WordPress User Info

Logging In

Once logged in, you will be presented with the Dashboard view, which will show you any updates to WordPress or Plugins that need to be done, errors, etc. Most of what you'll need to interact with is in the menu on the lefthand side.

Page Editing

When you click on Edit for a page, it brings up a screen where you can either do Visual or Text editing of the page (the tab selection is in the upper right of the edit window). In the Visual editor you can drag and drop images, edit text directly, etc. In the Text editor, you can enter straight HTML code and see exactly how the page is written. You can preview the page and see how it will look to the public by clicking the Preview Changes button, in the Publish section on the right hand side. Once you are done making edits, click the Update button at the bottom of the Publish section.

To add a new page, click on the Add New button next to the Pages page title. This will bring up a new page where you will give the new page a title, add content (in either Visual or Text mode), and set a featured image (in lower righthand section of the page) which will be used on the home page for the page link. When you enter a title, a Permalink will become visible below the title and you can edit it to be something reasonable if what it creates is not what you want. You can then either save a draft version of the page by clicking on Save Draft in the Publish section, or preview, or publish the page just as you would when editing an existing page. We have not been setting anything other than the default settings for the Yoast SEO, Page Attributes, Layout Settings, cripts, or Multilingual Content Setup sections.

If the new page to be added is in a different language, you'll want to set the Language (in the upper right section) to be the desired language and select which page it is a translation of. You'll then get the option to Copy content from English, which you probably want to do to get the images and format from the English language page, then update the text to the desired language. Otherwise, operations are the same as for adding a new page.

Map Editing

For the map you wish to edit, click the Edit button. Make sure you are on the General Settings tab, and you'll see information about the map, and lower down the various things you can edit. Towards the bottom of the page will be a list of existing markers and their properties.

The options to edit are in the Actions column at the righthand side of the marker entry. The first icon is to edit the marker information, second icon allows one to adjust the position of the marker, third icon (eye) is whether to show or hide the icon, and the fourth (X) icon deletes the marker.

To adjust the position of a marker, click on the marker icon in the Actions column and look on the map to find the marker that is now slightly transparent. You may have to zoom in or out on the map to find the marker and get the precision you want for positioning. You can click and drag that icon to the desired location. Once the position is correct, scroll up to right above the map and click on the Save Marker button. If you know the latitude and longitude position for the marker, you may enter those coordinates in the Edit Marker section of the page.

To edit the information for a marker, click on the first icon in Action column for that marker. Scroll up to the Edit Marker section and edit the Title, Description, Link URL, etc. as desired. Once done with editing, click the Save Marker button at the bottom of that section.

To add a new marker, find the Add a new Marker section and enter the new information. Give the marker a meaningful title, as that will be displayed to the public when they click on the marker. The Address/GPS we use for all our markers is Lick Observatory. The Link URL is a relative link within the WordPress site, e.g. /the-shane-telescope/, that matches the page it links to. Click the Add Marker button. You can then edit the new marker to adjust its position.

Header and Footer Editing

Identifying the item to be customized can be challenging, however, most of the text is contained in the Widgets. If you click on Widgets you get a new list of items in the lefthand menu.

Now click on the item you want to edit, for example FrontPage2. In this case there are two items, one for the English version of the web page, and a second for the Spanish. Select the Custom HTML item you want to edit and click when done. You can also remove the item if you click Remove. If you make a mistake, there is no way to easily undo an action, but you can click the X in the upper left to abandon any changes. When you make a change the Published note at the top of right of the menu changes to a Publish button with a gear icon to its right. If you want to go ahead and save and publish the page just click on Publish. If you want to save a draft or schedule the publishing of the revised page, you can click the gear icon to get a list of options. You may also discard any changes made.

Similar procedures can be used to edit the other items on the home page, header, and footer content.

UpdraftPlus Backup Plugin

In the Backup/Restore tab are two main sections, the Next scheduled backups and the Existing backups. If you wish to make a manual backup, click on the Backup Now button in the next scheduled backups section. This is wise to do before making large changes to the web site or updating WordPress software or plugins.

To restore the site from a backup, select it via the checkbox in the Existing backups section and click on the Restore button.

If you want to download a backup to your computer, which might be warranted if the computer is having trouble and you need to migrate everything to a new system, or delete just a particular item, e.g. a corrupt database backup, select what you would like take action on in the "Backup data (click to download)" column. Options are Database, Plugins, Themes, Uploads, Others. As you select what you want to restore, new information will be displayed and you'll be given the option to Download to your computer or Delete from your web server.

One can also delete old backups that are no longer needed to free up diskspace by clicking the Delete button in the Actions column for the selected backup.

The Settings tab allows you to set how frequently and how many automatic backups to do, as well as set the external site for backups. We have a 10GB drive set up for the site, which allows quite a few backups, which are stored in the directory /var/www/html/nona.ucolick.org/wp-content/updraft/. Currently we are using Elinor Gates' (egates@ucsc.edu) Google Drive for the off-site backup. If that needs to be changed you will need to click on the link provided in the Authenticate with Google item. After any settings are changed, you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.

Plugin and Update Management

Adding a Language

User Management

To add a new user, click on Users -- Add New in the Dashboard menu. Add the required items Username and Email, and also set the appropriate Role. Role options are SEO Editor, SEO Manager, Subscriber (default), Contributor, Author, Editor, and Administrator. In general we'll want Support astronomers and system administrators to have Administrator privileges, others likely should have a different level of privileges based on the work they will be doing on the site.