• After logging in, in a new tab/window open https://ukkidneyhistory.org again.
• You will now see a black bar at the top of each page as you navigate. On it, one of the options is ‘Edit page’.
• Navigate to a page you want to edit. Click ‘Edit page’ in the black bar at the top.
• Edit it. There is a highly simplified Word-style editor.
• When you are done, or at intervals anyway, click ‘Update’ near the top right.
• At the top there is then an option to ‘View page’.

2. MOST VERSATILE

• If you use the menu to the left, you can click on Pages – then All Pages,
• Find the one you want and and click on its title or on ‘Edit’.
• Where there are a lot of pages, they may be listed across several pages, and you can search for one.
• If it is a published page in a well-populated website, method 1 (browsing the site while logged in, then clicking on Edit Page/Post) is usually quicker.

Create something new: mostly PAGES

If you are just editing an existing page, you can skip this bit till later. There are two types of new content in WordPress: Pages and Posts. This (that you are reading right now) is a Page, and most of what we work on will be Pages. Pages are just web pages. We are producing pages not posts. Posts are for writing a blog or similar. On this site, Posts are only used for creating News items.

• To add a new page, click on “+ New” sign in the top editing menu bar, and choose ‘Page’. (Alternative: via Dashboard,  in the left hand editing menu, click on Pages, then Add New).
  • Choose a SHORT title. This will determine the url. After saving the new page (see below) you can change the title of the page, e.g. to be a bit longer, without changing the URL.
• Fix where you want the page to appear: On the right hand side, under Page Attributes, pick a ‘Parent’ page – the page you want your new page to hang from.
  • If you forget to set a parent page, or chose the wrong one, you can go in and change it later. Note that this changes the url, so that links to the page will break. So don’t do this for older pages without discussion.
  • You can alter the sequence of child pages, as seen in the menu, by clicking on  Pages – All Pages in the left hand editing menu, and dragging the page to where you want it to be. For example, we have arranged Units to be in alphabetical order. As long as they remain under the same parent page, moving  their position in the list will not alter their url.
• Update (=Save) using the blue button in the Publish section to the right, near the top.
  
• Add your text, as described in the next section.

Add/edit text

When you click on ‘Edit page’, the default view is similar to the actual webpage, but not identical. In this view you can add or replace text just by typing, and use the simplified text editor to do basic formatting.

The alternative ‘Text’ view, reached via the tab at the top right, allows you to edit the html code directly, if you like that sort of thing. It is necessary for some tricks, and it may be necessary (for example) for embedding videos, or fixing a nice table (but see below).

Most of the editing controls will look familiar and straightforward. 

To create Links:

• Highlight the text that you want to be a link.
• Click on the chain link icon and a pop-up will appear with a box for the link
• Enter the link
  • If it is another page on the ukkidneyhistory site, type in a word of two from the title of the page, and wait for the full page title to appear. Click on the correct page from the list offered (there may only be one). Click on the return button next to the url box. Click away from the link to check it has worked.
  • If it is a url pointing to a location on another site, paste in the full link (must include https:// or http://). Click on the return button next to the url box. Click away from the link to check it has worked.

Images, downloads etc are mentioned below.

You may need to change text size

The default size for text on pages is quite small. We’ve fixed a policy of usually increasing it – at present you need to do this manually as follows. For pages using the standard editor you will see this:

Use consistent headings to create a Table of Contents

Please use Heading 3 for your main subheadings. You can pick this from the drop down just left of the B (for Bold) in the editing menu – the default there is Paragraph. Beneath Heading 3 use Heading 4, Heading 5 etc for lesser subheadings in sequence as seems appropriate. These will then automatically create a logical Table of Contents that appears just before your first heading. You don’t see this in the editing view, only on the published page. Note that

• Table of contents only appears if you have 3 or more subheadings.
• There are ways to prevent the ToC appearing on particular pages: ask if it’s annoying.
• Other format tweaks are also available.

Adding images and video

Add an image by clicking on Add Media at the top. It will prompt you to upload or pick one from the Media library. You can browse that at any time via the left hand menu.

Simple formatting possibilities are shown if you click or double-click on the image. This image on the right of this paragraph is shown as a thumbnail, but you can pick centred or right also. By clicking on the pencil, other options (size of image, Alt text, caption …) become available.

My image is in the wrong place!

If it inserts in the wrong place (easily done), it’s often easier to delete it, then click in the right place and add it again. But if you’re happy tampering with the html directly, you can move it there.

Upload multiple images from a document

MS Word – Go to Save As … html. This will create a folder in which there will be various documents, but also a subfolder containing all the image files. You can now upload these.

MS Powerpoint – Go to File – Export

Add or embed a video

Although you can upload videos just as for images, you are very likely to run into upload limits and quality issues. And you don’t want users, especially on mobile devices, to have to fully download before watching. So it is almost always preferable to EMBED a video that has already been uploaded to a streaming platform such as YouTube, Vimeo, or your own University or other provider.

Note that we now have a ukkidneyhistory account at Vimeo. Vimeo has the advantage of no ads! Contact Neil if you have one to upload. Y

ou can grab the ’embed code’ from YouTube or Vimeo, but it usually needs to be added to the html (‘text’) version of the page (see above, ‘Add/edit text’, in the desired location.) This won’t be straightforward unless you’re a bit familiar with html, so ask if any difficulty. There are ways to use ‘shortcodes’ to implement this, which we may implement later.

Featured image

At the bottom right there is an option to add a ‘Featured image’. This appears at the very top of the page when viewing it, but is not shown on the editing screen. It is often picked out if sharing a link to social media. Click on it – add an image as above. Use a ‘landscape’ shape image here. If you want to show a caption you can put it at the top of the page. Suggest small print – leave it at size 12. And/or italics.

Attributing pages to contributors

• Leave a heading (Level 3) on the last line of your page “Authorship”
• Go to Tags in the right hand menu when editing the page. Begin typing the name (first or second name), or click on Choose from the most used tags. Previous authors should appear: click on the name.
• Update the page at the top right. Now when you view it, the authors name should appear with a link to the Contributors page.
• If you can’t find your contributor’s name – you can type it in as a new Tag (then click the Add button), but they will still need setting up on the Contributors page. Ask!

Adding tables

Althought available in the editing menu, try not to use them – they don’t adapt well to small vs large screens. Other ways of presenting may be better, though there are times when nothing else is as good. Modifying tables later often requires tweaking the html. Ask.

Adding downloadable files

such as .doc, .pdf. First thing to say is that core information is always better as webpage. It adapts to screen size, and to screen readers, much more consistently. However if it is an ancient paper that you are referring to that is available as a pdf, that’s fine. Or if it’s an unpublished long document that is not otherwise available.

• Add it to the Media gallery as for an image or video.
• At the bottom right is the url – copy it.
• On the page you want it to be downloaded from, create a link using this url.
• Always indicate that it is a download – e.g. The first 50 years of the Renal Association (pdf, 3Mb)

Many other things are possible

Ask!

Save (“Update”) and check

Preview/Save; Public/not? Near the top right of the editing window, a big blue button lets you Publish or Update. Before you click on it, check you’re happy with the settings above that. Under ‘Visibility’ you can choose to make it visible to all who land on the site (Public), or only to logged-in authors/editors. In general it’s best to make it Public straight away. Include ‘draft’ written at the top in capitals: DRAFT – WORK IN PROGRESS if it is embarrassingly incomplete. It is a common observation that Public pages get completed faster, and edited more quickly, than ones that are labelled Draft, which can hang around for months.

• See Authorship to understand how to acknowledge contributors. Joint authors are fine too. Substantial updates by someone else also deserves acknowledgement as a contributor.
  
• ‘Last updated by [name, date-time)]’ appears automatically at the foot of every page.
• The list of recently updated pages on the home page is automatically updated, as is the longer list at Latest changes.
  

Finally: check your page by clicking on View page (top menu bar), and re-edit it to fix the issues you’re bound to spot.

Menus

If you are editing an existing page, this isn’t something you should need to pay attention to. But if creating a new page you will:

• Which Menu/ submenu: When editing a page, in the right hand menu beneath Publish is a section called Page Attributes. If creating a new page you need to set a Parent page – pick the page you want your new page (the child page) to hang off. e.g. if it is a new unit’s history page, pick Units. If hanging off Newcastle’s unit page, pick Newcastle. If you have ‘No parent’, your page appears in the top menu, and upsets everyone. Do not change the parent page of long-established pages without thought and consultation; it will screw up links to the page, and upset Google indexing.
  
• Position in menu: You can drag and drop at Pages – All pages. We’re aiming for logical sequences; these may be time, alphabetical, or clustering similar topics. Note that moving a page to hang under a different ‘parent’ page can cause trouble – see paragraph above.

Show child pages etc

While browsing you will notice that on some main menu pages such as Timeline or Units there is a list of all the child pages that hang off that ‘parent’ page. Yet if you go to edit that page, you only see [a shortcode in square brackets]. The shortcode automatically generates the list of child pages. The order is determined by the order in the Menus (see above). There are ways to exclude particular pages from this list if necessary, or add others from elsewhere. Ask.