Website Maintenance Tips

We're using Wordpress v2.5. For documentation on Wordpress, go to http://codex.wordpress.org/

• If you're already logged in and want to edit the site, go to http://freegeek.org/wp-admin/
• We've disabled the visual editor for the site. Believe me, this makes things easier. If the visual editor wasn't disabled, many elements and plugins on the site would break.
  • All new website maintainers should get an html refresher (or learn it altogether). Some online resources:
    • http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp - straight up html lesson/refresher
    • http://www.accessv.com/~email/webpages/ - html tutorial, more for those who've never learned html before
    • http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/quicklist.html - reference list of all html markup tags

Editing Pages

• • "Keep private" checkbox means that only those with editing logins will be able to see the page
  • "Include this page in user menus" checkbox will make the page title show in the main nav or sub-nav bars. The site is only set up to show 2 menu levels, so if you're looking at a 3rd-level page like /about/contact/directions and you check this box, you'll break the nav.
  • If you ever do want to show a 3rd level menu, you should consider turning the sidebar menu back on and configuring it as you'd like.
• Wordpress doesn't like to comment things out. Eeep.
• When using the html editor in wordpress, keep in mind that even this editor has some visual editor qualities. Specifically, line breaks are treated as new paragraphs, so be aware. This means that if you're copying text over from another source, you'll need to remove the line breaks that inherently are copied from one text editor to another. If you don't? Broken code/funky formatting.

Images

• Can be uploaded from any page
• Click on "Add Images" above the text editing box on the page you'd like to edit
• If you want to upload an image, do it there
• If you want to add an image from the media library, click on that tab. Choose the image you'd like, and set the title, where you want it on the page (right, left, center) and the size. If you want a big image on the page, best to pick "full size". If you choose medium or thumbnail and try to increase the size in the visual editor, the image will become pixelated. Remember, though, that bigger images lead to longer load time.
• Once the image is on the page, be sure to include style="float: right;" (or left or center) Otherwise, the image will float above or below the text.
• Where the images (and other uploads) are saved: this is useful to know if you want to link a photo to a "hidden" photo behind it (like on the staff page). They're kept in directories sorted by date: /wp-content/freegeek-uploads/<year>/<month>/<filename>. Look in the media library listing for the photo you want hidden to find its specific URL.
• All images on pages have been linked to the image file itself. This means that when it's clicked on, the user will view the image itself. (The other option is to link to the image's own page, which usually has room for comments, etc. We don't want comments, so we've linked to the image directly.)

User Roles

Here's a summary of standard wordpress user roles:

• Administrator - Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor - Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people's posts, etc.
• Author - Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor - Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber - Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive news letters, etc.

For more info, go to http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities

Since our website focuses more on pages and the person who made the post or page doesn't matter as much, different roles have been set up for us:

• Administrator - can edit everything and everyone. this includes code, plugins, and themes.
• Maintainer - able to edit/delete/publish posts and pages, as well as create and edit users
• Page Author - able to edit, delete, and publish posts and pages
  • This role is intended for staff maintainers who'll pretty much stick to their own pages when editing.
• Post Author - able to edit, delete, and publish posts only
  • This role is intended for beginning volunteer web maintenance helpers
• Viewer - able to read posts and pages

If you're an administrator, you can change the features of each role (or create a new role) here: http://test.freegeek.org/wp-admin/users.php?page=role-manager/role-management.php This fine-grain role definition feature is enabled by a plugin: http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager/

When creating new users, be sure to disable the visual editor! If you don't, some of the site's underlying code may be compromised, then pages would break. And no one wants to be broken, especially not websites.

Calendar

• Our calendar is created by a calendar plugin: http://www.kieranoshea.com/projects/calendar/
• To add or edit events to the calendar:
  • Login at http://test.freegeek.org/wp-admin
  • Manage -> Calendar
  • It's pretty straightforward from there.
• View the calendar at http://freegeek.org/calendar
• If you ever want to change the page that the calendar appears on, please be sure to contact an ASS (most likely Lantz). The .htaccess file of the site needs to be modified to do so. i.e., if you wanna move the calendar to /volunteers/calendar, you'll need to get in touch with an ASS. And we all know how great it is to touch our ASSes. Do it!