Overview

WordPress was designed originally as a blogging software, but it has evolved into a complete content management system, allowing those with little to no experience building web sites to easily develop dynamic, professional-looking sites to fit a variety of needs.

This tutorial will cover the basic usage of the WordPress interface to help our faculty and staff get started with their own WordPress sites.

The Dashboard

Each WordPress site is managed through a system known as the Dashboard:  a central administrative page with links to sub-sections that allow the site’s owners to edit content, layout and plugins as needed.

To access a site’s dashboard, first go to the site’s home page, and then add “wp-admin” to the end of the URL.

You will be prompted to log in using your regular Unity ID and password. Once logged in, if you are on the list of the site’s owners, you will have access to the Dashboard.

A menu on the left will allow you to navigate through the various parts of your WordPress site. This tutorial will cover Posts, Pages, Themes, Widgets and Menus. For a complete walkthrough of what the other menus contain, see OIT’s video tutorial on using the Dashboard

Navigation, Look and Layout

Navigation and Menus

If your site will simply be a blogroll of new Posts on your front page, you may never need to make use of WordPress’ Menu feature. If, instead, you’re creating a classic website with a number of interconnected Pages, then you may need to make steady use of the Menu feature to keep everything organized and arranged properly.

Simply put, Menus in WordPress are your primary navigation. Each theme will represent Menus differently, so it’s important to experiment to find what fits best.

By default, every page you create is automatically added to the Primary Menu with its original title. To change this, go to the Menus section under Appearance.

A video walkthrough of how to make use of the Menus interface is available from OIT.

The most important things to know about updating your menus are:

1. You can change the title of a given Page in a menu without changing the title that’s displayed on the page itself, so if you wish to use a shorter name for the menu without losing the original, simply edit the Menu item.
2. Most themes allow only one Primary Menu, which is typically displayed prominently within the theme and serves as the primary navigation, letting your users browse your content easily.
3. SubPages are handled differently depending on your theme, so be careful how many layers of navigation you display. If you wish to limit which pages or layers are displayed, activate the Remove pages from navigation plugin on the Plugins menu.

Posts vs. Pages

In WordPress, you can write either Posts or Pages. The interface is almost identical for each, what’s different is how they are displayed in your site.

Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page (so that the most recent is displayed first). You can change this setting in the Settings panel on the WordPress Dashboard.

Pages are for stable content such as “About,” “Contact,” and similar information. Pages are often used to present timeless information about yourself or your site — information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage any content regardless of when the Page was created.

Creating and Editing Posts and Pages

To create a new Post or Page, go to the relevant menu in your WordPress Dashboard, and click Add New at the top of the page.

For Pages only, if you wish to create a subPage, use the Page Parent menu on the right when editing your page to select the page you wish it to live under.

You can nest sub-pages under other sub-pages, so there’s no limit to how many layers you can have, though we recommend keeping your navigation to no more than 2 to 3 layers, if you can help it.

When editing Posts or Pages, you’ll be able to use WordPress’ WYSIWYG editor (“What You See Is What You Get”) to add formatting and even rich media as desired.

On the right, you can choose when to Publish a page (to make it viewable by anyone who visits your sight), or leave it as a Draft to finish editing later. You can also add Tags or set Categories to help organize your Posts and Pages by common topics.

Note, if you change a Published page to Draft, it will immediately unpublish it and make it unavailable to users.

Tags and Categories are very similar, with one important distinction:  generally, a Page or Post belongs to only one Category, whereas you can apply multiple Tags to any given post to allow for topic overlap. Tags are also more easily created on the fly, and appear listed at the bottom of each post as links in case visitors wish to see all Posts or Pages on a given topic.

For a complete walkthrough of the editing interface, see the OIT video tutorial.

Block Editor

The WordPress sites utilize the block editor–this simple editor gives you powerful control of the content on the page. To learn more about the Block Editor, consult this resources on wordpress.org

Embedding Video

In addition to inserting images, you can also embed videos if they’re tied to a streaming media server, such as YouTube.

For instructions on embedding and an example to get you started, view the WordPress Codex entry on Embeds.

Further Resources

As you’ve seen linked several times in this tutorial, the OIT video tutorials are the primary source for learning and understanding the system to be able to best manage your site and its content. 

Additionally, the WordPress Support Forums are a wonderful resource when you aren’t sure just where to begin. The community is very responsive and welcoming of newcomers, so if you’re just getting started and want to know what’s available to make your site shine, the Support Forums are a great place to start.

myECE

The various portals of myECE are managed and edited by individuals within the respective units. Each supervisor whose content is on one or more of the portals is responsible for informing the Digital Communications Manager of any additions or removals of individuals editing the portals. 

There are two different forms of permissions being issued—portal management and page editing, and the level of control granted to each portal will be determined by the Digital Communications Manager in consultation with the supervisor. 

Page Templates

There are seven Page Templates available on the Oval theme, reflecting a variety of possible use cases.

• Right Sidebar (Default) – Page content appears in a 3/4-width column on the left-hand side and a 1/4-width column on the right-hand side containing sidebar widgets.
• Right Sidebar, Hidden Title – Page content and sidebar widgets appear as above. The page title is hidden.
• Left Sidebar – Page content appears in a 3/4-width column on the right-hand side and a 1/4-width column on the left-hand side containing sidebar widgets.
• Left Sidebar, Hidden Title – Page content and sidebar widgets appear as above. The page title is hidden.
• Full-Width (No Sidebar) – Page content spans the full width of the page, with no sidebar widgets.
• Landing (No Sidebar, Hidden Title) – Page content spans the full width of the page, with no sidebar widgets and the page title hidden.
• Subscriber Login Required – Page based on the default (right sidebar), however, displays a login window for users not logged in and requires Unity access to view. Use this template for pages you don’t want publically accessible.

Each page template also has the option of displaying a featured image as a full-width banner across the top of the page.

Accessibility

To ensure that myECE is accessible to all users, please ensure that content can be read by a screen reader. At the very basic, all images should have an Alt Text description (you can add this when you’re uploading an image). That description should be descriptive of what is in the picture, so that a user that can’t see the picture can still understand what you’re showing. 

Use the built-in Headings for every section heading. There are several levels of this (H2, H3, H4, etc) that can be used, if you need to nest headings within a section that already has a heading. Do not simply bold text that you want interpreted as a heading, as screen readers (and browser reader functions) will not recognize your formatting in the way you want. 

Gravity Forms

We use Gravity Forms as the input gathering tool across myECE—notably on the Communications, Graduate, entry Portal, and HR areas. This is a robust tool that gives more flexibility and customization than a simple Google Form. There is extensive documentation here, and it should be noted that there are select extensions to Gravity Forms activated—notably Signature Add-on, Gravity PDF, and Zapier Add-on.

The latter interfaces with Zapier, which is a service that connects disparate services together. The most typical use case in ECE for this is the connection of a Gravity Form to a Google Sheet to provide automatic addition of data from a Form. ECE maintains a paid Zapier plan, and requests to use Zapier as a connection will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Note that as adding Zapier into the process complicates things as information is routed all over the internet to get to the final destination, it is recommended that backup sources of information are maintained (viewing submissions in the Gravity Forms “Entries” tab, or via email confirmations—Forms > Settings > Notifications).

If an email fails to automatically send from Gravity Forms, it can be triggered from the Entry view using the checkbox next to the Notification and “Resend.” Similarly, a Zapier feed can be re-fired if needed.