The Dashboard... 2 If this is your first time logging in:... 2 How do I change my password or email address?... 3 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)... 4 SEO for Pages... 4 SEO for Images... 5 Managing Pages... 6 How do I edit a page from the front end of the website?... 6 How do I edit the content... 7 How do I add a new paragraph or a line break?... 7 How do I add a link?... 7 How do I add a photo?... 8 How do I upload a PDF?... 10 What if I accidentally delete a page?... 10 How do I add a new page?... 11 Managing Blog Posts... 12 What are Categories and Tags for?... 12 Contact Forms... 13 The Homepage... 14 1. Main Menu... 14 2. Slide Area... 14 4. The Footer... 16 Managing Menus... 17 Managing Events... 19... 19 Event Date and Time... 19 Event Location Details... 20 Event Cost and Tickets... 20 Organizer Contact Info... 21
The Dashboard *This may not be your site, but all of these site functions will work the same* On the footer of your homepage, you can click on the small icon that looks like a sideways power symbol to get to the login page. If this is your first time logging in: You will need to reset your password. For security reasons, we do not keep a record of your password, so if you lose it, you will need to follow these same steps. 1. Click on the Lost Your Password? link in the lower right hand corner of the login page:
2. On the next screen, enter your email address and click the Reset Password button. 3. The system will send you an email with a link you need to click on to continue. Check your email and look for an email from Gracia Burnham. Click on the link at the bottom. 4. The page this link takes you to will ask you to enter the new password you wish to use (for security, make sure you use something difficult to guess that contains letters, numbers and symbols). Click the Save button when you re finished. You ll be redirected to the login page. 5. Enter your username and password on the next screen and click the Log in button to access your dashboard. How do I change my password or email address? You can change your password or contact information anytime once you are logged into the dashboard. 1. Click on the Profile link from the left sidebar menu.
2. On the next screen, you can update your First and Last name, Email Address, and enter a new password. Click on the Update Profile button at the bottom of the page when you are finished to save your changes. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) The SEO on your website tell Google what a particular page or post on your website is about and affects how it shows in search results. SEO for Pages Every page, post or event on the website has an area where you can enter the SEO information The box is labeled WordPress SEO by Yoast. 1. The Snippet Editor determines what the meta content will be. There are three sections: The title, the URL and the content. All of them will automatically be entered when you create the page. If you would like to edit any of them, simply hover over them and press the pencil icon that appears on the right. The URL should never be changed. 2. A Focus Keyword is the main keyword or keyphrase that the post/page is about. 3. The Meta Keyword help tell search engines what the topic of the page is. Meta keywords are distinguished from regular keywords because they appear behind the scenes, in the source code of your page, rather than on the live, visible page itself. 4. The Content Analysis judges how effective the SEO of a page/post it. It will tell you what needs to be improved on the page to get better Google results. Once you have entered this information and saved the page, the SEO plugin will score your SEO you can see the results at the bottom of the Publish box (at the top of the edit screen next to the main content editor)
The scoring is pretty simple Green is good, Red usually means nothing was entered, and Yellow or Orange is in between. Blue means that the page has been marked No Index which means Google will not show it in search results this is sometimes used for thank you pages or hidden content. SEO for Images When you upload a new photo, you have the option to enter some information about it that affects how Google finds it and processes it. The Title and Alt Text contain a description of what the image is this is what Google looks at to determine what the image is. These two fields can be the same thing, but they should be filled in for every image. Caption is text that will be displayed under your photo on the website, and it is optional. Filling this in can help visitors understand what photos are though. The Description should just be a longer version of the Alt Text this field just gives Google a little extra information. When you are saving your images for the website, you should also try to make sure the file names are as descriptive as possible and contain whatever keywords apply.
Managing Pages The main areas of your website are called pages. You can access them by clicking the Pages link in the left sidebar of the dashboard. This will take you to a list of all of your website s pages. If you place your mouse cursor over the title of one of the pages, you will see some links appear that will let you edit the page, delete it, or view it directly from the dashboard. How do I edit a page from the front end of the website? You can also edit pages while viewing your website when you are logged in. Just navigate to the page you want to make changes to and click the Edit Page button in the black bar at the top of the page.
How do I edit the content The WordPress editor has several tools built in that make it very similar to using Microsoft Word to format your content. See the screenshot below for a basic explanation of the different areas of the editor. 1. This box contains the title of the page. This will also determine the URL of the page. 2. This is the actual editor where your main content goes. The toolbar at the top gives you some tools to add formatting like bold or italicized text, headings or lists to your page. The WordPress Editor works very similarly to Microsoft Word. 3. This is your toolbar that has many different options for formatting a page. 4. The Page Attributes box lets you set a page parent (i.e. if you were editing a page about a foundation member, its Parent would be the Foundation page.). 5. The Publish box is where you save your changes (by clicking the Update button) or preview them (by clicking Preview Changes at the top) How do I add a new paragraph or a line break? Pressing Enter will create a new paragraph. If you just want to add a line break, hold the Shift key when you press Enter. This will move the cursor down to the next line without creating a new paragraph. How do I add a link? Highlight the text you want to add the link to and click on the icon that looks like a chain link in the toolbar.
A new box will pop up. The text you highlighted will appear in the Link Text box. If you are linking to an external website or you know the URL, you can enter it tin the URL box. If you want to link a page on the website, you can click the text that says Or link to existing content. If the URL directs someone away from your website, check the Open link in a new window/tab. A new area will appear where you can search for a particular post or page on your site to link to. Click the Add Link button when you are done to attach the link to the text you highlighted. How do I add a photo? 1. Click on the Add Media button that is directly above the editor on the Edit Page screen. 2. If you are uploading a new photo: a. Make sure the Upload Files tab at the top of the screen is selected, then click the Select Files button in the center of the screen.
b. Browse to the photo you want to upload, the click Open to upload it. c. Once the upload is complete, you will see your media library on the left with the photo you just uploaded selected On the right side of the screen, you can set several options: If you want to use a photo that you have uploaded before: Click on the Media Library tab at the top of the screen (instead of Upload Files), find the photo you want to use, and click on it to select it. Follow the steps above for inserting it into the page (c-d). Once you have uploaded a photo or selected an existing one, you will see some options on the right side of the screen: Edit Image will take you to a new screen where you can crop or rotate the photo (clicking Save when you are done will bring you back to this screen)
Title and Alt Text are descriptions of your photo that help Google find your image and know what it is Caption is text that will be displayed under your photo on the website Alignment allows you to select whether the photo shows to the left or right of the text on your page or centered. Link To allows you to set a link for your image (if you do not want it to link to a specific page, you might want to set this to None Size lets you add a smaller version of the image to your page (depending on how large the original one you uploaded was) Click the Insert into page button when you are done to add it to the page. How do I upload a PDF? To add a PDF, click the Add Media button and browse to find the file you want to upload just like you would if you were uploading a photo. Once it has been uploaded, add a title like you would for a photo. In this case, the title is what will show as the link to your PDF. Click the Insert into page button in the bottom right corner of the screen to add the link to your page. What if I accidentally delete a page? Anytime an item is deleted, it gets moved to the trash so you can restore it if you need to. To access the trash for pages, go to the backend of your site and click Pages on the sidebar menu.
On the next screen, you will see three links at the top of the page - Click on the one that says Trash The next screen will list all deleted items. Hold your mouse cursor over the title of the one you want to restore, and two links will appear below it: Click Restore to move it out of the trash. Note: Clicking Delete Permanently here will delete the page for good, so be careful! How do I add a new page? There are several ways to add a new page. The most straightforward way is to go the Pages area by holding your mouse cursor over Pages in the sidebar menu of the dashboard.
Click on Add New at the bottom of the menu that appears. Add all of your information the same way you would if you were editing an existing page, and click Publish (where the Update button would normally be) so save it. Managing Blog Posts While pages represent static content on your website, posts are more like news stories posts are where you add current events. To add access posts, click on Posts from the sidebar menu in the dashboard. Once you are in the Posts section, you can add or edit them the same way you would for pages. What are Categories and Tags for? Categories and tags let you group posts together. For example, you could have a blog category that contained only posts about news so that a member could view all of the news in one place. Tags are similar, but we don t typically use them. Note: Refer to the Search Engine Optimization section when creating a post. SEO is essential in helping your post reach your target audience.
Contact Forms All requests that come from the contact forms on your website are stored in the database so you can review them later. When you log in to the dashboard, you will see a box that shows some quick stats for all of your forms. To view the requests, you can click on the title of the forms or the number under Unread or Total. The next screen will show a list of all requests for the form you clicked on. You can view the full request by clicking on the name. You can also switch the form you are viewing requests for from here by using the Switch Form dropdown in the top right corner.
The Homepage Some areas of the homepage are dynamic, and some are static. Each piece is described below with instructions for how to update it. 1. Main Menu This is your main menu. It is located on all of the pages of your website. To edit this area, refer to the Managing Menus section. All Main Menus Navigation Bars will be horizontal at the very top of the page. 2. Slide Area If your site does not feature an image slideshow, ignore this area. The slides have their own section in the WordPress dashboard. To access them, click on Slides from the sidebar menu.
The editing and adding process is the same as it is in other areas, but there are some Slide specific areas you need to enter. The title in this case is just there for your reference, to help you identify them later. It is not used on the front end of the website. 1. The Title appears as a headline on the left-hand side of the slide. 2. The Slide Image is the actual slide photo. The correct size is 2114x500, but the photo will be automatically resized if you add one that isn t quite right this isn t 100% reliable though, so you should try to have them to correct size before you add them if you can.
3. The Publish box allows you to schedule and/or publish a slider to appear on the home page. 4. The Slider Details allow you to add a caption to the slideshow. To add a caption just uncheck the No Caption box and type in what you would like the caption to say in the Link Text field. If you would like the slider to link to a different page on the site, just paste in the page URL in the Link URL field. You do no need to uncheck No Caption if you just want to add a link. 4. The Footer The footer can be changed by going into the dashboard and going to Appearance, once there go to Widgets. To change the footer, you will need to change the Copyright Area and Footer Sidebar sections.
Managing Menus All menus on the website are part of the main menu at the top of the page. You can make changes to the menu that shows up on the sidebar by adding sub-pages to the main items. 1. To access the menu from the dashboard of your website, hold your mouse over Appearance, then click on Menus 2. The next screen will look like the screenshot below. You can re-arrange the menu items by clicking and dragging them to a new position with your mouse. You can also add new pages to the menu by finding them in the Pages box on the left (click the checkbox next to the page you want to add, the click the Add to Menu button they will be added to the bottom of the list by default, so you will need to drag the new page to the position you want it in the menu). 3. Click the Save Menu button the top left corner when you are finished to save your changes.
Managing Events If your site does not feature an event calendar, ignore this area. To add or edit an event, go to Events on the left sidebar in the dashboard. Either add or edit an event. Once on an event you will see different option boxes, which will be discussed farther down. Below those, there is a normal text box where general information about the event can be added. Once you are on an Events page, there are a lot of different options. Event Date and Time The options in the box determines where and when the event will be. If the event is all-day, make sure the All-day event box is check, if not uncheck the box and choose the start and end time of the event. Clicking on the fields will open up a drop-down of different times to choose from. If this event happens more than once at the exact same time, click on the Repeat box. This will open up a calendar that you can choose other dates for this exact event. Choose the dates you want, and then hit Apply.
Event Location Details The options in this box allow you to input the Venue name and Address of the event. Just copy and paste the address and a Google Map will be generated. The address that is added here, will also show up on the Where is Gracia map (http://graciaburnham.org/where-is-gracia/). If you would like there to be a map on the page, make sure the Show Map box is checked. Event Cost and Tickets The options in the box determine whether or not an attendee needs to purchase tickets. If it is a free event make sure the Free event option is marked.
If an attendee needs to purchase tickets to the event, you will need to make sure the External Tickets URL option is chosen. This will bring down more options. Enter in the cost per ticket, and the URL of the external site where tickets can be purchased. Organizer Contact Info The last section is simply just contact information for whoever is running the event. The information available is: Contact name, Phone, Email, and the Website of the venue is applicable.