CMS User Guide v1.5-GOR

Content Management System User Guide | WordPress Platform
Golden Oak Ranch | Disney
July 20th, 2012
Guide Version 1.5 For WordPress 3.4
Table of Contents
Table of Contents.................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Using WordPress ............................................................................................................................... 3 Getting Started ..................................................................................................................................... 4 The Dashboard .............................................................................................................................. 4 Navigating the Admin Panels ........................................................................................................ 5 The Toolbar.................................................................................................................................... 7 Screen Options .............................................................................................................................. 8 Adding and Editing Content .................................................................................................................. 9 Understanding the difference between Pages and Posts ............................................................. 9 Creating Pages & Posts ................................................................................................................ 10 Page Attributes ............................................................................................................................ 12 Writing in a Post or Page ............................................................................................................. 12 Formatting text using the Rich Editor ......................................................................................... 14 Text Styling Tips ........................................................................................................................... 15 Formatting text using the HTML editor ....................................................................................... 15 Adding links to your Posts & Pages ............................................................................................. 16 Adding Images to Pages & Posts ................................................................................................. 18 Setting Post & Page options ........................................................................................................ 21 Saving & Publishing your Post or Page ........................................................................................ 21 Creating and Managing Post Categories ..................................................................................... 23 Publishing Content Created by Other Contributors .................................................................... 25 Creating & Editing Locations............................................................................................................... 26 Managing Forms ................................................................................................................................. 30 Administrating Site Navigation ........................................................................................................... 36 Widgets ........................................................................................................................................... 36 Menus ............................................................................................................................................. 38 Defining a Menu .......................................................................................................................... 38 Adding Items to a Menu .............................................................................................................. 39 Deleting a Menu item .................................................................................................................. 39 Customising Menu Items ............................................................................................................. 40 Working with Multi-level Menus................................................................................................. 41 Site Content Tips ................................................................................................................................. 43 Structuring a Site ......................................................................................................................... 43 Search Engines............................................................................................................................. 43 Credits ................................................................................................................................................. 45
VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 2
Content Management System User Guide

GoldenOakRanch.com is Proudly Built on the WordPress Framework
Introduction
Please note that this is a guide intended specifically for the people who will be performing day-to-day content management of the Golden Oak Ranch website, and is aimed at persons new to the WordPress platform. It is not a complete manual. The audience it is designed for is users rather than technicians so installation, advanced set-up and configuration guidance isnt included. This guide covers the basics in each section, looking to take a progressive approach so that each section builds on knowledge and skill acquired earlier in the guide.
Using WordPress
WordPress (WP) has really moved the game forward for non-experts who want to maintain their own websites. With WordPress you have the system to manage the content which automatically slides into the theme thats been developed for the visual presentation of the site. What WordPress also does is make possible the building of a well-structured website which makes the job of search engines easier. The biggest limit is imagination, and the beauty of this content management system (CMS) is that you get to spend less time fighting your website and more time on being creative and productive. As you learn more about WordPress youll learn a lot about what it can (and cant) do. But work within its relatively few limitations and you have a powerful and flexible tool to manage and continue to grow your website.

Getting Started
So the first thing to do is: Log In!
Simply add /wp-admin to the root address and youll arrive at the login panel pictured above. For example: www.goldenoakranch.com/wp-admin You will have been provided with your Username and preliminary Password to use when logging in for the first time. If you lose your details, you can click on Lost your password? and a new password will be generated and e-mailed to you if your email has been logged in the system. You can change your password to something more memorable. Enter your details, select Remember me if your computer is secure, only used by you and youd like not to have to log in each time. Then click on the Login button.
The Dashboard
Now that you're logged in, you'll arrive at the dashboard of your sites content management system (also known as the backend). The Dashboard is a panel that provides a range of quick-view information about your website:

Youll notice here that theres a great deal of information showing here in a series of modules. As delivered, there are five modules: Right Now Recent Drafts Incoming Links Forms QuickPress You can organize this information to best suit you, moving modules around and expanding or contracting them in whichever way you find appropriate. To move a module, click and drag the title bar of the module around. To roll it up, simply click on the right hand edge of the bar where youll see an arrow appear. By clicking Screen Options in the top right corner you can choose which modules to display and the layout. On the left hand side, youll notice that theres a large list of links such as Posts, Media, Pages and so on. This is your content management system menu (CMS Menu).
Navigating the Admin Panels

Navigation of the admin panels in the content management system is pretty straightforward, but it can feel like there is a bewildering range of options to choose from. We will go over each of them one-by-one.

To the left of the Dashboard is the CMS Menu these items when clicked-on then expand down to show you other sub pages. If you hover your mouse over a link the sub-pages show in a fly-out. You can move your mouse over the fly-out and click to navigate to the sub-page of interest. This quick reference reveals the range of navigation options, with a brief explanation alongside.
Navigate to your Dashboard, plus access additional utilities & support
Create, edit and manage Posts, Post Tags & Categories
Create, edit & manage Locations & Location Categories
Manage Media, such as images
Create, edit & manage Forms, such as the Contact form
Create, edit and manage static Pages
Manage the Menus & Widgets of the site
Manage your User Profile, including reset password Manage Galleries of images & upload new images

Theres also an alternative, less real estate-grabbing, view option which is great for those of you with smaller monitors click on the Collapse menu button at the bottom of the CMS Menu to make it smaller:
When you click it, you will get a smaller, icon-only version of the menu. When in this collapsed mode, all menu items appear as fly-outs when hovering the mouse over a parent menu item (like the Forms menu below):
The Toolbar
At the top of your sites backend you will see the Toolbar. This is shown when you are logged into the content management system, you can also (optionally) turn it on for when you are viewing your website on the front-end (the publicly viewable website).
Find this option by accessing Profile:

The Toolbar...
...provides quick access to the activities backend in the following ways: Site Name: Shown here as Golden Oak Ranch, clicking here will take you to the front end of the website + New: A dropdown to quickly add content to your site Gallery: Providing handy links to managing image Galleries The user section (on the right), where a dropdown menu will appear upon hoverover, revealing quick links to your Profile management panel and Log Out When you are editing a Page or a Post, you will also see on the toolbar the option, View Page; and when viewing a Page or Post on the front-end with the CMS toolbar visible, you will instead see, Edit Page (or Post)
Screen Options
One thing that many people dont notice is the Screen Options drop down in the top right of the screen.
This is a useful feature, allowing you to control the amount of items you can see on a panel. When you click it, a set of options will slide down, much like this one below:
So if you hear of a tool, option or field, but cant see it on the panel youre working on and think Nope, that tool or field isnt available to me then remember to check if its been disabled in Screen Options. Similarly, if you want to simplify your administration panels for yourself, then you can choose to do so in order to only concentrate on what really matters to you.

Adding and Editing Content

WordPress provides a number of tools for editing, and for image management. It allows you to easily manage your content with a familiar editing interface. You dont need to learn HTML just the skills youve already acquired using word processors like Microsoft Word. Shortly well talk about creating Posts and Pages, but first lets review some important nomenclature.
Understanding the difference between Pages and Posts

Its important to have a clear understanding of the difference between Pages and Posts. They are administrated separately and somewhat differently in the CMS, but can look very similarly from the front-end, where we refer to any site location a visitor may view as a webpage. Pages are usually those content elements which have a static purpose. For example, an About, a Price List, or a Contact webpage. These do not usually contain information about news items, for example, which are added to the site on an ongoing basis. Pages are generally structured so that they are always accessible from the homepage via the navigation menu. Some people build entire sites with just Pages this is especially the case for sites with little need for dynamic content. Posts usually contain semantically and chronographically arranged information for example, news reports, event results, promotions and of course blog entries. The semantic structure is defined by categories and tags, which can make it easy for people to navigate your site. Categories and tags will also help search engines to understand the content of your site and so improve the relevance of search results. Other Post-types | The construction of your website may include other post-types which look a bit like Posts or Pages but behave in different ways for example, GoldenOakRanch.com includes a custom post-type for Locations, which allows the user to create new locations and edit existing ones; each of which appear in distinctly coded areas of the site.

Creating Pages & Posts

Creating and adding content to a Page is essentially the same as writing a Post. What will differ in terms of administration is the way they are caused to appear on the front-end of the website, and the way they are managed in the back-end. Click on Pages and then Add New:
You now just need to add a Title, and enter some textual content. While youre writing and before you press Publish you can always click on Preview to see how the content is looking. Once youve completed your content entry, press the Publish button to the right. You can click Save Draft at any point without publishing, and that will create a draft of the Page/Post. So, where is the link to the Page youve just created? To learn how to add a new Page to your sites menu system, review this guides section, Administrating Site Appearance | Menus. (Posts are handled differently, as youll read shortly.) If you now have another look at the list of the sites Pages you will see the Page that you have just created. If you need to remove a Page, its not difficult to do.

Heres the list of Pages, access by clicking on the menu header Pages, or All Pages:
Parent Page Subordinate Page
Link(s) to your Page(s)
When you remove a Page, or a Post, in the way this guide will show you, the Page or Post itself is not permanently deleted but retained in the CMS Trash. A Page or Post only becomes lost forever when you delete it from the Trash. There are two ways you can do this: The first way is to place the mouse pointer over the Page entry you want to remove (which will result in the options in the screenshot below being displayed) then click the Trash option.
This method is fine for removing a single Post or Page at a time, but what if we wanted to remove many Posts or Pages quickly? To do this, select the check box next to the Post(s) or Page(s) you want to remove, select the Move To Trash option, then press the Apply button next to it. Be sure to empty the Trash if youre sure you no longer want the Pages/Posts that had been moved there. You can use the same approach for doing this as you did for the previous step.

Page Attributes
You can set the Page hierarchy either in components within the Edit Page panel, or via the Quick Edit link that appears on hover-over under the Page title on the list of Pages.
The three options we need to concern ourselves with here are Parent, Template and Order. The Template option allows you to set a pre-coded format/style for this particular page. The Parent option lets you select the hierarchical level of your Page, and the Order option selects the order in which your Page appears under its Parent. To set the Parent option for a Page, you need to click on the corresponding drop down box and change its value from Main Page (top-level menu) to the Page you want to be the parent. By assigning numbers to Pages in this field, you can set their order under their parent. In the back-end, by using Parent and Page Order, you can organize how you view your list of Pages within the CMS. On the front-end, some websites will display subpages either in drop-down menus, on sidebars, or perhaps in indented in lists of links. Templates built specifically for your site will be discussed later in this guide. When done reviewing or editing these settings, click the Update button in the bottom righthand corner to save the changes.
Writing in a Post or Page

If you are an Editor-level user on the site, you have a Publish button. Once pressed the Post/Page becomes available on the website. Before the Post or Page is ready, however, you can save it and keep it as a draft. Revision history is available making it possible to see changes and revert to older versions of Posts and Pages.

Enter any text you like in the text entry box. In the case of Posts, dont forget to add Tags as well the key words of the content that will attract search engines to this entry of your site. Of the nifty features of WordPress is the distraction-free writing (or, Zen) mode. Click the Toggle Full-Screen Mode button and all of the widgets, menus, buttons, and interface elements fade away to allow you to compose and edit your thoughts in a completely clean environment conducive to writing, but when you move your mouse to the top of the screen your most-used shortcuts re-appear. If youre using one of the latest browsers try pressing F11 to remove all browser tabs, menus etc., providing a completely clean space to write.

Formatting text using the Rich Editor

You can easily enter and format text using the Rich Editor if you're familiar with any word processing software. To create a News article as an example go to Posts in the CMS Menu and click on Add New. When youre writing a static page, you go to Pages in the CMS Menu and click on Add New there instead. The content editing concepts will for the most part be the same. You may wish to extend the size of the content entry box by dragging on the bottom right of it. As you can see from the myriad of buttons, its possible to format text in a number of ways using the buttons and theyll be familiar to any user of word processor software. You may only see one line of editing buttons, not the two you see here youll need to press the Show Kitchen Sink button on the far right of the top row to reveal them.
Un-ordered list (Bullet points) Ordered List Strike-out Italic Bold Block Quote Text Alignment
Link/Unlink & Advanced Linking More Break / Page Break Spell-Check Full-screen Editing Show / Hide Kitchen Sink Horizontal Rule / Anchor / Tables
Text Style Text Color Underline Justify / Align Text Remove Formatting
Undo/Redo Indent Left/Right
Help! Contains lots of useful information
Paste Text / Paste Text from MS Word
Custom Characters

Dont forget if you get stuck, hovering over the buttons will describe what they do, and the short cut to use them quickly from the keyboard.
Text Styling Tips

When youre writing you may have a style guide or content strategy to work with and you should follow its guidance. The following may be useful to you when choosing what text styles to apply in your content: 1. Heading 1 through to Heading 6 These will likely be coded with increasingly impactful format style. The higher the value, the more important a search engine will consider it, but keep in mind that H1 is usually reserved for the site title at the top of the page, and H2 for the Post or Page title. 2. Use Unordered or Ordered lists (bulleted lists) for lists that are relatively short, but resist the temptation to use them for lists of paragraphs instead, use the Heading styles. 3. Use Bold and Italic in moderation. Refrain from using bold as a substitute for heading styles bold is not as important to a search engine. 4. The coded style guide for the site may override your styling decisions for example, enforcing alignment, what an italic actually looks like and so on. You can experiment and test. 5. The coded style will highlight links in a different color than that of the surrounding text and may also create hover-over-initiated formatting properties.
Formatting text using the HTML editor

You can also click on the HTML tab on the editor and input text with HTML code the language that describes web pages. This is for the more technically inclined and does have the advantage of making it easier for some users to create more sophisticated content designs. You should make sure that you understand the importance of closing tags and labelling items correctly before attempting to use this feature. IMPORTANT: When using the HTML editor it's essential that you close all tags, or ask WordPress to do it for you by pressing the 'Close Tags' button. If you don't then your site's layout will be broken whenever that Post or Page is displayed.

Adding links to your Posts & Pages

One of the most important things you can do on your website is to link out to other sites. Those other sites will appreciate the links, but it also shows where you get your information from. This is useful to the reader and also a sign of an experienced and skilful content-writer who cites his references. Theres also absolutely nothing wrong with linking within your own site. Of course, it takes a little extra time, but its worth it for the extra engagement for your audience. To create a link in text, highlight the text you wish to link, and then click on the Link icon in the editor:
First, select the text that you want to turn into a link
Then click on the link icon
Once the link icon is selected, a pop-up dialog will be presented:

Simply insert the web address you want to link to in the URL field, a Title to give meaning to the link which will show upon hovering-over the link, and then choose whether or not to open the link in a new window/tab or stay in the current window/tab. Once youre done, click Add Link and the link will be created. Its always worth testing links in case a mistake was made. Its even easier to create links internally within your website. Click on the link to existing content text and use the search box to find a Post, custom post-type, or Page. When you find the one you want, click on it. The text you highlighted in the editor will now link to that Post, custom post-type, or Page.

Adding Images to Pages & Posts

You can easily add and manage your sites images, as well as automatically size images, including automatic thumbnailing and image management.
If you press the Add Media button
youll be presented with a pop-up window:
If opened in error, you can close this window with the small X in the top-right corner, or by clicking outside of the box. The Gallery tab indicates that this Page or Post already has one image loaded to it, and this image can be re-used. Generally you wont upload images from a URL and will use the Select Files button. You can upload one or many images. On most servers youll be limited to images of 8MB or less in size, so if you have a very high resolution digital camera you might need to resize the images before uploading to less than 1200 pixels wide or high. To upload multiple images simply select the different images while holding the CTRL key down. Once youve selected the images, press the Open button. After theyre loaded, youll see the list of uploaded images... Notice that the Gallery tab indicates the number of images that are now available to include in this Page or Post. Click on Show for each image and youll get an expanded dialog box:

This dialogue provides many options: Title This is the title of the image, and is defaulted to the images file name. Its recommended to edit this to a readers eyefriendly title-case title. Alternative Text (a.k.a. Alt Text) A brief description of the image; some browsers will use this for hover-over text. Caption The caption text for the image. Only use this if captioning is stylecoded for your website. Description The images description isnt necessarily used by your sites coding but handy to complete as it may be used in the future and it is seen by search engines. Link URL This is the address of the original image youve uploaded, by default, but it also allows you to create a link to another website here quickly and effectively. You can then choose from three options None, meaning the image has no link, File URL, the default, and Post URL which will show your image within the design of the site rather than as an image alone on its own tab when its clicked on to enlarge. Alignment This allows you to set how the image is aligned. The small icons show the effect on the text-wrapping. Size Youll want to choose how big the image will be in your content. If the image file is smaller than a thumbnail, the option will default to full-size. If its not too massive, you can use the Full Size image just make sure the image fits into the space available. Otherwise, a Thumbnail, by default is a 150x150px square, and Medium is cropped to fit in a 300x300px space, in this example. The default thumbnail size can be changed by your site developer. Once youve selected your options, you press the Insert into Post button (whether youre working with a Post, or a Page) to add the image where your cursor was when you clicked on the Add Media button.

Press the Posts or Pages Preview button, and you can see how that image looks on the front-end of your website. In the editor, if you click on the picture youll see two icons appear as shown to the right, one a red circle with a line, and another a little panorama (as seen below). The red circle is for deleting the image, and the panorama allows you to change settings for the image, but without having to re-upload it. After uploading, if you forgot to add images to a Post/Page you can still press the Add Images button and then click on the Gallery tab. This is the gallery collection specifically related to this one Post or Page, and is different from the Galleries utility for website. That utility is used in more complex functions and is discussed later in this Guide. On the Gallery tab after clicking the Add Media button, you can see all images attached to this Post/Page, and insert them individually.
Or, on this tab, you can opt to present a grid of image thumbnails in a Post or Page which viewers can click on to enlarge. To insert a gallery of images uploaded specifically into this Post or Page, upload those images (which are then attached to this Post/Page), then click the Save All Changes button in the bottom left-hand corner and then click on the Gallery tab: From here, you can adjust the order by dragging and dropping and insert the gallery of attached images by clicking on Insert gallery. The gallery graphic will be inserted into your Post/Page.

Now press Save Draft and then the Preview button and see how the gallery looks on the website.
Image Gallery graphic
How much space you have to place and size images and galleries will, to a large extent, be controlled by the style coding in use for your website.
Setting Post & Page options

There is a large range of options that are available to you if you look around the writing area and which give you finer control over how your content is presented. The order of the modules can change according to user preferences. Here some of them are discussed: Excerpt Use this to create a short introductory text about your Post. This may be needed by your sites style coding, and will be used by your sites RSS feed.
Custom Fields Custom fields may be included in your sites development. In some cases, you wont have to touch them, in others youll be required to input values. Author Allows you to set a Post Author if your site has multiple authors, you can change them here if you have a suitable user rights generally Editorlevel and above, although this can change on some configurations. You can revert to an old version of your Post or Page, and can track the changes made it. This option will not be visible when you are creating a new Post/Page.
Revisions
Additional option modules will be discussed later in this manual.
Saving & Publishing your Post or Page

Once youve written your masterpiece youll want to save it, and then publish it (i.e. make it visible on the site) for the whole world to see. Youve probably already pushed that Publish button, but were returning to it because there are various options that are worth knowing are available.

The Publish box above is usually at the top right of the panel. By default it looks like the above. As you can see, the simplest way to publish your content is simply to press that big blue Publish button. If youre a contributor, youll have found that you cant do much in the CMS beyond contribute words, and your Publish box will actually look like this: The following table gives a breakdown of the different functionalities available here: Preview Status Publish (immediately) This button allows you to preview how the content will look. The front-end will open in another tab. This shows the Status of your Post/Page: Published, Draft, or Pending Review. You can edit the date and time at which youd like this Post or Page to publish for public view in the future (such as pre-posting for holidays). Or set a date in the past if you are populating past content, or adjusting the order in which your Posts appear. Private If you want to keep the Post/Page from prying eyes you can do this. If a Post or Page is Private only registered members of the site can see it. This is the default. For Posts, there is a checkbox for Stick this Post to the front page, but this function may not be in use for your sites architecture. You can create Posts or Pages that are protected with a password which you will have to distribute to the appropriate readers. This can be useful where you want to give a selected few advance access to content. This saves the current Post or Page but will not change the publically viewable front-end version. The Publish button will change to say Update Post or Update Page, providing the option to initiate application of current changes to the front-end. The moment you push this button, the content becomes visible on the front-end of the site. If youre a Contributor you will not be able to Publish but instead only Submit for review.
Visibility
Public
Password Protected
Save Draft
Publish / Submit for Review

Creating and Managing Post Categories

Organizing Posts by categories can be one of the greatest influences in how easy it is to navigate your site. It can also be one of the hardest things to get right, and theres many a site owner who ends up having to re-categorise all their content later down the line. Adding a new category is always easy and straightforward and can even be done while you create a Post, if you have the appropriate user level: To categorize a post, look for the Categories module on the Posts edit panel. Click the checkbox on the appropriate category. If the category does not yet exist, you can use the Add New Category function. To organize and administrate your sites categories, go to the CMS menu item Posts and then the Categories link beneath that. You should see something like the screenshot below:
As you can see, theres already a category called News which has been configured by the site developer. Consult with your site development strategists to decide if additional categories are needed and how they will end up appearing to viewers on the frontend of the site.

To add a new category, simply go to the area of the panel marked Add Category, and get started. You have the following fields to consider: Category Name This is the nice, short name of the category. Try to avoid length descriptions. One or two words are best, and easiest to read on most websites This is an advanced option its automatically populated if you dont put anything in. Until you get to more advanced techniques you can leave this field alone. It describes the permalink path to the category when the permalinks option is set. Read the permalinks section of this document to learn more about the subject. If youre creating a subcategory, this allows you to define which category is a parent. Optional, but can be helpful especially if you have multiple contributors to your site. Explain concisely but clearly what the purpose of the category is.
Category Slug
Category Parent Description
If you create a category in error, you can also delete it here by selecting the category you want to delete in the box to the left, then clicking the delete button. Be careful theres no undo function here. However the posts that possess this category will not be deleted, they will just be re-categorized to the default category. Youll notice you cant delete the News thats because its the default category used if you dont assign one to a Post. The default category can be changed by your site administrator. You also have the possibility of creating a hierarchical tree for your categories for example, under News you could have Politics and Entertainment. This is simply for administration organization purposes. Now you can use your new categories by going back to existing Posts under Posts | All Posts. Edit each of Posts in turn assigning the new appropriate category to each one.

Publishing Content Created by Other Contributors

If you're an Administrator or Editor you can publish the work created by Contributors. Authors can publish their own work but cannot publish the work of other users. As an Editor you'll need to be aware of drafts that are awaiting publication. Usually the contributor should inform you that they've completed a document and, when you select Posts and Edit in the administration panel you will see a list of Other's Drafts as pending:
A Pending Post from a contributor awaiting approval from an Editor/Higher
When you select a draft you will be taken to panel where you can review the contribution, see the preview, edit it if necessary, add media and publish just like it was your own Post. You can also change the Post author if you have multiple users defined who have the facility to create Posts, should you require it.

Creating & Editing Locations

Currently, the Locations featured on the GoldenOakRanch.com website fall into four categories: Natural Areas Rural Sets Urban District Residential Street
When any of these categories are clicked on, the visitor arrives on the list feed for that Location category.
Here youll find a thumbnail image of the location, along with a title, in some cases a subtitle, and a short description. Clicking on any thumbnail or title will take the visitor to the Locations webpage.

On the Locations webpage you can scroll through the available thumbnail images, and click on any youd like to see enlarged. To the right of the Locations title, there appears a small information icon. Clicking there will reveal the summary blurb for this Location.
On the Maps page, most locations are indicated by number, which are referenced by using the available Locations key. Some locations, such as those on the Residential Street, are lumped together with one Location flag. When hovering over each numbered flag, the title of the Location, a thumbnail image, and a summary blurb will appear, such as this one for the Residential Street area.

Now lets look at the administration of Locations in the CMS. Navigate to Locations under the Locations Menu.
Notice that this list of Locations looks and will behave much in the same way as the CMS lists of Posts or Pages. Hovering over any one title will reveal the administrative options, Edit, Quick Edit, Trash, and View. Like Posts, Location content elements are listed in the order of their original creation, in reverse chronological order. They will also appear on the front-end in the same order on the page for their category. Order can be adjusted if desired, by altering the Publish date for this custom post-type, accessible efficiently with Quick Edit, or in the Publish module on the Locations edit panel. With long lists of entries such as this one, using the Search functionality can be helpful. Or you can navigate to each page in the list and scroll down to the bottom to search for the entry youre interested in. Alternatively the list can be filtered by category (See the dropdown that currently indicates Show All Categories), and then it will for instance only present those Locations within the Residential Street category. Creating a new Location content element begins with clicking on Add New Location. On the edit panel for the Location, you will see many modules that were discussed when reviewing Pages and Posts: the Title & Permalink the Publish module the Categories module the Featured Image Module the Rich Editor
New and unique to the Location edit panel, is the Location Data module.

Youve seen on the front-end where the title appears for each Location, as well as where the short description appears, which would be entered and edited in the Rich Editor here on the edit panel. Weve discussed Categories, and reviewed how to add a Featured Image, which is how to create the thumbnail for this location which will appear on the Locations categories webpage and on the Map when the location flag is hoveredover. Now lets go over the fields in the Location Data module. The House Name field is populated only for Residential Street locations. It is the subtitle that was mentioned earlier. Next is the Location Gallery ID number which will link a selection of images for this location to its Location content element, so the images can be viewed full-size on this locations webpage. A Gallery will have to be created for this location, and once thats done, its ID is available on the list of Galleries under the Galleries Menu, after clicking on Manage Galleries. To learn about creating and editing these Galleries of images, consult the section in this guide regarding Galleries. The Short Location Description field is for entering the description that will be visible when the visitor is on the category webpage, appearing next to the thumbnail image for the location. In order to add a location flag to the Map, enter a new number in the Location Number On Map field. By assigning a Map X Position and a Map Y Position you are dictating the point on the map on which each number lies. Units are expressed in pixels. One way to determine the necessary pixel coordinates for a new location is to look at the edit panel for a location nearby as a reference point, and note their X position and Y positions. Then experiment with making adjustments to those numbers on the edit panel for the new location. Location Number on Map, Map X Position and Map Y Position will not apply to locations existing on the Residential Street nor Urban District, due to the condensed nature of those areas. They are represented by a single location flag. Location Status gives you the opportunity to indicate a location exists on the Map, but the location will not be clickable, and will not be visible on the category page. Therefore all that would be necessary is a title, plus perhaps a thumbnail image and/or a short description. Click on Under Construction to disable click-through. When the locations profile is ready, click on Finished.

Managing Forms
The most common type of website form is a Contact form, which usually appears on the Contact webpage of a site.
In the back-end, navigate to the list of all the Forms that have been created for this website by clicking on Edit Forms under the Forms menu in the CMS. Note that a Contact form has been created for this site.
Each Form title is a link to the edit panel for that Form. Click on the title to access its management activities, or hover over the title, which reveals additional links: Edit (Form Settings), Preview, Entries, Notifications, Duplicate, and Delete. You also can see the number of each Forms Views, Entries, and the Conversion Rate each of the Forms have achieved up until this point. Entries | The CMS Menu also contains a link to Entries. Eventually, either this link, or the one under the Forms title will take me to the same place. On the Entries list page, I get a snapshot of all the entries submitted using this particular form by visitors to this website.

Each Name is a link to the detail view of the form Entry. Note that clicking on View will also allow me to view the Entry in full detail. In addition to viewing Name, Email, Point of Contact, Subject, and Comments, there are additional administration options available when viewing the detail panel of the Entry.
Notes can be entered in reference to this entry. You can choose to email your notes to the email address listed on the form entry and while doing so, specify a subject for that email. Whenever a form entry is submitted by a visitor to the site, notification of that entry is automatically emailed to the chosen contact. By using the Notifications module, you can choose to resend notification to that contact person. If you want to also email a notification to addresses you enter manually, do so by checking the Admin Notification box and typing a comma separated list of email addresses into the Send To field. When finished, click the Resend Notifications button.

If necessary, click the Edit button so that each of the entries will become editable. Make changes to any of the fields, and click Update once finished. The Print button will allow me to print the entry, with or without any added notes. Notifications | Either use the navigation link across the top of any form management panel to reach the Notifications section, or use the CMS Menu by hovering over the Forms title, clicking on the Edit Forms link in the Forms Menu, and once on the list of Forms, hover over the Form title you wish to manage, and click on Notifications.

Once in the Notifications section for the Contact form, find several editable fields, including customization options for the notification email that gets sent, and the specific email routing preferences for each contact person. These are the persons or groups of persons, indicated on the Contact webpage on the front-end of the website. They are listed within the please contact dropdown menu.
In order to add a new contact, navigate to the Forms Settings for this form.

Forms Settings | Scroll down to the Please Contact module, hover over, and click Edit. Here add a new person by clicking on the + button to the right of the person you wish to add the new person under.
Type their name and click Update Form.


Note that you can also remove a persons name by clicking on the button. Youll need to add a new notification so that in the event this new person is sent a message, they will receive it. Click on Notifications, and click on the + button to the right of the notification you wish to add the new notification under.
Type in the persons email address. Switch the type of Notification to the type you intend, then select that persons name. Scroll down to the bottom of the edit panel and click Save Settings. Check your work by going to the front-end of the website. You can do this by clicking on Preview at the top of the management panel.

Administrating Site Navigation

Widgets
Widget support is a way to display additional information on the website sometimes to a very sophisticated degree. A widget is simply a block with the potential for display activity which usually can be controlled, and which can be moved around. For example, you can place a widget in a sidebar that displays the most recent news posts on your site. With this website, you have one sidebar which is shown on the News post-feed webpage:
If you look at the Widgets admin panel in the CMS back-end (under the Appearance Menu), you have widgets that are available to you on the left, and places to put them on the right.

To add them to the sidebar you simply grab a widget and drag it across, dropping it into the widget space. If you have multiple widget spaces, you have more choice as to where to place the widgets. Once the widget component is added to the area you wish the widget to appear in, you can click on the dropdown arrow to reveal the widgets options. You also have an Inactive Widgets space that lets you store widgets that have been configured but which you dont want to display at the moment. This is a very useful tool for some busier sites because you can use this area to set up a widget before making it visible to everyone. This is a good practice to get into. If you were to add the Pages widget, you could add a title such as the name of your website, adjust the Page order, and exclude pages you would rather did not appear, by entering their Page ID. This can be found on your Pages list panel in the far left column of the list.
Recent Posts Widget content
Pages Widget content
One thing worth noting is that not all themes have styling for every widget to fit in every space. Be careful as some widgets will look terrible until youve had a web designer add suitable styling to your theme. Its often worth checking new widgets out on a development environment for aesthetics and performance. Testing things out on a live site is quick, but if youre working on a busy or important site then it can cause problems for visitors.

Menus
This section covers the basic tasks a user may carry out when using the built-in menu editor such as: Defining a menu, adding items to a menu, customising menu items, deleting menu items and creating multi-level menus.
Defining a Menu
Under Appearance in the CMS Menu, select the Menus option to bring up the Menus admin panel. You should see something similar to the screenshot below in your browser window:
Three Menus have already been built for this website: The Main Menu, the Footer Menu, and the Wish List Menu (which appears on the Scouts Desk webpage). Otherwise, you would enter a name for your new menu in the Menu Name box then click the Create Menu button. However you would need to work with your developer to make sure this new menu will appear where and how you intend it to appear.

Adding Items to a Menu

If you wanted to add a new Wish List item to the Wish List Menu which will appear on the Scouts Desk webpage, keep in mind that the Wish List can only present seven items, so you will need to delete one in order to add another.
At the top of the right column of the Menu edit panel, there are three tabs, each indicating one of the custom menus. Click on WishList Menu, to reveal the menu items for that menu. In the left-hand column of the Menu edit panel, you should see a sub-menu titled Pages. In this component, click the View All link. This will bring up a list of all the Pages that are currently published on your site/blog, in the order in which they are listed on the Pages list panel. Select the Page you want to add to your menu by clicking the checkbox to the left of each items title. Click the Add to Menu button located in the bottom right-hand corner. You should now see that this Page title has been added to the bottom of the Menus item list on the right. Click the Save Menu button to save the changes.
Deleting a Menu item

To access the options for the relevant menu item, find the corresponding menu item box in the right-hand corner of the Menu editor window and left-click on the arrow icon in the top right-hand corner of it. The menu item box should then expand and the admin options will be visible.

Click on the Remove link in the bottom left-hand corner. The menu item box for the menu item you deleted should no longer be displayed. Click the Save Menu button to save the changes you have made.
Customising Menu Items

Open up the admin options for a menu item and well review the other menu item administration items. The Navigation Label option specifies the title of the menu item as the item appears on the menu on the websites frontend. The Title Attribute option specifies the Alternative (or Alt') text for the menu item. This is what will be displayed when a users mouse hovers over a menu item, or if the user is accessing the site using screen reader software, for example. For instance, on the Wish List Menu, there is an item that has been re-titled Filmfriendly Facility. Notice that the original Page is titled About. This means that for the purposes of the thematic structure on the viewable Wish List, the About page is titled Film-friendly Facility and if a viewer clicks on it, they will be taken to the About page. Notice in the upper right corner of the menu item, it indicates this item is linking to a Page. Lets add a Title Attribute, so when viewers hover-over Film-friendly Facility, they will be presented with more information about that link. Adding Click here to navigate to the About page, to the Title Attribute field, then clicking the Save Menu button to save the changes this will cause that text to be revealed upon hover-over. In order to add a News post or a Location to this menu, you will need to either: a) Use the Posts selection component to link to a News post, or b) Use the Custom Links selection component to create a link to the URL of the Location you wish to link to.
Click here to navigate to the About page

Working with Multi-level Menus

When planning the structure of your menu, it helps to think of each menu item as a heading in a formal document. In a formal document, main section headings (Level 1 headings) are the nearest to the left of the page; sub-section headings (Level 2 headings) are indented slightly further to the right; any other subordinate headings (Level 3, 4, etc.) within the same section are indented even further to the right of the page. The CMS menu editor allows you to create multi-level menus using a simple drag and drop interface. You can drag menu items up or down to change their order of appearance in the menu, or you can drag them left or right in order to create a multi-level menu structure. To make one menu item a subordinate of another item, then position it underneath, and drag it slightly to the right of, the main menu item. Currently the Main Menu consists of Level 1 items, as well as Level 2 items, as can been seen in the screenshot below, where About is a Level 1 item, and History is Level 2:
On the Main Menu tab on the Menus edit panel, you can drag and drop the order of the Level 1 items, or the Level 2 items. You can also make a Level 1 item a subordinate of another Level 1 item by dragging it under its new parent item and dragging it to a slightly indented position. Click the Save Menu button to save the changes. Your new menu, with the structure described in this example, will now appear on the viewable frontend of the website, as pictured in the next graphic.

Change of position from Level 1, to Level 2, a subordinate of a Level 1 menu item

Site Content Tips

Structuring a Site
One of the most important things to get right with a website or blog is the structure of its content. This can make an incredible difference to usability and search engine performance do it well and users will be able to navigate your content easily and quickly. Fortunately, with WordPress the navigation of your site will usually follow a fairly standard route. Simple Structuring Rules: 1. Categorise and tag your content | ...so that it's clear and easy to find without resorting to the search tool. For example, if the main source of traffic to your site is interested in your stories about knitting, then a category called knitting, along with perhaps some relevant tags against Posts such as crochet and machine knit could be the way to go. 2. Resist the temptation to clutter your website | ...with logos, affiliate links and advertising. Theres nothing at all wrong with links and logos, but a sea of them is confusing and distracts people away from the main purpose of your site. 3. Edit your content carefully | ...for spelling, grammar and suitable content. When you publish whether it's within a magazine or on the internet you take a certain level of responsibility for the information you disseminate. 4. The front page of your site is important | It should contain at least some information about what/who you are and what you do this can help not only site visitors to know what it is you're doing online, but will also help search engines to find the content on your website.
Search Engines
Search engines will bring your website traffic, typically around 25%-35% of it. In some cases, it will bring a lot more, and in other cases a lot less. But if search engines bring 95% of your traffic then youre probably doing something wrong. The following tips describe how to maximise your site for search engine performance, but its not the be all and end all great content usually means great traffic after a while. 1. Dont write just for the search engines | ...because when you do that, visitors are quickly aware of your attempts to stuff keywords into every sentence. 2. Link Out because quality links add quality to your own site. 3. Keywords are more important in headers and titles | ...but in body text they quickly lose their power except when linking to other pages in your site and to other websites. For example, if you write click here to read about Britneys latest escapade and link that it will perform worse than a paragraph with a link that reads when Britney Spears fell out of a taxi drunk. 4. Get inward bound links | ...by creating great content, commenting on other blogs, engaging with other bloggers, and generally making an effort to be an active part of your industrys community. 5. The search engines dont like being gamed | Any underhand tricks used to increase your ranking could eventually lead to a de-listing. That can include

inappropriate link-purchasing, spam blogging, e-mail spam, Twitter spam and so on. Be careful. 6. If your site is hacked it can be bad for your ranking | Spammers try to hack websites in order to insert their own hidden links. If you have a lot of poor quality links on your site you risk losing page rank. 7. Concentrate on great content | ...rather than working the search engines trust, people link a lot to good stuff.

Credits
Arthur Zeesman Karim Marucchi Michael Grace Jason Rosenbaum Ryan Powell Anna Berness Andrea Fiegenbaum Bobby Jasso Bogdan Fireteanu Cristi Rusu Cosmin Iacob Rebekah Henderson Ian Slater Kari Leigh Floyd Chief Strategist, Zeesman WordPress Digital Architect, VeloMedia Account Manager, Zeesman Client Manager, VeloMedia Art Director, Zeesman Senior Graphic Designer, Zeesman Project Manager, Zeesman Project Manager, VeloMedia Development & Integration Lead, VeloMedia Database & Programming Lead, VeloMedia Programmer, VeloMedia Integration Specialist Content Services Specialist Procedure Documentation Specialist


CMS User Guide v1.5-GOR

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

CMS User Guide v1.5-GOR

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Content Management System User Guide | WordPress Platform

Golden Oak Ranch | Disney

July 20th, 2012

Guide Version 1.5 For WordPress 3.4

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 2

Content Management System User Guide

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 3

Content Management System User Guide

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 4

Content Management System User Guide

Navigating the Admin Panels

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 5

Content Management System User Guide

Navigate to your Dashboard, plus access additional utilities & support

Create, edit and manage Posts, Post Tags & Categories

Create, edit & manage Locations & Location Categories

Manage Media, such as images

Create, edit & manage Forms, such as the Contact form

Create, edit and manage static Pages

Manage the Menus & Widgets of the site

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 6

Content Management System User Guide

Find this option by accessing Profile:

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 7

Content Management System User Guide

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 8

Content Management System User Guide

Adding and Editing Content

Understanding the difference between Pages and Posts

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 9

Content Management System User Guide

Creating Pages & Posts

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 10

Content Management System User Guide

Parent Page Subordinate Page

Link(s) to your Page(s)

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 11

Content Management System User Guide

Writing in a Post or Page

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 12

Content Management System User Guide

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 13

Content Management System User Guide

Formatting text using the Rich Editor

Undo/Redo Indent Left/Right

Help! Contains lots of useful information

Paste Text / Paste Text from MS Word

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 14

Content Management System User Guide

Text Styling Tips

Formatting text using the HTML editor

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 15

Content Management System User Guide

Adding links to your Posts & Pages

Then click on the link icon

Once the link icon is selected, a pop-up dialog will be presented:

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 16

Content Management System User Guide

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 17

Content Management System User Guide

Adding Images to Pages & Posts

If you press the Add Media button

youll be presented with a pop-up window:

VeloMedia CMS User Guide v1.5 | Page 18