USING WORDPRESS TO CREATE A WEBSITE (RATHER THAN A BLOG) STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1:Preparing your WordPress site Go to the Dashboard for your new “blog” Select Appearance > Themes. Make sure you have Activated the Theme that you have selected for your web site Select Posts. If it is there, delete the post called “Hello World” by clicking the checkbox and selecting Trash Select Pages. Delete the “About” page (or any other page you find there) by clicking the checkbox and selecting Trash NOW CREATE YOUR SITE

STEP 2: Adding your pages (including one for blog posts) 1.Go to Dashboard >Pages > Add New 2.In the Title box, add the name of your first page – (plan this in advance and don’t just call it Home page) 3.Under Page Attributes > Template (on the RH side of the page) select the layout that you want for the page (Many themes offer different layouts for a home page and secondary pages.) 4.Scroll down and remove the checkmarks from the Discussion area to prevent comments (if you don’t have this box on your Theme, see the next slide) 5.Remove the social sharing buttons if you don’t want them 6.Publish your page by clicking the Publish button Add all your other pages in the same way (following Steps 1-5 above), giving each a relevant title from your plan. Name one of the pages for your blog posts. Don’t add any content to your pages at this point – just concentrate on establishing the skeleton for your site.

Remove Comments Box Remove Sidebar contents STEP 3: These elements make your website look like a blog and need to be removed – the next 2 slides show you how

Removing the comments box from your pages (if you haven’t already done so) 1.Go to Pages > All Pages 2.Select your home page again and go to Quick Edit. 3.Remove the check mark from the Allow Comments box 4.Click Update 5.Repeat for each of your Pages

Removing unwanted widgets from the page sidebar From the LH sidebar menu of the Dashboard go to Appearance > Widgets Remove all the widgets from the right-hand sidebar by dragging and dropping them to the left into the main area of the page – You may want to add Widgets later, but for now your objective is a blank canvas! View your page to make sure the sidebars are empty Sometimes widgets show up on your page that aren’t listed under the sidebar on the Appearance -> Widgets screen If you can still see content in the sidebar when you view your page try dragging a blank Text Widget into the right-hand sidebar For more help on this look at from-sidebar

STEP 4: Set your homepage and posts page (IMPORTANT!) From the LH sidebar menu of the Dashboard go to Settings > Reading Settings Go to Front Page Displays >Static Page > Front Page then select the name of your home page from the drop down list Go to Posts Page then select the name of the page where your blog posts will appear Scroll down and Save Changes

STEP 5: Customize your settings Go to Settings > General Change the Site Title to the name of your site. Either delete the Tagline, or add one that is appropriate for your site Save your changes You can also change the header image (depending on your theme), but we will get to that later View your pages by clicking on the name of your site at the top of the screen

STEP 6: Navigation bar and “Menus” View your site (using the link in the top menu bar) Your navigation bar items (the same as the titles you entered earlier) will appear in alphabetical order (which you probably want to change) From the LH sidebar menu of the Dashboard go to Appearance > Menus and use the tool there to create a custom menu with the items in the order that you wish. You can also change the wording here (see next slide for details) NOTE – if you have an additional Home link on your navigation bar, make sure you have followed STEP 4

Step 3: Rearrange your navigation bar elements here by dragging them into place Step 1: Create a new menu and save it with a descriptive name Step 2: Select the pages for your navigation menu and click Add to Menu Step 5: Click Save Menu Step 4: Select Primary Menu

STEP 7: Adding a header image or a “featured” image Some themes allow only one header image – so it may be the same on all your pages. Investigate the options for your theme. From the LH sidebar menu of the Dashboard go to Appearance > Header Upload the image you have prepared (you will need to check the size for your particular theme) You can crop the image to fit using WordPress, but it is better if you have prepared it earlier, along with your other images You can also add/remove Header Text to/from the image if you wish “Featured” images (used by the Edin theme) are added at the individual page level

Checkpoint: before you add any content make sure your site has: 1.All of your pages including your homepage and blog posts page (no content at this point unless you are already using Wordpress for your blog) 2.A custom navigation bar showing the navigation links in the order you want 3.A blank sidebar / footer (if part of your chosen layout) 4.Custom header or featured images 5.A custom tag line (or none at all)

STEP 8: Adding content to each page Click on Pages and you will see a list of all the pages in your site Select the page you want and click Edit You can edit a page as many times as you want to, so there is no need to worry about getting it perfect on the first try Add your text, images, links, and video Click Update and Preview Changes You can edit using either / both the Visual and Text toolbars

Create embedded links to your sources Add images so that the text wraps around them Add video

Adding images to your pages 1.Resize all your images so they match your plan (use a tool like pixlr.com or the image editor of your choice)pixlr.com 2.In WordPress, open the page you want to Edit 3.Place your cursor where you want the image to go. 4.Click on the Add Media button (camera icon) and upload your file 5.Add the Alt Text (a description of what the image shows) 6.Use the align controls to position the image on the page 7.In the Size options select Full Size 8.Click Insert into Post See illustration on next slide

Alt text Alignment on page

Adding content Add all of your content – remember you can edit your pages at any time Use the Text Widget to add text or images to the sidebar (you can use html to add these) If you want to remove the Like and Share buttons from your pages scroll down in edit mode and uncheck the relevant boxes See the next section for information on making text into clickable links, adding a YouTube video, and embedding a Google Docs form

MAKE TEXT INTO A CLICKABLE LINK EMBED A VIDEO FROM YOUTUBE EMBED OTHER MEDIA

Making text into a clickable link Step 1: Write the text in the usual way

Step 2: Highlight the phrase you want to make into a link. Make it as descriptive as possible so people know what to expect when they click. Step 3: Click the link icon on the toolbar and a dialog box will appear Making text into a clickable link

Step 4: Copy and paste the URL into the dialog box, or link to other pages in your site Step 5: If you want the page to open in a new window or tab, then check this box Step 6: Whatever you write in the Title box will appear when someone mouses over the link on your page Step 7: Click “Add Link” and that’s it! Making text into a clickable link

Embedding a video from YouTube Get the URL for sharing the video from YouTube Edit the page you want the video to appear on. Place your cursor where the video will go Select Add Media Select Insert from URL (This is easier than using the Insert YouTube function)

Embedding other media using embed codes You can embed many types of media into a Wordpress site (Google forms, Slideshare presentations, Storify, Google maps etc) Get the embed code from the source site Switch to Text view on the page you are editing and follow the instructions on the next slide NOTE: you can also embed Twitter, Instagram feeds etc into sidebars using Widgets

In WordPress edit your page in Text view and paste in the embed code where you want it to appear. You will have to preview the page to see the embedded media