If you are the site owner, remember to READ this PAGE and DELETE or make it DRAFT, before you start writing!
Help for Beginners
Free site
Free = DIY. If you want to ask us a question feel free – but do it through the http://support.ourlocality.org forum.
Want personal support? Consider a donation to Sustaining Dunbar.
We have re-set the privacy options. Your site will not be public and you can chose to make it public when you are ready.
Use your new site wisely and check our terms of agreement if in any doubt.
Here some tips:
1) Respect others and think before you publish
2) Be original NEVER duplicate content or plagiarize
3) With greater power comes greater responsibility
Even if websites are your thing this forum may be helpful:
Enjoy!
Thanks
–The Team @ SITE_NAME
Help for Beginners
What are posts?
Posts are articles or news and the lifeblood of your new website. Keep your site alive by posting articles regularly.
What are categories?
Make your articles easy to find by creating and assigning posts to categories and tagging them with suitable index or key words (but no need to over-do it).
Can I upload pictures?
Sure. Resize images before you upload (for web publishing the size needs to be optimised – e.g. 2000px wide at most) AND that you have permission to use the image. Use photo sharing sites like flickr.com and picasa.com if you have significant image management demands.
What about comments?
Remember to configure your settings appropriately, especially those relating to user registration and comments. By default comments are CLOSED, but if you want interaction makes sure the SPAM settings are activated and ENABLE comments, post by post or universally.
What Themes can I use?
Some of our themes may look basic, but conceal many hidden functions. More themes are also available at wordpress.org. Ask very nicely or pay us and we’ll consider adding a new theme just for you. Pick wisely and make sure it is WP3.0 enabled and will work under the latest version which is WP 4.7. We won’t upload any old theme, and definitely will not tolerate something found or stolen. Now that we have reached WordPress 4.0, you should be using a responsive template.
How about pages?
Pages are like the static pages of old fashioned websites. They contain infrequently changing blurb about you or your organisation – e.g. Contact Us or About Us. Many of the nice features that posts have are missing on pages, but pages do have their uses and can help to create a nice structure. Keep your post to page balance as high as possible if you want to engage your audience.
Can I change Menus?
Since WordPress 3.0 you can configure the menus very flexibly, but you will need a WP3.0 enabled theme. While some themes support automatic menu creation, you’re as well learning to hand craft them.
What about the right hand column and footer?
The column contains Widgets which can be configured to suit your taste. The default template has a footer too, that will take several columns of widgets. Each theme supports a variety of widget positions.
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.
You can find this article here:
For community support:
While most software we use is free, not much else is so donations help us keep it free for those that cannot pay: