If you are the site owner, remember to read these pages then make them draft (to refer to later) or just delete them.
Help for Beginners
Free sites
Free = DIY. If you want to ask a friend feel free. Prefer email based support? Consider a plan or at least a one-off donation to Sustaining Dunbar if you’re really hard up.
Nota Bene
We have re-set the privacy options. Your site will NOT be immediately public. Remember to make it public when you are ready though.
Use your new site wisely and check our conditions of use if in any doubt.
Here are some tips:
1) Respect others and think before you publish
2) Be original, NEVER duplicate content on multiple sites, or worse plagiarize it
3) With greater power comes greater responsibility …
Even if websites are your thing this forum may be helpful:
http://support.ourlocality.org
Enjoy!
Thanks
@ourlocality
Help for Beginners
What are posts?
Posts are news articles or stories, e.g. part of a blog that you might design to engage, update or inform your audience. Posts are the lifeblood of any website. Keep your site alive by posting articles regularly, so your readers know you’re still there. Many themes from the WordPress stable support multiple post types, so you can choose to engage your audience using short text, quotes, images, video embeds etc. Activate the events plugin or create posts in an “events” category. Posts are syndicated on https://news.ourlocality.org. Your stories can easily be syndicated to another website or to your favourite social media advertisers, though there are now very few ethical options.
What are categories?
Make similar articles easier to find by assigning posts to categories, at least one is mandatory, but it is best not put all your articles in just one like: News (the default is there in case you forget). Multiple categories and tagging are optional extras. Tags are index or key words intended to connect to related topics and should extend categories, not duplicate them. Too many is confusing, but judicious use can help you create a more legible website structure for regular posters.
Can I upload media and pictures?
Sure you can. Resize larger images before you upload. A width of 2000px is a good guide, and use a 4:3 or 16:9 format ratio in landscape will serve most purposes. Smaller pics won’t look so good as featured images, the format of which will dictated by the template you adopt. Ensure that you have permission to use any images that you publish. Use photo sharing sites if you have significant image management demands. Use document sharing sites for pdfs. Your free site is limited to 256Mb or 256 images of 1Mb. Although the upper size limit is 10Mb, self evidently shrinking images is a good idea if you are using the free plan and want to have more than 25 images at max size.
What about comments?
By default comments are closed to protect you from spammers. Remember to configure your settings appropriately, especially those relating to user registration (also turned off). Enable comments selectively e.g. on a page or only for posts AND only if you are prepared to monitor and manage SPAM and have a clear moderation policy. If you enable comments YOU MUST MUST MUST have a GDPR policy. If you allow users to login to your site, you have additional duties to look after your user’s data. Think it through carefully before enabling comments.
How about pages?
Pages can contain infrequently changing blurb about you or your organisation – e.g. Contact Us or About Us, but can also be important pages like your front page or any special landing page. Many of the things that feature on post types, like categories and tags, and the date stamp are missing on pages. However like posts they can support different page templates and can be useful in creating thematic areas for your content. Use pages to help you create an initial website structure, but remember that pages are not checked frequently by search engines. Use posts not pages to update your news. Keep your post to page balance as high as possible if you want to engage your audience and be noticed. If you create an important new page or if updating an old page radically, it is wise to signpost the change with a new post announcing the changes. Page items are not syndicated and not checked as frequently by search engines.
Can I manage Menus?
Since WordPress 3.0 you can configure the menus very flexibly, automatically of by hand. Page stubs can be created straight from the Customizer and links to categories, tags and external sites are possible. Many themes support a social menu and may offer a number of menu positions – margins and footers if supported. Menus can be placed in pages too, sometimes handy.
What about the right hand column and footer?
Most templates support a footer and some a left or right hand column. These are called widget areas in the pre 6.0 WordPress and can be configured to add static content, like images or dynamic content, like a list of recent posts or comments. Themes usually support a variety of widget positions, which will stack vertically on a mobile responsive theme. Widget management is enabled in one of 2 ways, if you want the old way, activate the classic widgets plugin. Widgets are being eclipsed by Blocks since 6.0.
Are Blocks enabled?
Blocks are the new layout system in WordPress, available since version 5.0 (December 6, 2018 – 5 years at the time of writing). Blocks are very flexible design elements, which are exactly like widgets, but can be placed anywhere in the content area. Blocks enable anyone with a bit of creative imagination to design good looking front pages or landing pages with a clear call to action. Block themes are widget free.
What Themes can I use?
Some of our themes may look basic, but conceal many hidden functions, though some also offer premium services (we do not benefit and we don’t normally recommend them). More themes are also available at https://wordpress.org/themes. Ask very nicely or make a decent donation and we’ll consider adding a new theme just for you, if you’re on a paying plan (business). Pick wisely and make sure it will work under the latest version of WordPress, which as we write is 6.3.x. We will vet a proposal carefully and won’t upload anything unlicenced, not part of the wordpress.org repository, will not update automatically.
And if want to make my website private?
Plenty of options. You can stop search engines, e.g. during site development, in Settings > Privacy. Once public News is also published on ourlocality.org/news. Single articles can be made private or password protected. Or you can go into stealth mode and hide yourself from the world entirely, until you’re ready to go public.
You can find this article here:
https://ourlocality.org/twentytwentyone/first-things-first/
The starter template website is also here:
https://ourlocality.org/twentytwentyone/
Donate:
https://ourlocality.org/donate/
While most of the software we use is free, we pay for many tools e.g. the registration side, SSL certificate management and naturally the web server needs paying for. The platform is subsidised by Sustaining Dunbar and is not profit making. Paying customers are necessary. Donations also help us keep it free for those that really cannot afford to pay. If you receive free support an are feeling flush: https://ourlocality.org/donate/