can only display one set of related posts per post. If you use the related post block, it will supersede the global settings. There are more settings in the block including how many posts get displayed. See below for an example of the Related Post Block.
Example of Related Posts Block
Keep in Mind
Related content will not appear unless Jetpack can show at least 3 good results. The more posts you have, the more likely you are to see related posts appear.
Related content is automatically generated based on the content and any categories and tags you use.
The maximum number of related posts you can display is 6.
As part of our Jetpack features series, learn how to enable extra sidebar widgets to extend what your site can do. From Twitter timelines to a countdown for a big event, using Jetpack widgets is an easy way to add extra functionality.
