UCSC Primary Sites

WordPress plugin that loads site-specific functionality for the primary UC Santa Cruz websites: www, news, and events.

How it works

The plugin uses a registry/loader/module architecture:

1. Site Registry -- maps named site groups (e.g. www, news, events) to URL patterns and module classes.
2. Site Loader -- resolves the current site URL against the registry and boots matching modules.
3. Modules -- self-contained feature classes that register hooks, post types, blocks, and other WordPress functionality.

Sites are matched automatically by URL pattern (e.g. https://news.ucsc.edu). An admin settings page under Settings > UCSC Primary Sites allows overriding any group to always-on, always-off, or auto (URL-based).

Site groups

Group	Patterns	Modules
WWW	www.ucsc.edu, *www-ucsc*	Front Page, Dashboard Widgets
News	news.ucsc.edu, *news-ucsc*	Media Coverage, Dashboard Widgets, Block Variations
Events	events.ucsc.edu, *events-ucsc*	Block Bindings, Users Events Column
Shared	all three site patterns	Robots Generator

The Shared group exists for functionality that should apply uniformly across all UCSC primary sites. Add a module to its list in sites/registry.php when the behavior is not site-specific.

Robots Generator (Shared)

Appends UCSC-specific rules to WordPress's generated robots.txt via the robots_txt filter. Two lists are maintained as class constants in sites/shared/modules/class-robots-txt.php:

• LIMITED_AGENTS — AI training crawlers (e.g. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot). Each receives a Crawl-delay directive set by the CRAWL_DELAY constant.
• BANNED_AGENTS — aggressive SEO scrapers and known abusive crawlers (e.g. AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, MJ12bot). Each receives Disallow: /.

The module deliberately excludes AI search bots (e.g. OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ChatGPT-User), which provide user-initiated retrieval rather than training data. If a site is set to discourage indexing in Settings > Reading, this module leaves WP's default output unchanged.

Adding a new module

1. Create a class in the appropriate sites/<group>/modules/ directory that extends UCSC\PrimarySites\Module.
2. Implement get_name() and boot(). Optionally override can_load() to check dependencies.
3. Add the class to the group's module list in sites/registry.php.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4+
• PHP 8.0+
• ACF Pro (required by the Media Coverage module in news; other modules load without it)

License

This plugin is licensed under the GPL-2.0.