Winter website updates underway: SEO, Events Calendar, Jetpack
The Digital Communications team has been performing behind-the-scenes work with your websites. You may see changes in the WordPress dashboard once these changes are made:
SEO — Moving from Yoast to SEOPress
As mentioned in our October newsletter, we are transitioning from the Yoast SEO tool to SEOPress for search optimization features. The SEOPress tool is better supported by UMS IT’s Web Technologies team, and will be in use for all university websites going forward. This change has been made to many sites already— if you see an SEO icon in your dashboard instead of the “Y” Yoast icon, your site has already been updated. Our SEO Workshop is a great way to learn more about SEO considerations for your website, and can be scheduled for one of our Friday consultation sessions.
Events Calendar — Updating event database format
Our event calendar software was updated in July, and with that update came a new database format for events. The Events Calendar system has an easy process to update this in the dashboard, but large calendars can take some time to update. As we have updated SEO on a website, we triggered this database update to ensure forward compatibility with future improvements.
Jetpack removed from websites
As of Jan. 24 we have removed Jetpack from all but four websites on umaine.edu, and will be reviewing Cooperative Extension websites next. Websites that have specific uses for Jetpack are being reviewed to identify new options for Jetpack features, and we will be in touch as we learn more.