Newswire Wordpress Guide (Part I) (1)

8/13/2019 Newswire Wordpress Guide (Part I) (1)

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The KULMUNNEWSWIREGuide

WORDPRESS

Part I

User Profles &

Posts

Marin Aeschbach


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THE KULMUNNEWSWIREGUIDE TO WORDPRESS PAGE 2

IntroductionDear Members of the Press

If you hold this document in your hands, you are part of the very rst KULMUN NEWS -

WIRE team. Congratulations on embarking on this adventure, we are sure that well

have a lot of fun.

The NEWSWIRE Project is the very rst of its kind. It was born out of our experiences as

editors of Model United Nation media teams and aspires to achieve three goals:

Firstly, to promote a critical and conscious approach to international news reporting.

Secondly, to familiarize people with journalistic work and state-of-the-art tools for con-

tent publishing. Well use Wordpress, one of the worlds most popular content manage-

ment systems and other open source software to publish web content.

Thirdly, to train young academics in the art of being a Model United Nation journalists.

We hope people will realise how much they can learn and how much fun they can have

being MUN journalists.

This document is the rst one of a series of guides youll receive (most others will deal

with the actual process of writing). Its subject matter is very basic: It explains how to setup your KULMUN NEWSWIRE prole and how to publish an article there. If youve ever

used a CMS or have a blog, you might already know most things explained here. Still,

please carefully study and apply (!) all the steps explained here.

Even if you dont consider yourself an technology-savvy person, you should have no

problems. If there are in fact some (software does tend to have a mind of its own, after

all), please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] or me personally at

[email protected].

Have fun!

Marin


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PART ONE: USER PROFILES & POSTS PAGE 3

Table of Contents1 Login 7

2 Update user prole 7

2.1 Enter Account Information 8

2.2 Get a Gravatar 8

3 Add new post 12

3.1 Kitchen Sink 13

3.2 Write your Article 13

3.3 Copy from Word 13

3.4 Add Image 14

3.5 Add Categories and Tags 16


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1 | LoginBefore you can set up your user prole or write anything, you have to log in to the KUL-

MUN NEWSWIRE back-end (Thats the part of the home page only people with accounts

can access, the public stuff is ttingly called front-end). The back-end is where you can

post your articles, upload pictures and create all kinds of content. With the e-mail you

received, logging in is fairly easy.

1. Go to http://newswire.kulmun.be/

wp-login.php/. A login dialogue

like the one on the left should ap-

pear.

2. Enter the credentials you received

in the e-mail. Click on remember

me if you want to stay logged in.

Done!

2 | Update user profleOnce youre logged in, you should see a dashboard like the one on the picture to the

right. Feel free to click around and check everything out. It is impossible for you to

break anything (unless

youre a very gifted

hacker and try to do it

on purpose), so have

no fear. When you feel

comfortable with the

dashboard continue

with completing your

prole.

2.1 | Enter Account Information

1. Click on Proleon the menu to the left.

Your are now in the section of the back-end (looking like the picture below) where you

can edit your user prole. We should have already put in some information, but theres

more stuff to ll out.
http://newswire.kulmun.be/wp-login.php/http://newswire.kulmun.be/wp-login.php/http://newswire.kulmun.be/wp-login.php/http://newswire.kulmun.be/wp-login.php/


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2. Check the already entered information.Correct anything thats wrong.

By the way: Your e-mail is only visible on the back-end of wordpress, that means only people

with an administrator account (us and the editor-in-chief of KULMUN) can see it.

3. Change the display publicly as option to your rst and last name, so your name is dis-

played neatly next to your articles (remember: You are actually publishing your work

here).

4. Change your password! This is really impor-

tant! We gave you a very insecure starting

password, so you need to change it to some-

thing more secure that even we dont know.

No one should be able to screw around withyour stuff and that includes you account (we

can still edit your articles, so dont worry about

that). So go and change your password right

now at the bottom of the prole overview.

5. Write a nice description of yourself. Right

above the password section, theres a eld ti-

tled Biographical Info. Thats where the short introduction you wrote about yourself.

The content of this eld will be displayed next to your posts and the archive of all your

articles, so that readers get a feeling for who you are.

2.2 | Get a Gravatar

The last thing you need to do in order for your user prole to be complete issigning up for a

gravatar. Gravatar stands for globally recognized avatar and is a nifty little web service pro-

vided by auttomatic, a company that works very closely with the developers of the Wordpresssoftware we are using. An avatar, as you may know, is the picture representing the author of

content online.

Gravatar links your e-mail address to a picture, so that the picture can be displayed wherever

you use your e-mail address to write something.

That means when a web developer includes the gravatar functionality on his website and you

use the same e-mail address you used on gravatar to comment or write a post, the picture

from gravatar is retrieved and shown. Gravatar is natively included in wordpress and widelyused for displaying comment avatars. We think its pretty neat that you can see your picture

next to the work youre done.


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wordpress.com (provided by a company) is not directly related to the wordpress software.

Wordpress.comallows you to have a free blog with a URL that looks something yourblog.

wordpress.com using the wordpress software while the software alone (which you get at

wordpress.org, by the way) can be used on any website with any URL you desire (which is what

we do). You dont have to do anything with that wordpress.com account, just remember that

if you try blogging on your own later and wordpress.com tells you that youre e-mail address

is already in use. If you already have a wordpress.com or gravatar account using the same e-

mail address you gave us, youre already set.

One thing to think about is that your gravatar is being used on all the sites that use the func-

tionality. That includes sites that you dont necessarily want your picture on. Still, wed like toreally see you on the KULMUN NEWSWIRE. Consider using another e-mail address for those

sites or change your avatar to something non-personal after youre done with the KULMUN

NEWSWIRE. Overall, we think that gravatar is a very useful service that takes privacy very se-

riously (they never send you any e-mails or anything), so it is reasonable to use it. If you still

have any privacy concerns, please contact us and well gure something out.

These are the steps necessary to set up your Gravatar prole.

1. Go to http://en.gravatar.com/

2. Click on Sign Up at the top of the page. If you want more information, you can watch

the info video, read the privacy statement or browse around.

3. Enter the e-mail address you used for the KULMUN NEWSWIRE project and click Sign-

up.You must enter the same address, otherwise the service will not work.

4. You should receive a conrmation e-mail. Once you have received the e-mail (checkyour spam folder), click on the conrmation link in the e-mail.

Your E-mail will remain com-

pletely invisible in this process.

Also, gravatar also does not

want any other personal in-

formation from you. However,having a gravatar also means

that you get an account on

wordpress.com (another ser-

vice provided by auttomatic). It

is important to note here that
http://en.gravatar.com/http://en.gravatar.com/


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5. The link should redirect you to a gravatar site where you can enter your username

and password (quite a lot of usernames are already taken, so be creative). This

username does not need to have anything to do with your real name, so enter

whatever you like. Enter a safe password.

6. Now, you should see your gravatar dashboard that looks something like the pic-ture above. You can add additional e-mail addresses if you want more than one

e-mail using the same avatar. Otherwise, click on Add one by clicking here!

7. Upload a picture from your computer.

8. Crop the image. Gravatars must be square.

9. If necessary, choose the rating of your picture according to the instructions. I hope

its at least PG.

10. Youre set! Congratulations, you just completely set up your KULMUN NEWSWIRE

account!


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3 | Add new postNow that you have your awesome KULMUN NEWSWIRE and Gravatar accounts, well

tackle how to write posts.

The Posts in the back-end are sorted after the respective edition in which they are being

published. For now, theres only the KULMUN 2012 edition, and the PRACTICE EDITION

for your rst articles. Later on, well add more editions. For your training articles, select

the PRACTICE EDITION. They all have the same interface, just like the Posts menu on

top of the editions.

Important: The Posts section is only used for ofcial announcements, not for articles.

Do not post your articles there.

Click on Add New, either on the menu on the left or the button on top. The elds where

you can enter the title and text should appear. It should look like the image below. As

you can see, its nothing to fancy and works quite similar to a text-processor like Micro -

soft Word. On the right, there are boxes with several options to chose from. These will

be explained as we go along. For now, ignore any boxes that you can see below the text

eld. You can hide them by clicking screen options on the top right corner and unselect-

ing them.

Once you are done writing your article in the text eld and have added formatting, pic-

tures, categories and tags (the guidelines for that make up the next few pages), click on

submit for review.


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3.1 | Kitchen Sink

Before doing anything else, we recommend clicking on the outer right eld on the

menu bar called Show/Hide Kitchen Sink (picture below). By clicking there, more im-

portant options will appear.

3.2 | Write your Article

Now you are ready to write your article. Theres really only two necessary options: First,

if you use intertitles, select Heading 2 from the formatting options on the bottom left.

Second, print the lead or teaser in bold.We will talk about what a lead is later on. We

recommend you write the article directly in the text eld, without using word or any

other text processor. There are a couple of reasons for that:

2. Wordpress saves drafts automatically to its database from time to time, so you

dont lose your work if something goes wrong.

3. The editors can track your progress and know what you have been working on.

4. If you copy text from work, you have to redo all your formatting(making intertitles

bold, italics for important words) because wordpress cannot interpret text proces-

sor formatting.

3.3 | Copy from Word

That being said, if you absolutely must copy-paste your text from word, do not do it

directly. This will generate weird spacing and possibly other typographical issues (with

special characters, for instance). There is a special option on the menu bar called paste

from word. If you click on this, a special eld will appear in which you should copy your

text. Always use this eld! If you copy from another program, use the paste as plain

text eld.

3.4 | Add ImageLets assume youve typed in your article. Now you need kick-ass picture that attracts

the visitors attention. Here, there are a couple of things to be considered.


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1. The image must be large enough in size. Wordpress only crops images or makes

them smaller. It doesnt stretch pictures (and thats good, because it would look

horrible). This means that the minimal size required for images is the largest

thumbnail shown on the website, the slideshow picture. Its measurements are

885 pixels in width and 270 pixels in height. Thats at least how big your picturemust be. You can check the measurements by checking the le information of the

image. The format must be .jpg, .png or .gif.

2. Equally important is the copyright of the image you use. The license of the picture

should state that you can at least use it for non-commercial projects. You cannot

just use a picture from Google Image Search, because you most likely cant nd

its license. Apart from using your own image (which is the best solution at MUNs

themselves, but might not work for your practice articles), there are two places

where you can nd pictures and their license. The rst one is Wikipedia. Click on

an article image and scroll down on the image page to nd the license. Since

Wikipedia images are generally quite overused or boring, Flickr might be the bet-

ter choice.

Flickr allows the users to keep the rights to their pictures and issue a license

statement. To search for images with the right license, rst search normally with

the bar on the top right corner of the website. When the results are shown, you can

now click on advanced search and select only free to use pictures under license.Its needlessly complicated, but probably still the fastest way (and a prime exam-

ple of bad web design, because it requires the user to make unnecessary clicks

that could easily be eliminated). The actual license is displayed next to the image,

read it carefully.

After you downloaded the picture, return to the wordpress back-end. The Add Media

button is quite hard to nd (another example of poor design). Its above the text options

to the left (see the picture).

This will open the upload dialogue for media. Just to be safe, please use a picture you

downloaded on your local computer. If you embed it from an URL, theres a small pos-

sibility that the URL will change at some point in the future and produce an 404-not

found error.


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than one picture with this method.

5. It is possible that you have to attribute the image to its ownerin order to use it. If

that is required in the images license, write the name of the author in the caption.

Well talk about this some more in training on Thursday.

3.5 | Add Categories and Tags

If you have blogged before, you might be familiar with categories and tags. Categories

and Tags are both a way to classify and add meta-information to your articles. The main

difference between the two is that categories are hierarchically structured (with sub-

categories and parent categories) and tags are not. Consequently, youre more free in

the assignment of tags. You can set categories and tags in their appropriate boxes tothe right of the text eld.

Their hierarchical structure makes categories a perfect t to classify contentfor menus

and archives. The main menus in the different KULMUN NEWSWIRE editions are mostly

links to the archive of all the important categories. It is important to note that in the

KULMUN NEWSWIRE, we usecustomised taxonomies that behave like categoriesfor

each edition in order to separate their content.

For instance, the taxonomies for the edition of KULMUN 2012 Edition are called Coun-

cils (KULMUN 2012) and Media (KULMUN 2012). We only always assign one term per

taxonomy, in the case of a conference the council you report (Human Rights Council)

and the media youre representing (International Court of Justice). Makes sense, right?

There may be exceptions to this rule, such as for gossip and

press statements, who also have their own categories.

For your rst article, think about how the PRACTICE EDITION

could be structured and assign a category of your choosing.As for the tags: They are not displayed on the website itself,

but are important for upcoming features like links to related

posts, so we might as well start with them now. Assign about

ve tags to each of your articles. Its important to use tags that

cover wider (e.g. environment) and narrower elds (climate

change) but tags must always be thought of as being reus-

able. Never use a tag that is so specic that its only going to be used once.

And... Thats it! Everything about user proles and writing posts that you need to know!

Please keep in mind that the formatting as well as adding images, categories and tags

instructions are to be done for all of your articles!Now get going!

Documents

Newswire Wordpress Guide (Part I) (1)