Adding new web content

Login to website. Depending on the level of access the webmaster has given you, you should be taken to the WordPress layer behind the front end (public pages).

The Dashboard menu runs down the left-hand side of the screen. Select News Items and then Add New.

Enter the headline for the article (post). There is no need to add a headline in the main text box. Think about being clear and drawing the reader in. Consider using any formal references in brackets after a more straightforward introduction: “WATCH welcomes Archbishops’ Report (GS 1886)” rather than “WATCH responds to GS 1886” Very few readers will automatically know the importance of GS 1886, and the site needs to engage the interested layman as well as the GS aficionado.

Type within the Visual Editor screen just as you would in any other word-processor. There are many of the same formatting options (italics, bullets, alignment etc) in the toolbar. This is the main text box for uploading a new feature is for the full story (post) that will appear when readers click on the headline or read more link. This is the place for images and links that accompany the post.

Ideally, new posts should be written within the WordPress Visual Editor rather than copied and pasted from Word. Although it generally looks fine in the ‘Visual’ screen, Word carries with it a lot of extraneous tagging that causes issues with display and layout when published (Take a look at what happens to Word text in the ‘Text Editor’ or coded screen...).

The WordPress system will save drafts so posts can be drafted and marked as ‘Pending Review’ to be edited by several users (committee members) before pressing ‘Publish’ and going live.

If you’re writing a long post, you could draft it offline in ‘notepad’ or similar system for producing unformatted text.

If you have to copy a document from Word, there is a Word CleanUp feature to remove extraneous tags. Select and copy the text in the Word document. Back in WordPress, on the second row of the Visual Editor toolbar, click the icon of a clipboard with W on it.

This opens a screen into which you can paste your Word text. Formatting may be removed in the process, and links will have to be re-established.

Use the Excerpt box lower on the page to customise the words that will advertise the story elsewhere on the site including the front page. Readers know to click on a title to follow through to the full text. Make the headline and excerpt interesting enough for them to bother.

An important point! The excerpt that appears on the front page “The latest from our news stream” or in the boxes that often appear on the right-hand of pages by default just pulls out the first 50 words of the main article. This isn’t always the best outline to reflect the story. NB: It also will not handle links to documents so it can seem that it isn’t working if the opening text from the full article invites the reader to ‘click here’ or ‘follow the link below’.

Adding Images

There are two types of image display:

Images generally sit within the body of text and are most suitable when used to illustrate a particular point within the text (art works for reflection within a Chair’s blog, for example, or a graph to show survey responses). Any number of images can be included within a post. NB: They will not display, however, when the item appears in excerpt form on the news stream, only when read in full.

A ‘Featured Image’ is placed alongside a post (such as a photo of the person in a news story). The advantage of the ‘Featured Image’ option is that it will appear alongside the item whenever it appears, not just when clicked on to display in full. There can only be one featured image per item.

NB It is easiest to write the text first, and then add images afterwards. It is easier to position images beside and around text once the text is in and unlikely to change significantly.

To add an Image within a post

Click on Add Media above the Visual Editor (text box)

You then have the choice of choosing existing images from the Media Library or to Upload Files from another source. NB: the thumbnails in the Media Library are icons for easy identification – they don’t necessarily show the whole picture.

Clicking on Edit Image will give you editing and resizing options. Play around until you are happy, then click Update.

Give the image a Title. This is what will appear when the cursor hovers over the image. The ‘Alt text’ can be the same – some computers would use this to read aloud the title. Captions and descriptions can also be added.

You can select Alignment to specify where the image is displayed in relation to the text.

Select Size - bear in mind that a screen is roughly 600 pixels across so ‘Medium (179x300)’ will be roughly 1/3rd page width. The ‘Thumbnail’ option will crop the image to a square.

When you’re happy, click Insert into Post.

If you want to add a new image file, click Upload Files. You can then click on the file from another programme on your desktop and drag it onto the screen. When you drop it, it will be added to the Media Library page. Edit and Insert as above.

You can use a URL to take an image from another site. There is a risk that this stops working if the external site changes.

To add a Featured Image

This is much the same process as an image within the main body of text. Select Set featured image and follow the same processes for uploading either ‘From Computer’, ‘Media Library’ or ‘From URL’.

Edit and label as explained above. Once inserted, you won’t see the ‘Featured Image’ in the text, as it will only display alongside it on the site.

To view, select Preview from the Publish section on the right-hand side of the screen. This will show you the featured image as it will appear alongside the post.

Adding links

To add a link to another website, select the text that you wish to be clicked on by the reader. Highlighting two or three words will cause the link and unlink icons to appear on the top row of the toolbar (they have previously been greyed out).

Click on the Insert/edit link icon. You will be taken to a screen to add the link address:

Have item for link open in another window so you can copy and paste the URL rather than type it in – this is less prone to error.

Add a Title which is the text that appears when you hover over the linked words, a kind of signpost to the link.

Tick the box for Open in new window/tab or the link will take people away from the WATCH site, making it hard for them to return once they’ve followed the link.

Click Add Link. The linked text will now be highlighted and will take you to the extra material.

If you wish to link to another item on the WATCH website, use the Or link to existing content search function.

As you type in the key words, it will search through existing posts, or you can scroll through recent posts.

Click Add Link as before when you’ve selected the relevant post.

To remove a link, select the link text, then click the Unlink icon from the toolbar.

Adding attachments

Attachments for this Post is the place for uploading whole documents that you refer to within the article. They will appear as icons at the bottom of the post. Click Choose files to attach.

You then have the choice of choosing existing files from the Media Library or to Upload Files from another source. If you want to add a new file, click Upload Files

You can then click on the file from another programme on your desktop and drag it onto the screen. When you drop it, it will be added to the Media Library page.

In this example, I added ‘WATCH communications diagram’ from My Documents on my computer:

Then click Attach to add document to the post.

You will return to the post screen and can see the selected attachment. Here you need to add the Title. This is what will appear alongside the attachment icon on the post. You may simply use the file name, or edit to something clearer if that is too long or obscure. If you add a caption, this will appear as an explanation under the title.

You can attach several documents to a post. Follow the same process and attach each in turn. If you decide you wish to display them in a different order than you attached them, use the three horizontal line icons to the left of the ‘Title’ box to drag attachments into a different order

NB Unless you deliberately wish to provide a Word document that anyone can download and edit for their own purposes, please save any attachments as a pdf before uploading to the website. This way, WATCH can control how its information is presented and used.

Maximising the impact of a new post

WP (WordPress) to Twitter

It’s worth considering whether some new web content could be flagged up on Twitter. There is a function built into the WordPress site to enable this.

The default setting (‘Your template’) simply sends a tweet saying the equivalent of “There’s a new post on the WATCH website – here’s the link” (WATCH news item #title# #url#)

You can customise a tweet (‘Custom Twitter Post’) to say something more pertinent or provocative, but you will need to add the website address to get people to go to the site. URLs count as 20-21 characters of the 140 as they are reduced magically during the process.

You can set the time for the tweet to publish. There is a default 10 minute delay to allow for the fact that it’s often only when something goes live that you see the glaring mistake in it, so you’ve got time to go back and fix it. You can set it to send later in the day, or send several times if you want to make sure it is seen by those with very full twitter streams.

Note of caution. This is an area full of potential for raising WATCH’s profile but there may be a need for policy decisions to be made, and certainly an onus on anyone tweeting a web post to keep an eye on the Twitter response and be ready to follow this up.

News Categories

If an item for the news stream is about the WATCH campaign, check the ‘campaign’ box on the right to ensure it will be added to the Campaign pages.

Items can belong to a number of categories. If you don’t select any categories, the article will appear briefly in ‘The latest from our news stream’ and also under the archive for the month it was published, but not on any other pages.

NB: Using this facility thoughtfully is key to making sure things appear in the right places on site and don’t get lost once they are no longer in the most recent 5 posts.

Publish date

Most of the time, you will simply publish your post when you’ve finished it and so need do nothing with the date and time function here. However, there is flexibility:

A post can be added and back-dated so that items can be added to the online archive. Depending how far back, the new item may not be picked up by the e-newsletter which reads the dates of new content to send its digest.

Items can be uploaded and post-dated so they will publish on a future date which may be useful if you wish to get things ready to go out to coincide with other events in the world.

Going Live

Before you hit the Publish button, you can check how the post will appear on screen by selecting Preview. If you need to make any changes, go back to the draft to edit. When you are happy with the result, Publish!

How to add a Chair’s Blog

Login to site and select Chair’s Blogs, then Add New from dashboard.

Posting a blog works in the same way as adding a news item, with slightly fewer options. You can’t currently add attachments to blogs (if this is an issue, please talk to Graham Stacey – it could be added as a feature). If needing to refer the reader to extra material, you may need to use links to do this, either to elsewhere on the WATCH site or to other websites. See the notes for this within the Adding News Items instruction.