Category Archives: WordPress Blogs

Documents and Forms, WordPress Blogs

FontAwesome for WordPress

FontAwesome for WordPress allows you to insert FontAwsome icons into your page or post either by using shortcode or HTML.

Choose the icon you want from the FontAwesome icon gallery . All free icons are supported. Please note that pro icons are not supported at this time.

Shortcode Examples:

You can insert the cog icon by using the shortcode below.

[icon name="cog"]

You can use prefixes to display icons with different styles like below.

[icon name="check-square" prefix="fas"] [icon name="check-square" prefix="far"]
[icon name="clock" prefix="fas"] [icon name="clock" prefix="far"]

If no prefix is specified, FontAwesome will default to prefix=”fas”. Some icons only have one style such as the cat icon.

Adding FontAwesome icons can provide helpful visual indicators in your documentaion. For more information, visit the plugin homepage .

WordPress Blogs

Privacy settings for your blog

Blogs in blogs.brynmawr.edu are public by default, but there are options to make your blog less visible while your work is in progress, or to make a blog with restricted access.

To change your blog’s privacy settings, go to the Dashboard.

Go to Settings->Reading

Then scroll down to “Site Visibility.”

privacy

The options, from most public to most private:

Allow search engines to index this site– Your blog is viewable by the public and will be searchable via search engines such as Google and Bing. Recommended for public blogs.

Discourage search engines from indexing this site– Your blog is viewable by the public public, but search engines that respect this setting will not index your blog.
Not all sites will honor this request. You may wish to use this option if you are still building your site and prefer that your work in progress is less visible in search results, but still visible to people you send it to.

Visible only to registered users of this network– Anyone with a blogs.brynmawr.edu login may view your blog.
No one without a login may view your blog. Any Bryn Mawr, Haverford, or Swarthmore community member may have a login. blogs.brynmawr.edu logins are occasionally made available to other parties as well.

Visible only to registered users of this site– Anyone who is a user (with any role) of your individual blog, plus administrators of blogs.brynmawr.edu (the Web Services staff), may view your blog.
Recommended for blogs intended to be more private, such as some class blogs, more private collaborative work, work in progress you prefer others not to see, or blogs used for administrative purposes such as scheduling library shifts.

Visible only to administrators of this site– Anyone with the administrator role in for your individual blog, plus administrators of blogs.brynmawr.edu (the Web Services staff), may view your blog. Similar to the previous setting, but also inaccessible by any user of your blog who has a role lower than administrator.

General Assistance, Social Software, WordPress Blogs

LITS support for student organizations

Need resources to communicate with your student organization? Preserve your organization’s history? LITS is here for you. Need assistance with setting up or using these resources? Contact help@brynmawr.edu

Communication resources:

Blogs.brynmawr.edu : Great for building a website or blog, public or just for your group.

Examples: http://sga.blogs.brynmawr.edu/

http://pms.blogs.brynmawr.edu/

http://bmcoig.blogs.brynmawr.edu/

  • It’s free
  • Customize the look and feel of your site to suit your organization
  • LITS provides help when you need it
  • LITS can assign access to new site administrators when you graduate
  • Save yourself the hassle of setting up a website elsewhere
  • Avoid risking loss of access when your group membership changes!

Moodle: Good for communication within your group, such as…

  • a forum/message board
  • conduct votes
  • share documents privately with members.
  • Post important information/dates/requirements
  • Training materials (e.g. party training, RA training, etc.)
  • General information/link to resources
  • Document storage for relevant documents
  • Email/communication
  • Keep a copy of the course site and course materials by backing up your Moodle page! (administrators of the page only: http://techdocs.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2749)

Preservation resources:

  • libguides.brynmawr.edu/pdad
  • Student Archives Toolkit Coming Soon!
  • Personal digital archives workshops with Rachel Appel may be available on demand.
Web Editing, WordPress Blogs

Alumnae/i Bulletin Blog documentation

Note: This documentation applies only to the Alumnae/i Bulletin blog theme.

Creating a new issue homepage:

  • Create a new page with the name of the issue, e.g. “June 2012”
  • Page parent= Issue Archive (so the issue becomes part of the archive)
  • Page template= Landing Page
  • slug= month-year, e.g. june-2012 (all lowercase). This should get created when the page is published, but if articles from old issues are displaying, double-check that the slug for the page was created correctly.
  • The content of this page is the text in the grey/gold box for that issue
  • Attach the cover image to page without inserting it into the page (upload via the media uploader as usual but do not insert). Inserting the image will result in 2 copies of the cover image appearing on the Issue Page.

Create articles for an issue

  • Article posts must have a tag that matches the issue’s page name (without spaces or other characters). This must be the FIRST tag on the post. For example, if the issue page is “June 2012,” URL http://bulletin.blogs.brynmawr.edu/archive/june-2012 , the corresponding tag must be “june2012.” This is how articles get to the proper landing page.
    • If the issue tag is not the *first* tag on a post, it will not appear in the “in this issue” sidebar area.
  • Put the text you wish to appear on the Issue homepage in the Excerpt field (below the Post field on the Post screen) for this article.
  • The first thumbnail in an article should automatically be used as the thumbnail that appears on the Issue Page.

Making a new issue live:

Set the new issue’s homepage to be the front page of the blog under Settings->Reading. The first item on the page says, “Front page displays.” Select the page you want from the drop-down menu.

Embedding videos and other media:

Known issues with this theme:

  • The theme’s comments.php seems to override or ignore a default function of /wp-includes/comment-template.php — when a user comments and the comment is held for moderation, they should see a message indicating that. This happens with most themes. In this theme the comment just displays as if it has been posted.
Drupal CMS Basics, Web Editing, WordPress Blogs

Web Forms (Wufoo)

Which form solution is right for me?

Consult the College protocol for online forms and surveys and talk with LITS to determine the correct choice.

Several form services are in use and supported across campus. LITS can help with:

  • Wufoo – used for most online forms, such as simple web forms or surveys.
  • Formsite- used for forms that collect payments. Discuss such needs with Web Services.
  • Office 365 Forms- may be useful for cases where access should be limited to authenticated Bryn Mawr Office 365 users. Discuss such needs with Web Services.

The Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment supports Qualtrics. Qualtrics is used for surveys, including IRB approved human subjects research.

If you need to collect sensitive information, contact LITS for help determining a suitable data collection and handling method. See the Data Handling Policy for details.

More about Wufoo

Wufoo is not appropriate for collecting confidential or sensitive information, or online payments. If you have questions about collecting such information, contact help@brynmawr.edu.

If you don’t have access to the College’s Wufoo account, please contact help@brynmawr.edu for access.

Links to Wufoo forms can be sent via email, or linked/embedded on College websites and blogs.

Examples: 

Loaner Laptop form

Note: Contact Web Services via help@brynmawr.edu to get forms embedded in web pages or blogs.

 

Having Wufoo problems?

Review the documentation below or contact help@brynmawr.edu for assistance from Web Services. We can resolve most issues, or contact Wufoo support on your behalf if needed.

Documentation: 

Basic documentation:

Wufoo’s documentation homepage Wufoo provides excellent documentation on their site, and we link to the most commonly used features here.

Export form entries and download in spreadsheets or other formats. Advanced feature: Batch download files your form users have uploaded.

Field types and how they work

Notifications provide email or other alerts when a form is submitted.

Confirmation options and other form settings

Advanced features:

How to build rules for your form  — set up logic to show or hide different fields based on answers to previous question, or skip to another page. Handy for longer or more complex forms.

Hide or rearrange fields with CSS keywords

 

Drupal CMS Intermediate and Advanced, Web Editing, WordPress Blogs

File Names for Web Pages and Blogs: Best Practices

It’s best to be consistent and keep things simple when naming files for your website. You may need more complex naming conventions and multiple versions of files on your hard drive or shared drive, but simplifying file names for the web decreases the risk that your links will break or that some people will have trouble opening your files.

  • Don’t put dates in file names unless you must keep multiple versions of a file online.
    • If I name my document List_of_Ponies2012.pdf and other offices link to that list, I break everyone else’s links when I replace the file with List_of_Ponies2013.pdf.
    • If I forget to delete the 2012 file, everyone else is seeing last year’s list of ponies, and we don’t want that!
    • If people must be able to refer to an older version of a file as well as the current version (example: financial aid forms), use dates, but make sure departments you work with know to check for new versions and update their links (or link to a page listing your forms)
    • List_of_Ponies.pdf is usually better than List_of_Ponies2013.pdf
  • Remove spaces from file names. Browsers turn the character for a space into “%20” and that gets really messy. Use Mixed Case or underscores instead of spaces.
    • http://www.brynmawr.edu/parties/Dinosaur Tea Party.pdf becomes http://www.brynmawr.edu/parties/Dinosaur%20Tea%20Party.pdf and can cause confusion or errors.
    • Or if you’re pasting that address into email, the space may cause the link to break, leading to confusion and sadness as your users go to http://www.brynmawr.edu/parties/Dinosaur and get an error.
    • Instead of Dinosaur Tea Party.pdf , use DinosaurTeaParty.pdf or Dinosaur_Tea_Party.pdf .
  • Be consistent with your use of capital letters. This makes it easier to remember what you named a file, and also avoids a tricky difference between most of your computers’ operating systems and the web server’s.
    • Windows and Mac OSX don’t pay attention to case in file names– they think owls.pdf and OWLS.pdf are the same. So I can’t make two separate files called owls.pdf. and OWLS.pdf .
    • Linux, the operating system that runs our web server (and most other web servers) does pay attention to case in file names. So if I upload owls.pdf , and then later create some other file OWLS.pdf and upload it, they’ll both be there, causing confusion.

Need to clean up old files? Learn how to delete old files in Contribute or contact Web Services at help@brynmawr.edu for assistance deleting old files in Drupal, or in making sense of and cleaning up large numbers of website or blog files.

WordPress Blogs

Bryn Mawr WordPress theme documentation

The Bryn Mawr WordPress theme is available upon request for blogs that require Bryn Mawr branding. If you would like to request this theme, please contact help@brynmawr.edu and include the address of your blog if it has been created.

For the most part, the Bryn Mawr WordPress theme works like any other WordPress theme, and all of the usual WordPress documentation here applies. However, it has a few features to make it look and function like the College website that require some additional documentation– menus and contact information.

Headers:

You must select a header for your blog to display correctly.

Select your header by going to Appearance->Theme Options. Most blogs should use the Bryn Mawr Only header, but there are options available for Bi-Co and Tri-co branding.

Contact Information

The Contact Us Info Box plugin must be activated with this theme.

Once it is activated, you may edit your contact information by going to Settings->Contact Us Info Box.

Contact Us info box option in settings menu

Enter contact information and format it with simple HTML:

editing the contact information

Common HTML for contact information:

Line break: <br>
Email link: <a href="mailto:you@brynmawr.edu">you@brynmawr.edu</a>
Bold: <b>bold text</b>

Left Navigation menu

Add left navigation menus by going to Appearance->Menus

To create your first menu, click the “Create Menu” button. For additional menus, click the + tab.

 

Add WordPress pages or categories, or Custom Links (links to any web page) to your navigation menu using the panels on the left:

Drag and drop to reorder menu items as needed. When a menu is complete, click “Save Menu” to save your changes and make your menu available to add to the navigation.

Select the menu you want to appear first in the “Bryn Mawr Top Menu” dropdown. Select additional menus to appear below it (if applicable) in the next two dropdowns:

Click “Save” beneath Theme Locations to make your menu(s) display in your left navigation.

Breadcrumbs

Need breadcrumbs to link back to your department or office like this?

Under Appearance->Menus, Create a menu named “Breadcrumbs” and add Custom Links to it. Reorder items as needed, and click “Save Menu.” Your links will appear as breadcrumbs above the navigation menus, just as they do on Bryn Mawr web pages.

Left Navigation Buttons:

If you want callout buttons between the left navigation and contact information like this:

Activate the Left Navigation Button Plugin.

Then go to Appearance->Widgets

Drag the Left Navigation Button Widget into the Left Nav Callout Button widget area.

Then add your Link Text and Link URL to the widget.

The recommended maximum number of buttons is 3.

RSS Subscribe Button

To add an RSS subscribe button to the right column, activate the RSS Subscribe Button plugin, then go to Appearance->Widgets and drag the RSS Subscribe Button widget to the desired location.

WordPress Blogs

Updating Your Alumnae Club Blog

1. Log in to your club blog. If you are having trouble logging in, please contact help@brynmawr.edu or call the Help Desk at 610-526-7440

Once logged in, you should see the Dashboard with the name of your club at the top like this:

dashboard

If you just need to update your contact information, click on Posts in the left sidebar:

And hover your mouse over your Welcome post, then click “Edit.”

You should be on the edit screen for your Welcome post. In the editor, you can update your contact information just as if you were typing in a Word document or an email.

 

If you need more text formatting options, you can click the “Kitchen sink” button (as in “everything but the…”) to get big headings, indenting, underlining, paste from Word, and more!

 

To add a link to a Facebook page or email address, highlight the text you want to make into a link, then click the link button:

 

To link to a Facebook page or other website address (any address starting with http:// ), paste the address into the “URL” box and click “Update.”

 

To link to an email address, type “mailto:”  followed by the email address (for example, “mailto:help@brynmawr.edu”) in the “URL” box and click “Update.”

 

Once you are done updating your contact information, click “Publish”.

 

 

Want to see your changes? Click “View post” in the yellow box that appears, and you will be taken to your new and improved post!