Editing help
Once you are logged in, extra help on the WordPress system used to produce this site can be accessed from the help tab at the top right of the screen. The notes presented below are a summary of the main points you will need to edit this particular site.
To edit a page
Access the editor by either:
- From the Dashboard, click the ‘Edit Pages’ button or select Pages | All Pages from the lefthand menu, click the required page
- From ‘Site View’, navigate to the required page, click ‘Edit’ at the bottom of the page
The editor box has 2 tabs, ‘Visual’ and ‘HTML’. Unless you are familiar with html, use the editor in ‘Visual’ mode where you can type text exactly as it will appear onscreen.
To ensure you have access to all the toolbar buttons, click anywhere within the editor box, then use Alt-Shift-Z (or the Show/Hide Kitchen Sink button on the toolbar) to show/hide the extra toolbar buttons.
Enter your text changes using the editor. Most of the buttons are self-explanatory to alter the formatting (bold, italic, alignment etc) and hovering over a button tells you what it is. The ? at the right hand side of the bottom toolbar gives extra help.
Note: The ‘Return/Enter’ key inserts a new paragraph rather than a new line; to get a new line instead, use Shift and ‘Return/Enter’.
Remember to save any changes by clicking ‘Update’ in the ‘Publish’ box
Select the required text in Word, and use Edit | Copy to copy it to the clipboard.
In the website editor screen click where you want the pasted text to appear, then click the button in the middle of the 2nd row of the editor toolbar (it has a small W on it), use Ctrl V to paste the text into the popup window then ‘Insert’ to place it in the web page.
To insert an image
Click within the page editor at the place you want the image to be.
Click the Upload/Insert link above the editor toolbar.
The popup box allows you to select an image file from your own computer, from another website, or one that has already been uploaded to your site’s media library.
Note: if you select an image from another website, this will only link to the image, not upload it to your own site.
On selecting an image from your computer, it is uploaded and you can add a caption and adjust the display size before clicking ‘Insert into Post’.
Note: even if you choose to display an image at a smaller size than the original, this will not alter the original size; the original will be the one downloaded on viewing the page, only its display size will alter.
To insert links
Highlight the text users will click on to access the link, use the toolbar button in the middle of the top toolbar (showing chain links) to enter the URL you want to link to.
If you want to link to a document (e.g. a Word document or pdf) within your site, the procedure is very similar to inserting an image. Click in the editor screen where you want the link to appear, then click ‘Upload/Insert’ above the editor toolbar. The Media popup allows you to select documents already in the media library or any from your own computer to upload to the media library. Once selected, they will be shown in the Add Media popup where you can add extra details. The title box is the name the file will be given within the media library as well as on the link to it within the web page. If you want the link text to be different to the document’s title, select the file from the Media Library (Media | Library) in the lefthand Dashboard menu and copy the URL of the uploaded file. Then link to this with a normal link (using the chain links button on the editor toolbar).
To edit the News sidepanel
The News items are posts which are edited in a similar way to pages. If there is a particular item you want to appear at the top of the news panel, from the list of posts, hover over the post title, select Quick edit and check the ‘Make this post sticky’ in the publish panel. For other items in the news panel, ensure this box is unchecked.
To add a new page
From the Dashboard, click Pages | Add New from the lefthand menu. A screen very similar to the normal editing screen will show a blank page. Give it a title (this is the name the site will use to link to the page so keep it short). Add the page content in the same way as editing any other page.
In the ‘Page Attributes’ box, set the parent page. If you want the page to appear in the main navigation menu of the site, set the parent as (no parent); otherwise choose the page the new one is most related to. This creates a page that can be linked to from other pages within the site but doesn’t appear on the main navigation menu.
In the ‘Publish’ box, select Visibility to Public or Private depending on whether you want it avaialble for everyone to view or only those able to login to the site. If you still want to work on it before making it available for others to view, save it as a draft; otherwise click ‘Publish’.
To add/remove photos in the slideshow
Upload any new photos using the media library. Once uploaded, in the list of images in the library, use the attach link to attach the photo to the home page. Any photos attached to the home page will be displayed in the slideshow. If you want to remove a photo from the show, use the unattach link. If you have photos on the home page that you want displayed elsewhere on that page (i.e. not in the slideshow) you will need to exclude them from the slideshow. On the editing screen for the home page, edit the slideshow parameters to e.g. where the numbers are the attachment IDs of the relevant photos. (The attachment ID numbers are given in the list of images in the media library.