Distinction Communication Website Manual

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Moris Atkins
5 years ago
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1 Distinction Communication Website Manual Introduction Welcome to your new site! It is built using WordPress software, and features a composer system designed and built by Murmur Creative that makes it easy build and style site content. The Composer The Composer allows you to easily build complex content on any page of your web site. It is composed of several blocks of different types that provide different functionality and can be moved around to change their order. When you first visit a new page, the Composer is empty, and looks like this: Once you ve added a few blocks, it will look more like this:

3 To create content with the Composer, just look for the blue Add Block button under the Content section, and click it. This will open up a pop up with a list of possible block types. Just click one to add it. Block Types Here is a quick run down of the types, and what they do: Single Line These blocks should contain only a single line of text not more than a sentence. Headline A prominent but short piece of text. Tagline A slightly smaller piece of text, but still larger than normal body text. Title Only slightly larger than body text. Useful for separating sections of text. Multi Line These blocks can contains several lines of text from a paragraph to a whole post. Intro Large text that stands out on the page. Used for the introduction of a page, or perhaps for an important quote. Text Unstyled body text. The majority of post content will be this type of block. Lists These blocks generate vertical lists of single line content. This is a good way to present some kinds of information, or to provide a collection of curated links. Buttons Essentially links, but styled to look like clickable buttons. Good for things like Contact Us calls to action. Links A list of links, with an optional comment for each. Good for curated lists of links to internal or external content. ( see: Video Blogs. These use the Links block for the Other video blogs section.) See also: The Files block (below) also presents information in a list form. Media These blocks contain media, such as images, videos, files, etc. Image A single image, with an optional caption. Video An internal (stored in Files) or external (i.e. YouTube) video. Note: You can only add videos from the services on this list: Files Links to one or more PDFs/Ebooks stored in Files. Note: These links respect the Protected setting described in the Files section.

4 Formatting These blocks adjust formatting or display content in slightly more novel ways. Although they can be helpful, they should be used in moderation, and carefully: Some are designed for specific situations, and may cause odd behavior if used incorrectly. Cards These are the rectangles with shadows beneath them seen in several places on the site. They have three sub types: Basic These can, in theory, be used anywhere, but should be used with care. Profile Used only on the Team Bios page. Client Used only on the Clients page. Separator Inserts a simple horizontal line. Also stops wrapping behavior (i.e. on images that have been aligned left/right). Other There are a few other block types that are not defined here: These are very advanced block types, and you shouldn t find yourself needing to use them. If used incorrectly, they can break the site or cause very undesirable behavior. Usage Each block has a header that looks like this: On the left is a number representing its order on this page. Clicking the circle with the + in it will add a new block above the one clicked. Clicking the circle with the in it will remove this block. Clicking the circle with the triangle in it will collapse this block, so that only the header bar is shown (the block s content will still appear on the published page). To adjust the order of a block, click on the header bar, and then drag the block to its new position. Once you have finished setting up your blocks and content, press the Publish or Update button to finalize them and publish them to the site.

5 Pages Most of the Distinction Communication site is made up of Pages, which can be found in the Pages section of the side menu in the Dashboard. Most should require little to no modification during the lifetime of the site. A few have unique functionality or purpose that may require additional attention, however. Trainings To create a new training, simply create a new page and select the appropriate page ( One on One Coaching, Small Group Workshops, or Virtual Coaching ) as the parent. Then make sure to set Training Event as the template. The Page Attributes section should look something like the image to the right. Setting the template will cause the Details box to appear. This is where you will enter specific information about this event. Tagline and Summary must be filled out, but Group Size and Duration are optional. The Composer can be used to create the rest of the event content. If you would like to match the layout of the other events, look at one of them for reference. Alumni Resources The Alumni Resources page is password protected. If you would like to change the password, look for Visibility: Password Protected in the Publish section on the right, and then click Edit. This will open a field that will allow you enter a new password. Note: This is the same procedure used to set passwords for the individual Client post session pages. Posts Posts are the other core part of the site. They are used for Blog Posts, Video Blogs, and Podcasts. To put a post in one of these sections, select the appropriate category.

6 Blog Blog posts have no special requirements or processes. Video Video blogs don t include any specific functionality. To add a video, simply use the Video block. We also recommend you use the Links block to curate lists of other videos. Podcast Selecting the Podcast category will reveal a Show Details box where you can select the file you would like to use for the episode. Saving or publishing the post will cause WordPress to attempt to guess the duration of the episode, and enter it in the Duration field in Show Details. If it is unable to guess the duration, or the duration is wrong, simply enter a new one in the form of hours:minutes:seconds. Featured Each section can have a Featured post, which is the post that appears on the index page ( distinctioncommunication.com/blogs podcasts/ ). To select the featured post for a section, select the Featured category. The index sections will display the most recent post for each category that is in the Featured category. Files The Files section allows you to curate a collection of useful documents and media, such as PDFs, ebooks, and videos, for use on the site. Note: Since there is currently only a single Ebook, marking additional files as ebooks will have no immediate effect. If you wish to have an Ebook index (similar to the White Paper index) contact Murmur Creative. Type

7 When adding a new file, first select all applicable filetypes here: PDF If the file you intend to upload is a PDF, select this option. This will be most, if not all, uploaded files. White Paper If the file you are uploading should appear on the White Paper index ( distinctioncommunication.com/filetype/white papers/ ), select this option (usually in addtion to PDF). Video If you would like to add a video, select this option. Ebook As mentioned above, if you find you need to add items to the Ebook collection, please contact Murmur Creative. Adding the File If you re adding a PDF/White Paper/Ebook, you ll see a button that says Add File :

8 Use this to select the file you d like to add. If you re adding a Video, then you ll see a place to enter the URL of the video you d like to add. For a list of supported services, visit this link: codex.wordpress.org/embeds

9 Content Once you ve added the file, you can add content to the page where it is displayed using the Composer, just as you would on a post or page. Capture If you d like to capture e mails for your newsletter from file access, tick the checkbox that says Protect next to where you added the file. This will require people to enter their name and e mail address before gaining access to the file in question.

10 Clients You site includes a function that allows you to create private pages for clients after they complete their training. To create one, navigate to the Clients section via the sidebar on the Dashboard, and select Add New. Fill out all of the required items (indicated by a red asterisk) in the Client Data section, and add a logo for the client if you wish. If you would like this page to be password protected, look in the Publish section for Visibility. It will probably say Public, with a link next to it that says Edit. Click the edit link, then select Password protected. This will open a field where you can enter the password you would like to use. Once you ve entered the password, press OK to save it. Once Published or Updated, this page will be inaccessible to visitors unless they enter that password. In addition to whatever content you add to this page, when viewed it will also include all the content from the Alumni Resources page. Duplicating Clients You may find you need to duplicate a client page to make creating a new one easier. To do this, navigate to Clients from the Dashboard, and then hover over the client you d like to duplicate. You should see something like this: Click on Clone to create a new copy. It will be named COPY OF (original name), so in the above example, the copy would be called COPY OF Robert Leimer. You can now edit it as you would any other client. Warning: All of the content is copied when you do this, so if there are references to the original client in the text of the page, you must go through and change it. Warning: The title of a new client is used to create the URL for that client this means that, for instance, the URL for the above example, once copied, would be /copy of robert leimer. You should make sure to change this. You can change it by clicking on the Edit button here:

Form Submissions Your site collects visitor submissions from several different forms. These submissions are e mailed to info@distinctioncommunication.com, but they are also saved on the site itself.

11 Form Submissions Your site collects visitor submissions from several different forms. These submissions are e mailed to info@distinctioncommunication.com, but they are also saved on the site itself. You can find them by navigation to the Forms section through the Dashboard menu, and then selecting Entries. To see entries from the different forms, use the Switch Form dropdown in the upper right corner. Form Settings In some cases, you may need to change some things about your forms. Detailing every possible change is beyond the scope of this document, but we ll cover some likely scenarios to give you an idea of how the forms function. Form Selection Before making any changes to a form, you must first select the form you wish to modify. To do this, select Forms from the side menu in the Dashboard, and these select the Forms sub item. You should be presented with a page that looks something like this:

12 Simply click on the form you would like to change. When making changes to a form, you will see something like this at the top of the page: The area marked 1 shows the name of the form you are currently editing. The area marked 2 allows you to switch between forms. Notifications The e mails that are sent out when a form is submitted are called Notifications. To change them, select a form as described above, then select Form Settings and click Notifications. This will display all notifications assigned to that form. Most have only one, but Workshop Registration, for instance, has three: Select the one you would like to change. For instance, if you want to change the message that is sent to a visitor when they fill out the Workshop Registration form, select Sign up Notification. You can customize nearly everything about the notification, but you shouldn t change anything unless you re certain you know what it does: Mis configuring the notifications can prevent people from receiving the e mails they need. If you find you need to change what address

13 e mails are sent to, or sent from, contact Murmur Creative to help you safely change the settings. If you would like to change the subject line or e mail content, however, that can be done without worrying about causing e mail to not be sent. Simply scroll down to the section where you see the fields Subject and Message. Subject will become the subject line of the e mail, while Message will become the body. To the right of both of these fields, you should see a small button that looks like this: Clicking this button will open a list of all the fields on the form, i.e. Name, E mail, Address, etc. Selecting these items will insert special codes in the related field that will then be populated with the submitted content of that field. For instance, if we want to insert the selected workshop date from the Workshop Registration form into the message, we would do the following: Select the field insert button... Select the field we want to insert Click that field, and there it is:

14 When the e mails are sent, they ll appear like so (let s say the person submitting it selected the Sept. 22 workshop): This process can be repeated for any other fields you would like to include: There is no limit on how many you can add.

NiCHE Website Posting Guidelines & Best Practices (updated 22 December, 2013)

NiCHE Website Posting Guidelines & Best Practices (updated 22 December, 2013) Getting oriented Registering for an account The WordPress Dashboard Editing your profile What to do if you ve lost your password