J Press: A guide to creating your own website

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1 J Press: A guide to creating your own website At the Ryerson School of Journalism you will be provided with your own website on our own in house multi site WordPress server located at J press.fcad.ryerson.ca. Please note that this is a private network installation which means you can only log in while at the University. It is also only available for viewing to those on the Ryerson network. This protects you from having your work available to the public while you gain practical experience and develop your skills. Once you are done the course, if you wish to make your work publically available, we will provide you with instructions on exporting your site s content. Creating your Gravatar: A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. This picture connects to your WordPress profile and can be connecting with commenting systems or author biographies. The school of Journalism s Ryersonian.ca uses these gravatar s for their author bios which allow visitors to search an author and find all of their published work s for the school s digital publications. You will need to create a gravatar using Gravatar.com This profile should be linked to your Ryerson account in order to have it appear as part of your profile WordPress profile. It is also beneficial if you plan on contributing to Ryersonian.ca Begin signing into Gravatar. You will need to create a Wordpress.com login using your Ryerson address. Click on Need an Account? You won t be creating another WordPress account, just simply a login. Click on the Add Image button in the top menu bar. You can browse your computer for an image and click Next. You can crop your image and when you are happy with the look, click Save &Finish J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 1

2 J Press Logging In: To log in, you must be on a computer connected to the RU Secure wireless network. Go to: press.fcad.ryerson.ca/wp login.php Log in using your FCAD Credentials. Creating your site: You will need to begin by creating a site. To do this click on the My Sites tab on the left panel. Next, choose Create a New Site. You will be redirected to a new page in which you can set up your new site. Begin by selecting a site name and enter it in the field below. Remember that this will be your site s URL and cannot be changed once you ve selected it. This name should not include spaces. Next, you will need to choose a title for your site by entering it in the field provided. This title can include spaces and special characters. You can edit this title at a later date if you choose to do so. Finally, you can select a radio button to choose whether or not you would like your site to be searchable. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 2

3 When you are finished, click Create Site. Viewing your site: To view your site, go to: press.fcad.ryerson.ca/yoursitename/ You can access the backend of your site by selecting My Sites Your Site Name and then clicking on dashboard. Themes and Plugins: Due to the nature of the J Press server setup, some features require an administrator to activate them. This is true for themes and plugins. You have been provided with 10 or so themes to choose from. Some plugins have been enabled for you but you do have the option to active a few additional plugins. If you require an additional theme or plugin please speak with your professor or a News Media Specialist to discuss this possibility. Wordpress basics Post: A post is a standard blog entry. The bulk of what you do in WordPress will be writing posts. Posts are entries that display in reverse chronological order. In contrast to pages, posts usually have J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 3

4 comments fields beneath them and are included in your site s RSS feed. You can create and edit posts from the Posts menu. Categories: These are the general topics in which posts can be classified. For example, you might organize your page into Business, Politics, Entertainment, Sports etc. Posts are organized into categories. You can create and edit categories from the Posts > Categories menu. Tags: Tags are like micro categories. For example, if I have an entertainment blog, I probably have a movies category. If I write a lot of posts about Johnny Depp, I don t want to give him his own category, but I could tag those posts with his name. You can add tags from the post editor (see below). Page: A page is like a post, but you create a page for static information that remains relevant to your site indefinitely. Generally you should use pages for About Me, Contact Information and similar sections, and posts for everything else. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology and are often used to present information which you consider timeless. You can create and edit pages from the Pages menu. Create a new post Here are the basics of creating a post. If you ve used any blogging software before, this should be familiar. From your dashboard, click on the Posts menu and choose Add new. Enter a title for your post in the top field, and start writing content in the field below. Above your content field are several options. The highlighted options below handle your basic formatting, including font style options, bullets and numbering and text alignment. Adding category and tags Remember to choose a category for your post. You can create new categories by clicking the Categories link in the Post menu on the left side of the screen. Save drafts, preview and publish J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 4

5 You should remember to save your drafts often. To do so, click the button that says Save draft. Once you ve saved a draft, click the preview button to see how your post would appear online. When your post is finished, click publish. This makes it accessible to everyone who goes to your website. Adding images Single images can be added anywhere within the body of a post. WordPress will allow you to upload.jpg,.gif or.png image files. The steps to upload a single image are as follows; Once you have created or opened an existing post, place your cursor where you would like the image to appear and click on the Add Media icon located just above the text area. The add media window will appear. Here you can choose to upload a file from your computer or select an image from the Media Library. Once the image has been uploaded and processed you will be given the option to edit some of the image settings before inserting it to the post. o Title: This will display on the image s attachment page. If a visitor clicks on the image it will open in a new tab with the images name at the top. o Caption: The image caption will be displayed directly below any single image embedded in a post. o Alt Text: This text will display if the image is not available. It is also important because it is seen by both search engines and screen readers. o Description: This is other information you may want to include with the image which will be visible on its attachment page J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 5

6 o o o Alignment: This section controls the position of your image within your post. Choose right or left depending on where you would like it to appear in relation to the text on the page. You should remember that the article body width of a page is 640 px, so consider the size of your image. If your image is 620 px that will not leave much room for text on either side. You may want to consider centering an image that size. Link to: You can use this field to enter a URL/web address that you would like your image to link to. There are four options 1. Custom URL: You can enter a web address you would like the image to connect to 2. None: This will completely remove any link 3. Media file: This will link to the original full sized version of the image 4. Attachment : This will link the image to its attachment page Size: This refers to the size of the image. There are generally three image sizes to choose from. And you can do this by clicking on the dropdown menu and selecting the one you want.. Remember that this only affects the image you are editing without altering the original. The options include: 1. Small 2. Medium 3. Full size To insert an image which has already been uploaded to the Media Library, you can click on the Add Media button and once the pop up window appears you will select Media Library rather than Upload files. o Locate the image you want to use and select it. o You can then edit the image settings using the same steps listed above. o When you are finished editing the settings, click Insert into Post at the bottom of the page. Add an image gallery Place your cursor in the body of the post where you want your gallery to appear. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 6

7 Click the button to begin creating your gallery. The Media Library window will appear. From the left sidebar choose Create Gallery You can add images by either uploading files in the Upload Files tab or select images that have already been uploaded in the Media Library tab. Click on each image you want to add to your gallery. You will see a checkmark appear in the top right of each selected image. Remember to file in the image details section with a title, caption and Alt Text. You can do this by clicking on each image and entering the relevant details. When you re done, click Create a new gallery Next you will be brought to a screen where you can edit your gallery. You can add captions if you haven t already done so as well as choose the number of columns. When you are finished. Click Insert gallery. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 7

8 Featured Images Many themes use featured images. Usually, these images are embedded as thumbnails for your articles. If you re using a theme that displays thumbnails for each article you should add a featured image. The process for adding a featured image is the same as the process for adding a single image. From the right sidebar of a post find the feature image box and click on the Set Featured Image link. From there complete the usual steps for adding an image. Adding Audio or Video Once you have created or opened an existing post, place your cursor where you would like the image to appear and click on the Add Media icon located just above the text area. The add media window will appear. Here you can choose to upload a file from your computer or select a file from the Media Library. Click on the Upload Media tab and press Select files. Browse your computer to find the audio or video file you want to upload. You will need to have an.mp3 file for audio or an.mp4 file for video. Once the file has finished uploading, click Insert into post. WordPress will create the player and insert the media to the body of the post. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 8

9 Adding multimedia Embedding a YouTube video in your post In order to embed your video in your WordPress post you will need the <iframe> embed code for the video. You can find it by selecting the video you want to add to your post. Just below the player window you will see a Share tab. Next, click on the Embed button Make sure to choose 640 x480 from the Video size drop down menu as these dimensions best fit most theme layouts. Copy the <iframe> code. Once you have the embed code from YouTube you will need to create or edit a post in WordPress. Add the video to your post by switching to Text view, place your cursor where you want the video to appear and paste the embed code. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 9

10 Add media using <embed> or <iframe> If you have embed code from a website such as Google Maps, Geo Commons, Dipity, and other similar sites you can use the following instructions to embed this media within your pages. This work for any online app that provides you with an embed code. <embed>, <object> or <iframe> If you have <embed, <object>, <iframe> code, you can paste it directly into your post. Make sure you paste into the TEXT view, not the visual view. That s it! Adding links Add links to posts/pages You can add links to your posts/pages using the button. Begin by highlighting the text which you would like to appear as the link. Next, click the hyperlink icon and enter the URL you wish to link to. You can also choose to have the link open in a new window by selecting the checkbox. Appearance You have the ability to customize the appearance of your site. On the left side of the dashboard, there is an Appearance panel. Themes: The first option is Themes. You can click here to choose a new template for your site by clicking Activate The more complex a theme is, the harder it is to set up, so keep that in mind when choosing a layout. Customize: This section gives you quick access to a handful of options depending on your theme. You can customize the look of your theme without having to go to the theme options page and can view the changes live. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 10

11 Widgets: Click here to add widgets to your sidebar or footer. Different themes have different widget options. To use a widget, click and drag it to one of the widget areas on the right. Menus: This section is where you create menus for your site. Menus can appear in various areas of your site depending on the theme. Some themes support a number of menus. To create a new menu click the Create a new menu link. Next, click the checkbox next to items you want to include in your menu and click add to menu. You can choose these items from the Pages, Links, Categories, etc., options on the left sidebar. These items can also be clicked and dragged to place them in your preferred order. At the top of the menu window, you will notice the Manage Locations tab. Clicking this brings you to a window where you can select which menu to place in which location. Again, depending on the theme there may be multiple options. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 11

12 Theme settings: Some themes have extra options. These options vary between themes. You can try enabling various themes, but remember that once you have uploaded content, it may change the way in which it is viewed on the site. It is recommended that you choose a theme early on and stick with it. J Press: Creating your own Website Ryerson School of Journalism September 2014 Page 12