Setup Guide

Follow the instructions on this page for guidance setting up your web site. When you are done with this setup guide, you can either delete it or remove it from the Navigation Menu. It is recommended that you open the Setup Guide in a new tab for ease of use. The instructions hereon will assume you have this page open in a new tab.

0. Log In

First you must login to WordPress. You will have been provided with a username and a password. Scroll down to the bottom of the FrontPage. In the footer, on the lower left, you will see a link to ‘Login’. Click on this link.

When the page refreshes, fill in the Username and the Password. Check the “Remember Me” box and then click the “Log In” button. The page will refresh and you will see the WordPress Dashboard.

1. Basic Site-Wide Settings

First, in the dark part of the Dashboard on the left, scroll down and click on “Appearance” and then “Customize”. When the page refreshes, click on “Site Identity”.

Still on the left under “Site TItle”, change the text for “Your Library Name” to the name of your library as you would like it to appear in the page headers.

If you have a tag line (a slogan) for your library, you can replace the text that says “Your Tag Line” with your library’s slogan/tagline.

Note the two checkboxes below for “Display Site Title” and “Display Tagline”. Check these to make the text you entered actually appear. Uncheck them to prevent the text from appearing.

A little further down you will see a heading for “Site Icon”. If you want an optional small (512×512 pixel) graphic to appear to the left of your Site TItle, you can add one here.

Slightly below this, you will note three little icons. The first looks like a computer monitor. This is the default Preview view that you see on the right side. If you want to know what your site will look like on a tablet, click the middle icon. To see what your site would look like on a cell phone, click on the right icon. You can toggle between these three as you please.

If you have made changes, you will notice the top-left “Publish” button will turn blue and become highlighted. Clicking the “Publish” button will save and commit the changes you have made. If you do not click the “Publish” button, any changes you have made will be discarded.

Next, click the back-arrow toward the top left (the one next to “Customizing Site Identity”, ~not~ the browser’s back arrow).


2. Background Colors

To change the background color around the outside of the web page content, click on “Background”. The “Select Color” button will appear with the default grey selected. If you click on this button, a color picker square will appear. Selecting a different color will update the Preview (give it a moment) and you’ll notice the “Publish” button will turn blue and be highlighted.

If instead you would like to have a background image that appears behind (in the outside border of) all web pages, you can click on the “Change Image” button. This will take you to your web site’s Media Library where you can either select or upload-and-select a background image.

If you have made changes, you will notice the top-left “Publish” button will turn blue and become highlighted. Clicking the “Publish” button will save and commit the changes you have made. If you do not click the “Publish” button, any changes you have made will be discarded.

Next, click the back-arrow toward the top left (the one next to “Customizing Background”, ~not~ the browser’s back arrow).


3. Header and Footer Colors

Continuing from the above, you can change the Header and Footer colors. Click on “Headers Footers” on the left-hand side. In the sub-window that appears, two “Select Color” buttons will appear, one for the Header and one for the Footer. If you click on either of these buttons, a color picker square will appear. Selecting a different color will update the Preview (give it a moment) and you’ll notice the “Publish” button will turn blue and be highlighted.

Feel free to experiment with different colors. The changes are made only in the Preview. When/If you want to commit the changes, click the “Publish” button as detailed above.


4. Administration Email Address

There are additional site-wide settings to update next. Return to the Dashboard. Click on “Settings”. On the page that appears, you will see another place where you can change the “Site Title” and “Tagline”. It is not uncommon in WordPress to find several places where you can set or reset the same settings.

Look for the “Administration Email Address” field. The email address entered here is the default email address for any email notifications or web form responses that WordPress may need to send out. Change this to the email address of the person at your library who will handle these emails.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Save Changes” button. When the page refreshes, you will notice WordPress lists a notice that an email has been sent to the email address you just entered. Check your email inbox. You should receive an email with a confirmation link. Click on the link in the email to confirm the Administration Email Address you entered. WordPress will not use the email address you entered until you confirm it.

Other plugins for WordPress (such as NinjaForms) can have a different email address specified for delivery. The Administration Email Address is used if no other email address was set for the form to use.


5. Site Administrator Account

Back in the Dashboard, click on “Users”. When the page refreshes you will see all the WordPress accounts which have been set up.

The ‘morenet’ account is used by MOREnet to update the core code and plugins for your WordPress site. This is done usually twice a month, around the beginning of the month and the middle of the month. If you alter the ‘morenet’ account, MOREnet staff will not be able to update your web site’s WordPress core code and plugins.

You will also see a ‘siteadmin’ account. This is the initial account you will be given for managing the content, menus, layout, and appearance of your web site. The password is initially set to a simple-but-secure value. You will need to update the ‘siteadmin’ WP account password with one of your choosing.

Hover your mouse pointer over the ‘siteadmin’ name. A series of options will appear underneath, and you can click on “Edit”.

When the screen refreshes, scroll down to the Contact Info section. You will see a text box for “Email (required)” Change this value to your email address. Then scroll down and click the “Update User” button.

After the screen has refreshed, scroll down to the Account Management section at the bottom. Click the “Set New Password” button. WordPress will generate a new random password for you. You can use this password if you want to. Or, you can enter a new password of your choosing.

Pay attention to the message banner that appears under the text field. MOREnet has configured your site to enforce strong passwords. If you see “Weak” or “Medium” appear underneath the password you entered, add additional letters, numbers, or symbols to raise the password strength to “strong”.

After you have entered your new password, scroll down and click the “Update User” button. When the page refreshes, you should see “User updated” in the info bar at the top. If you do not see this, the message bar will tell you why the changes were not accepted.


6. Add Accounts for Editing

You can create additional accounts in WordPress and set permissions for them. You are not required to, but it is generally a good practice to have separate WP accounts for different people who work on your web site. If you are the only one who works on your web site, you can continue to use the ‘siteadmin’ account or you can create a separate account specifically for yourself. The choice is yours.

If you want to create a new account, in the Dashboard click on ‘Users’. When the page refreshes and displays all of the currently existing accounts, you will see an “Add New” button near the top. Click on this button.

The first field for a Username is required and should not contain any spaces. This will be the name used to log in to your WordPress web site.

The second field for email address is also required and must be an email address not in use by another account in your WordPress. The next fields, First Name, Last Name, and Website, are optional. You can leave them blank if you want.

The Password field will be filled in with a suggested random password. You can use this password if you want, or you can change it to one of the person’s choosing. Keep in mind that the password must meet the minimum Strong Password requirements.

The ‘Send User Notification’ check box is optional. If you leave it checked, the web site will send a notification email to the email address you entered above for this account.

The ‘Role’ drop-down box determines what the new account is able to do…
Subscriber
It is unlikely that you will use this role. A subscriber is enabled if you allow site registrations. Subscribers can only create/update their own user profile, read the content of your web site, and leave comments. Initially MOREnet provides the site template with all comments turned off and registrations disabled.
Contributor
Contributors can only create and edit their own posts, but cannot publish or delete them. They cannot modify anyone else’s posts. Also, they cannot upload images/media files.
Author
Authors can create, edit, publish, and delete their own posts. They cannot modify anyone else’s posts. They are able to upload images/media files.
Editor
An Editor has complete control over all content. They can create, edit, publish, and delete any posts or images/media. This includes content posted by someone else.
Administrator
An Administrator can do everything an editor can do and more. An Administrator has access to the administrative functions of your WordPress web site. They can change any settings. They can work with Menus. They can add/edit/change/delete plugins and themes. They can also create or remove users.

Since web site visitors (and hackers) can generally see the “Posted by Username” on pages and posts of your web site, it is often recommended that you create a separate account for yourself with the ‘Editor’ role. Use this separate account to work on the content of your web site (Pages, Posts, Calendar Events, and images/media, etc.). Save the ‘siteadmin’ account for site administration stuff that does not involve publicizing the ‘siteadmin’ account name.

When done, click on the ‘Add New User’ button at the bottom of the page.


7. Posts

Pages in WordPress are for long-term content and are typically longer in length, plus listed in the Navigation Menu. Posts are shorter and are typically announcements or notices, Posts are typically listed in chronological order, and often get added or removed frequently. Posts are also items which can be displayed in the FrontPage slider.

Posts are given ‘Tags’ and ‘Categories’ to identify what type of announcement or notices they are. Posts can be grouped and displayed by their Category(ies). A basic common set of Categories has been included in this template.

On the left side of the Dashboard, you will see ‘Posts’ listed toward the top. After clicking on ‘Posts’, the page will refresh and list all posts currently available. You will now also see an option for ‘Tags’. Click on ‘Tags’ to display the currently available tags. You are welcome to add, delete, or modify any of these tags for your library’s needs. You can enter new tags on the left of the page after filling all the text boxes and then clicking the “Add New Tag” button. You can edit or delete existing tags on the right side of the page by hovering over the tag’s name and then clicking on the ‘edit’ or ‘delete’ link which will appear beneath the name. To start with, the only tag available is ‘slider’. Giving a Post a Tag of ‘slider’ will cause it to appear in the FrontPage slider. Certain Themes and Plugins will use Tags to control displaying certain posts. The only Tag currently in use is the ‘slider’ tag, which causes a post to appear on the FrontPage slider.

Above ‘Tags’ on the left side of the Dashboard, you will also see ‘Categories’. Categories are used to group Posts together based on the category. Click on the ‘Categories’ link. The page will refresh and the currently available categories will be listed. You are welcome to add, delete, or modify any of these categories for your library’s needs. You can enter new categories on the left of the page after filling all the text boxes and then clicking the “Add New Category” button. You can edit or delete existing categories on the right side of the page by hovering over the category name and then clicking on the ‘edit’ or ‘delete’ link which will appear beneath the name. You can create pages which display posts of only certain Categories. Also, the FrontPage will display a short description and a link to Posts that have certain selected categories. (The selected categories for display can be chosen from the Appearance –> Widgets page.)

Next, returning to the Dashboard on the left, click back on the ‘Posts’ link (or the “All Posts” link). Several example posts have been created to get you started. These posts contain instructions for how to edit them. Hover your mouse over the Title of each post and “Edit”, “View”, “Trash” links will appear. Clicking on these links allows you to edit and modify, or just view, or delete that particular post.


8. Determine What Pages You Need

The pages included on this site are meant to get you started. You might not need all of them. You might need pages that haven’t been included. You can add or remove pages as you need.

If you don’t need a particular page, it is recommended to delete the page first. Once deleted, visit the Navigation Menu. It will display a notice that the page you just deleted is missing and can’t be displayed in the menu. This will help you be certain you are removing the correct menu item. You can then remove that menu item for the deleted page.

If you need to add a page, create it first, then add it to the Navigation Menu.

You can view all the pages by following the links in the Navigation Bar. Alternately, you can click on the ‘Dashboard’, and then click on the left-hand link to ‘Pages’. A list of all the pages of your site will then be displayed by page title. Hovering over the page names will cause the ‘Edit’, ‘View’ and ‘Delete’ links to appear.


9. Re-order the Navigation Menu

You may want to re-order the items on the main Navigation Menu. Under the Dashboard, hover over ‘Appearance’ until the fly-out appears. Then click on ‘Menus’. On the page that appears you’ll see a drop-down near the top. Make sure that “Main Menu (Main Navigation)” is listed in the drop-down. (If it is not, click on the drop-down arrow to highlight it, then click on the ‘Select’ button.)

In the page section titled “Menu Structure” you will see all the pages listed on the site’s Navigation Menu. The ones that are indented appear in drop-downs under other pages in the menu. To re-arrange them, hover over the the box listing the page. You’ll see the cursor turn into a multi-directional arrow. If you left-click and hold the item, you can drag-n-drop it where you want it to appear in the menu order. Drag a page box slightly to the right to indent it if you want it to appear in the menu drop-down under another page.

To remove a page from the menu, click on the down-arrow in the page box. You will see a ‘Delete’ link appear. Click on this link to delete the menu entry. Note that this does ~not~ delete the page, it just removes it from the Navigation Menu.

You can experiment with rearranging the Navigation Menu. If you want to cancel any changes you may have made, you can simply exit the page. None of the changes you make will take affect until you click the “Save Menu” button in the bottom right.

If you have created a page and need to add it to the Navigation Menu, look to the left in the box titled “Add Menu Items”. You will see a list of pages and a ‘Add to Menu’ button. In between is a scroll-down box where you should be able to find the page you created. Place a check mark in the box for the page you want to add, then click the ‘Add to Menu’ button. A page box will be added to the bottom of the Navigation Menu. You can then drag-n-drop the page box to the position you want it to appear in the menu structure. Remember to click the ‘Save Menu’ button bottom-right to commit the addition to the menu.


10. Footer Menu

The current “template” set up by MOREnet uses only the “Main Menu” and “Footer Links” menus. If you want to edit the “Footer Links (Footer Navigation)” menu, select it from the “Select a Menu to Edit” drop-down and click the ‘Select’ button.

When the page refreshes, you will see the items currently displayed at the bottom of each page of the web site. As with the Main Navigation, you can add, edit, or remove these footer menu items as you need.


11. Update Content and Fill in the Pages

What remains is to work through the pages and fill them in with content for your library. Feel free to contact MOREnet if you have any questions.


12. Uh-Oh!

If you make a mistake, and need something put back the way it was, MOREnet can restore your WordPress site from our automated backups. File system backups are made every night. The nightly filesystem backups are “incremental”; They only record what changed. An additional weekend full filesystem backup is made of all files on Sunday night.

The database backups are also made each night. These are complete backups of your database. However they only cover the last seven nights. As database-intensive as content management systems (CMS’s) like WordPress are, there is little value in saving database data that is over seven nights old… if something goes wrong and needs to be restored in the database, you will know about it pretty quickly! This is something you need to keep in mind if you discover you need the database restored. Please do not wait to request restoring the database from backup if you need it, as after seven nights the database information is gone.


Code and Plugin Updates

While you’re working on your site, you don’t need to worry about updating the core code of WordPress or the Plugins and Themes. MOREnet will take care of that for you. Twice a month – around the beginning and middle of the month – MOREnet will apply any official updates for your WordPress that have been made available from WordPress.org. You can stay focused on your content!