Introductory remarks – how we got here
The World Service Tech Committee produced OA web site ready-to-cook packages for WordPress and Joomla. After evaluation of both publishing systems, WordPress was chosen.
First goal was to replicate the contents of the static content web site into WordPress. Much of the content had to be reformatted and not an insignificant amount discarded as obsolete or needed major revisions to live in WordPress.
The components chosen for the Region III web site are the result of considerable trial, error and experimentation. Much gratitude is owed to the WordPress user community, whose members contribute thousands of free extensions (called plugins) to extend, refine and sometimes restrict, the functionality of WordPress.
WordPress is a sophisticated web publishing system and therefore has a lot of buttons, dials and levers to manipulate. One of the goals of this guide is to lay out which controls are important and how to use them.
Choosing the Theme
There are many theme packages for WordPress, both free / shareware and commercial. In many ways the choices are overwhelming- one could spend months just evaluating themes and working to get the desired appearance. The Suffusion theme was chosen because it offers formatting options which obviates the need for various single-feature plugins (conversely it also provides many options which are left unused or even disabled). Plugins are still employed to provide some organization and formatting features either not provided or not desired.
One of the good features of Suffusion is the ability to re-skin the entire theme easily. As of this writing, I chose “royal blue over white” color scheme due to its cleanness – which is of course a combination of personal taste and graphical acuity. (It is very easy to make a really ugly web site – this is another area in which “keep it simple” is a good guideline).
The basic layout is a header along the top which includes the website logo, the main navigation menu below that and finally a one-column of content and one right-hand sidebar. Clean and simple.
What’s on the page
The basic page format is two columns – one for editorial content and a sidebar. Sidebars typically contain one or more “widgets” – little self-contained items. Every page of the web site has at least three widgets – the upcoming events list (On the Horizon), the Google Translation feature and login form.
Along the bottom lies a footer in which is a copyright tag and a link to a dynamically generated site map. Site maps are sometimes the quickest way to find a particular page. The search panel which is also on each page is another important feature to help people find things.
Just below the Region III logo is the main menu. This menu provides navigation through the pages of the site. Other kinds of menu arrangements are possible, but sticking to pages kept things simpler.
There are several standard content types in WordPress:
- Posts
- Pages
- Media
We use posts like sticky notes – write on them and then slap them onto one (or more) WP pages. The Post Page Associator plugin is used to attach posts to a particular page. Typically post categories are used for to lay out a page. The content of the page itself is displayed then the associated posts. This provides the ability to have a standing head on a page followed by varying content.
Navigation
- The main instrument of navigation is the main menu which appears on every WordPress-generated web page.
- The contents of this menu is controlled in the Suffusion options.
- WordPress pages are arranged in a tree, the structure of which is visible on the administrative dashboard Pages Tree View widget.
- The main menu by default includes all the pages in the site with the top-level pages being on the menu bar. This is not desirable, so some pages are explicitly excluded via the (Pages in Navigation Bar – All or Selected) Suffusion option.
- Most main menu items will have drop-downs showing child pages.
- Some pages appear on the menu but cannot be directly accessed via the menu because they are placeholders for child pages. For instance the Members menu item does not lead to a page but has a drop-down of items for sub-sections of the Members area.
- Logged-in users will see additional items on the main menu. This section is for navigating the members side of the site. Visibility of these menu items is controlled by the Members Only plugin.
Sidebars
One right-hand sidebar is used for the site. A few widgets are placed into this sidebar and will appear on every post and page. There are a lot of widgets available but only a handful are applicable to our needs:
- RS Event Multiday widget displays a summary of upcoming events on the datebook.
- Google Translation widget will take a stab at translating the text on a web page to the requested language. This version does a decent job.
- Login / logout box.
Footer
At the foot of every page is a little collection of administrativa – various credits, the copyright notice for the site and a link to the site map.
