New Local Group Website Instructions. Write your information here: Location. User Name Password

Transcription

1 New Local Group Website Instructions 2016 St. Paul Street Evangelization. All Rights Reserved. Write your information here: Location URL User Name Password

2 Welcome Dear SPSE Chapter Coordinator, Welcome to St. Paul Street Evangelization! The following instructions will help you get up and running with your SPSE chapter website. The first thing that you need to know is that your chapter website is a clone of a template chapter website. This allows every chapter website to maintain uniformity. You will be free to make a number of changes though. Many of them you are going to want to make right away. We use WordPress as our CMS or content management system. WordPress is the platform behind more than 16% of the websites on the Internet. WordPress is not the fanciest or most powerful content management system on the Internet but it combines a wide range of versatility while being fairly easy to master. Your website will be your local group s virtual home on the web. It is directly connected to the national website and will serve as a way for people in your area to contact you about what it is you do and how to join your group. You will also find it a great way to organize with your team members. Since we employ a program called multi-site, our IT staff will always be able to access your website and help you when you run into questions or problems. In Christ, Adam Janke SPSE Program Director Contact Need help? Contact Adam or Paul first. Steve Dawson National Director steve@stpaulse.com Adam Janke Program Director adam@stpaulse.com Paul Schlenker Web Application Development Server Administration pschlenker@stpaulse.com

3 Website Location When your local group was approved by the national office we began the process to set up your local website. These sites all run off of the national website. If you are tech savvy and want to purchase your own domain name to point to your local group website you may do so. However, the URL for your website is usually the name of your city after the URL: It is all lowercase. You are welcome to use this website in promotional materials. Your website is connected directly to the national homepage and we have put your location on a national map so visitors can find you. Login On your SPSE website, you will see a Login button on your home page. Click on that, and then fill in your user name and password. Your username and password were automatically ed to you when your local group website was created. This will bring you to the dashboard. If y o u h ave trouble with l o gi n, you can reset your password by clicking on the Lost password? link, or us for help.

4 Dashboard Once you login, you will see an administrative menu across the top of the screen which you can use to access your website s administrative dashboard. Good news: You do not need to know any HTML or code to use your website. You only need to look around and learn how your dashboard works. More good news: Most of it is selfexplanatory. If you are already familiar with WordPress, you may not even need this instruction manual. If you are not, you ll be a master within the hour. If you can use Microsoft Office products (like Word), you can do this. Since you are using one of the most popular online content management systems, there are also extensive help networks on the Internet. If you can t find it in this instruction guide, you can probably find it on the WordPress support forums by searching or posting your question here: More good news: it s pretty difficult to break your website. If you manage to do so though, our SPSE national staff can quickly login to your website and find out what s going on. Don t be afraid to try things out as you are learning.

5 Create New Users Along the menu at the right hand side you have various options. One of t h e o p t i o n s you have is to create new users and control those users. SPSE recommends having each of your team members create a username (or create one for them) so you can communicate through your website. You can set up hidden pages and calendars that only your team can see to help coordinate your efforts. As your group grows, using a calendar will be easier than calling everyone each time you want to set up a time to go out and evangelize. After you have created a new user, you can edit their profile, give them more access, or limit their access. Subscribers can only view the website and comment on posts. Editors have additional access. Administrator - Somebody who has access to all the administration features. Editor - Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users' posts, etc. Author - Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts. Contributor - Somebody who can write and manage their posts, but not publish them. Subscriber - Somebody who can only manage their profile.

6 Adjusting Widgets In the menu on the left under appearance is a button that says Widgets. A widget is a mini-program that allows you to customize your website. You will see a large box populated with different widgets you can use. As you become more familiar with your website, you may choose to use more of these. The active widget areas are on the right-hand side (see the picture here). The Main Side Bar already has 5 different widgets operating on your website. Click on Text: Contact widget. It should open up to reveal the information in that widget. Change the contact information to your own contact information as you see fit. Then click on save. You have just edited your own website. You can add additional text areas to add more information if you would like. You can also add widgets to the other widget areas such as Footer Area One. You can then go to your website to see what they did. Feel free to experiment to make your local group your own. We ask though that you leave the top 2 Text boxes as they are. Creating a new banner image Again, under Appearance in the left menu bar is a Header option. Here we would like you to change your banner to an image of your city, or a picture of your street evangelization team. If you know how, you can add text or adjust the image to include your city name (such as in the Lansing, Michigan banner). The program GIMP, which is free to download online, will allow you to do this, too. If you would like the national office to create your banner, just send your image and what you want done with it to adam@stpaulse.com.

7 Writing a Blog Post When you have news, press releases, and notices to your team, or just have something that God has put on your heart that you want to share with those who visit your website, you can write your own blog post. Click on Add New under the Posts menu item. Add a title to your post in the first box, and then type your post c o n t e n t in the second, larger box. The options available are very similar to Microsoft Word (Bold, Underline, Bullet Points, Center, Justify, Change the color or size of fonts). You can also add images and links as well as documents using the media button next to the word upload. You can categorize your posts, allow users to comment on it, and either save it as a draft or directly publish it to your website. You can always come back later to make changed by clicking on all posts and edit. Creating a New Page Creating a new page works the same way, only this will become a page on your website with its own menu button. You might want to create a password protected or hidden page with your calendar of evangelization times, or you might want to make it public. You might create a page just for your team to talk back and forth to one another similar to a forum or facebook wall. The uses are only limited by your imagination. Once you publish a new page, go to Appearances and Menu. There you can add your new page to your menu. If you get stuck, let us know.

8 Feedbacks Feedbacks is a pretty important menu item. Here anyone who has filled out the Get Involved form on your website and submitted it will have their data saved in this area for you to look at. Plugins The plugin menu button (as well as the CSS/php editor) have been disabled on your website. Since we are all using the same installation of WordPress, we have only activated the plugins that are universal to everyone and we know are safe. If there is a plugin that you want activated for your site, please contact adam@stpaulse.com with the name of the plugin and a link to the download page. However, you have an incredibly powerful plugin called Jetpack installed already that covers a multitude of common things you may want to do with your website. Take some time to look through Jetpack and click on the learn more buttons to find out how to use the many options.

9 Have Fun! That s about it for the basics. Most of the website has already been set up for you. We already went in and adjusted settings, security, gave you administrative access, set up the basic pages, programs, and forms that you will need. After just a few customizations and adding new users you are ready to go. Here are some things that you might consider adding to your website in the future: Links to your local parishes, diocese, and other Catholic material that is not already included for you. Slideshows and pictures of your outings. Event calendars, so people and team members know when to find you. (It is very easy to add a Google calendar). Blog posts of Gospel reflections, media coverage, team member profiles, or anything else you can think of. Our support staff can usually respond to questions and concerns within 48 hours. Often times we will respond within a matter of minutes. It depends if we are at work or not. Thank you for the work that you are doing to spread the Gospel and invite people into a relationship with Jesus Christ and His Holy Church. The term, new evangelization recalls the need for a renewed manner of proclamation, especially for those who live in a context, like the one today, in which the development of secularization has had a heavy impact, even in traditionally Christian countries. The Gospel is the ever new proclamation of the salvation worked by Christ which makes humanity participate in the mystery of God and in his life of love and opens it to a future of strong, sure hope. Highlighting that at this moment in history, the Church is called to carry out a new evangelization, means intensifying her missionary action so that it fully corresponds to the Lord s mandate Proclaiming Jesus Christ the only Saviour of the World, today is more complex than in the past; but our task remains identical to that at the dawn of our history. The mission has not changed, just as the enthusiasm and courage that moved the Apostles and first disciples must not change. The Holy Spirit which prompted them to open the doors and made evangelizers of them (cf. Acts 2: 1-4) is the same Spirit which today moves the Church to a renewed proclamation of hope for the people of our time. St Augustine affirms that we must not think that the grace of evangelization was extended only to the Apostles and with them that fount of grace was exhausted, but this fount is revealed when it flows, not when it ceases to pour out. And it was in this way that the grace, through the Apostles, reached others too, who were invited to proclaim the Gospel in deed, it has continued to be a call right up to these days for the entire body of his Only Begotten Son, that is, his Church spread throughout the earth (cf. Sermon, 239, 1). The grace of the mission continually needs new evangelizers capable of receiving it so that the salvific news of the Word of God never fails to be proclaimed in the changing conditions of history. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI