Guide: Step by Step

So you’ve decided you have content to contribute to the EPT teacher’s manual, but need some help with the techie nonsense? This is your first port of call. If can see this page then you already have the access and privileges needed to create your own page. You may want to read this page and then throw yourself straight in and play, but it might be easier to keep this page open and do your editing in another browser tab / window. This (and other EPT guides) have been made with all jargon (techie speak) in italics. If any of these words are not well explained, you’re on your own. (only joking, contact Ed/Pub and we’ll try to improve).

Creating a Post

So, how do you begin? On the EPT Homepage, log in. You should now see a toolbar across the top of the window. Hover the mouse over ‘+ New’ and select ‘Post’ from the drop down menu.

Adding a Title and Metadata

You should now see the following screen, which is your page editor. Don’t Panic Page Editor Firstly, add a title to the text boxes in the middle of the screen. Add titles in as many languages as you like/know, but please add at least an English title and introductory paragraph. Numbered red boxes have been used to highlight some important tools on the page editor. These are mostly used to add metadata (that is: information about your post). Here’s what they do: 1. The drop down menu which brought you to the post editor. 2. The status of the post, here there are 2 options:

Draft: This allows you to save the post unfinished and come back to it later. The unfinished post will be visible to other editors but not to the uninitiated (that is, regular visitors to the site).

Pending Review: Select this when your post is finished and ready to be published (see below).

3. The visibility of the post. Our wordpress powered site allows for 3 levels of access to posts.

Public: Any visitor to the EPT site can view the post once published.

Password Protected: What it says on the box. Can only be accessed by people you give the password to.

Private: Only those with editor access can see private posts.

4. Publishing timer. This allows you to set a date and time for your post to go live (that is, to appear on the website), or to have it published immediately you press the publish button. 5. Preview. Lets you see what your post will look like when published. Use this to check formatting and admire your handiwork. 6. Publish. Click this at that wonderful moment when your post is finished! Note that even if you have set a publishing timer, the post will not go live unless you have also pressed this button. 7. Categories. This is very useful! These are how people will find your post. Most likely if you’re reading this guide you will want to add things to the ‘Teacher’s Manual’ category, but probably also to a sub category of that. 8. Add a Category. This button is dangerous! If your post does not fit into any of the existing categories, you can add another. However, the more categories which exist, the harder it will become to find the wonderful information in our teacher’s manual, so think very carefully about adding more categories. 9. Tags. These are search terms (keywords) which will make it easier for people to find your post.

Adding Text

Now that you know how to add metadata, we can get on with adding content! Scrolling down the post from the image shown above, you will find the post text editor. Hopefully the ‘Add Media’ button will be better positioned than the one in this image. Text Editor The wordpress text editing system is very similar to many others, so hopefully shouldn’t cause you too much trouble. Here are the details, as numbered in the picture: 1. Text editing options, which have icons (pictures) which look like MS Word or other packages. 2. Used to link to another post or website. To add a hyperlink, first type some text, then highlight it and click the ‘Insert/edit link’ button. Then type in the web address of the post you would like to link to and give the link a name. Note that the published post displays the text which you originally typed, not the link name. You can remove the hyperlink but leave the text by clicking the ‘Unlink’ button. 3. Insert page break. This is very useful! Whenever you add a page break to your post, the post will only be shown up to the break, with a ‘Read More…’ link at the bottom. Adding page breaks prevents longer articles from looking daunting and/or taking a long time to load. 4. Enter ‘Distraction Free’ editing mode. This makes the post editor fill your entire browser window, hiding all of the metadata and control panel options and allowing you to really concentrate on your content. 5. Open/ Close the kitchen sink. The kitchen sink gives you more text editing options including unusual symbols and various title and subtitle typefaces. 6. Resize Text Editor. When you first create or choose to edit a post, the text editor will be quite small. By clicking and dragging these diagonal lines you can make the box bigger and easier to use.

Adding Media

Media on the EPT Compost is stored in a library, which can be added to either directly or from the post editing menu. Once files are in the library they can be placed in any post.

To add directly to the library:

The major advantage of adding media directly to the library is that it becomes very easy to add multiple items (eg. albums of pictures) in just a few clicks.

Once logged in as an editor, click the ‘Media’ tab at the top left of your screen. This page should appear:

The Media Library
The Media Library

To upload your media, click either of the highlighted buttons. This should bring up the next page:

Media Upload Tool
Media Upload Tool

Here you can ‘drag and drop‘ files from your computer, or click the ‘select files’ button and search your computer that way. You can add as many files as you like. They will appear in a list below the upload tool. Once a file appears in that list it has been uploaded, you can now go back to your post and insert the media.

To do this, go to the text editor for your post and click the ‘add media’ button. This button is currently hidden behind some of the text editing options, we’re working on a better layout so I’ll upload a picture once it’s working. Clicking the button will bring up this screen:

Insert Media Tool
Insert Media Tool

This is the tool for adding media to your post. There are lots of options for where to get the media from, and how to make it look good.

1. Create a gallery. If you want to add lots of pictures to your post, it may be much nicer to store them in a gallery, which is linked to your post. This way your text will be easier to read as it will not get lost amongst all of your pictures.

2. Set featured image. This allows you to select an image which will be shown on the website, before visiting your post.

3. Insert from URL. This allows you to add content from another website. We would prefer that you host your content on the EPT wiki as far as possible, but of course if large files are already on the web elsewhere (eg. youtube videos) then you could use this to link to them. Any copyright infringement will be the responsibility of the individual editor, not the EPT.

4. These options allow you to add text describing your media.

  • The ‘Title’ is the name which will appear in the media library.
  • The ‘Caption’ will appear on your post underneath your image (see ‘Insert media Tool‘ above)
  • The ‘Alternative (Alt) Text’ will appear when a user hovers their cursor (mouse) over the media. If this is left blank then any caption text is automatically set as the alt text.
  • ‘Description’ gives more detail about the media. This is visible in the media library.

5. These options allow you to alter the way your image is inserted into the post.

  • ‘Alignment’ can be used to wrap text around your media.
  • ‘Link to’ allows you to send a user to another post when they click the media. The default is to take them to that entry in the media library.
  • ‘Size’ allows you to insert the image at a size that works for you. The numbers are in units of pixels. For example all of the images on this post are around 1100-1200 pixels wide.

6. Upload a file not already in the library. This is a quick way of adding single items of media without having to upload them to the library before hand.

Also note that you can add as many items from the library as you want in a single use of the ‘Add Media’ tool.

Selecting an image which you have already inserted into your post will allow you to edit it, giving a few more interesting ways to make your media look good. You can also find these by going to the media library, finding your item and clicking ‘edit’. We suggest that you have a play with these (on one of your own media items!) to get the best possible post.

Translations

A language other than English is a great resource, and the EPT has the opportunity to be accessible to many different people through adding our content in a range of languages. This is a brief guide to how you can do just that, with a few warnings about how to make sure that the EPT web page stays looking nice.

It is important that you add at least a title and a brief introduction in English. These will be used on the website to attract people to your post.Translations can be usefully added to existing posts, or you could start your own post in another language. Please do not duplicate other posts just to translate them, see below.

To translate an existing post, open that post for editing through the post library:

Open Page for Editing
Open Page for Editing

Add the title translation as described at the start of this guide. Above the text editing icons you can see a list of languages. Select the one you would like to translate into and get started!

You may find it helpful to copy the existing page into the box for your new language and edit from start to finish, this will let you keep all of the same formatting and images. You can also add the tags in your own language to help people find the page.