How to edit your website

General notes

Don’t delete items, just change them from Published to Draft. They won’t appear to users, but will still be available if you need them later.
When you’re editing content, you’ll see a Visual and a Text tab in the top right corner. You usually want to be editing in the Visual tab, since that shows you what the user will see. Clicking the Text tab lets you see the HTML behind the scenes, which you’ll sometimes need to access.
If you see a lot of weird formatting when you paste text, undo the pasting, click the Paste as Text icon, then try again. You can also paste into the Text tab, which will clear all formatting.
Internal links should open in the same window, while links to external sites should open in a new window. To set this, select the text you want to be a link, click the Link icon, click the Gear icon, and check the “Open link in a new tab” box.
You can set items to publish at a later date in the future. This is useful for news posts. Click on the Edit button next to “Publish immediately” in the top right corner of an item, and choose the date and time you want the item to be published.
Items are typically ordered chronologically from the date they are published, unless there’s a specific Date field in the item.
Typically, if you don’t enter information in a field, that field won’t appear to the user on the page.

Managing users:

click Users in the left column of the Dashboard
click Edit when hovering over a user to change their password, email address, roles, etc.
click Add New at the top to add a new user

NOTE: Roles define what level of permission a user has. Editors can manage almost everything on the site, but can’t do things like add/remove plugins. Administrators have complete access. For security reasons, you should try to limit the number of users you have, and give users the role that have the minimum permissions needed. So if a user with a role of Editor finds there are certain things they need to do, but can’t, then add the role of Administrator to that user.

When viewing a list of items, i.e Pages:

hold the mouse over the title to show the options available for that item, such as Edit and Quick Edit
use the search bar in the top right corner to quickly find what you’re looking for
clicking on a column heading generally causes the list to be sorted by that column. Clicking the column heading again reverses the sort order.

Adding a blank paragraph (two blank lines)

To add a blank paragraph, press the Enter key. (You can also insert a blank paragraph by adding <p> </p> in the Text tab of the editor. (  means non-breaking space.)

Adding a new line

To add a new line, press Shift + Enter. (You can also insert a new line by adding <br/> in the Text tab of the editor. (br means line break.)

Commenting things out

To make items a comment, start with <!– and end with –>

NOTE: Look in the Text tab of this page for an example.

Revisions and Backups

WordPress automatically stores the last 3 revisions of each page, so it’s easy to go back to a previous revision if you make a mistake. If you make a really big mistake, the site is backed up every night, and it’s easy to restore the site from the backup point.

Adding/editing media (images, pdf’s)

You can upload as large an image as you want, since WordPress automatically creates smaller versions to optimize fast page loading times. Resizing images before uploading is only important if server space is an issue.

To add media:

Click Media > Add New
Drop files on the box, or click Select Files to select certain files

Once you’ve added media, you’ll need to edit the metadata associated with the item:

Click Media > Library
Click on the item you want to edit
Add a description in the Alternative Text box. This is what screen readers use for accessibility, and also what search engines index.
Click the X at the top right to close the box, or use the < and > arrows to move through the library

To edit an image:

Click Media > Library
Click on the item you want to edit
Click Edit Image below the thumbnail of the image
To scale an image (resize it proportionally)
- Enter the new size you want in the New Dimensions box of the Scale Image section. You only need to enter one dimension–the other will be determined automatically.
- Click Scale
To crop an image (remove part of it)
- Click the Crop tool in the upper left
- Drag one or more of the handles of the bounding box. Move the mouse inside the bounding box if you want to drag it.
- If you want a certain aspect ratio, or a certain selection size, enter those in the Image Crop section
- Click Save

To replace media:

Click Media > Library
Click on the item you want to replace
Click Upload a new file in the Replace Media section
Click Choose File and choose a replacement file
The defaults (Just replace the file and Replace the date) are typically what you want, so no need to change those
Click Upload
Make any changes needed to the metadata
Click Update to save

NOTE: replacing a media item deletes the old one from the site. This is typically what you want to do when you’re updating a pdf that has staff contact information, for example. If you want to keep the original document, e.g. annual reports for multiple years, you’ll want to add a new media item, not replace one.

Links

To create a new link:

select the text that you want the link to apply to
click the Link icon
click the Gear icon
to link to a page on the current site, click on that page in the list of pages (if you can’t find the page, use the Search box to help find it)
to link to a page on another web site, paste the URL into the Destination URL box. Check the “Open link in a new tab” box
Click the Add Link button

Linking to an anchor tag (a link to a specific spot on a page)

Click the pencil icon to edit the Row that you want to link to
Add a name to the Row ID box (at the bottom of the page)

To link to that spot in the page, use the name of the page, followed by #, followed by the name you entered in the Row ID, e.g. https://hccc.wa.gov/our-hood-canal/salmon/#somelink

Pages

Click on Pages in the left column of the Dashboard to view the pages on the site.

If you move the mouse over a page, you’ll see options to Edit, Quick Edit, View, Delete, or see more options (… ):

Edit opens the page in the editor, and gives you full editing capabilities
Quick edit lets you change things like the author, title, and whether it’s published or not
Trash puts the item in the Trash, so you can delete it later
View lets you see the page
Clone creates a copy of the item, and puts it in Draft mode. This is an excellent way to create a new item that’s very similiar to an existing item.
New draft: not sure what this does, and have never used it

Posts (News page)

This is a dynamic page, with the content consisting of an introductory paragraph, and then a display of the posts.

To create a new post:

Click Posts > Add New Post
Add the content you’d like to add.
Click on Featured Image in the bottom right to add an image that will appear above the post on the News page.

Note: posts are listed in reverse chronological order (newest first) based on the Published date. If you want to change where a post appears, change the Published date.

Resources

To create a new resource:

If the resource is a pdf, add it to the Media Library first. Copy the URL of the item.
Click Resources > Add New
In the Resource > URL field, paste the URL of the resource
In the Resource > Resource date field, type the date of the resource
In the main WYSIWYG field, paste the following: resourceURL. Replace the resource URL with the actual URL noted above. For example, if the URL is https://hccc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/coolresource.pdf, then you should have the following in the WYSIWYG field: coolresource
Select the appropriate Resource Topics

Redirections

Redirections let you take a URL and redirect it to a new one. This is most often used to redirect the URL’s from an old website to a new one.

To view the redirects, choose Tools > Redirections. To create a new redirect, choose Add New at the top of the page. Add the old URL in the Source URL box, and the new URL in the Target URL box. Click the dropdown arrow next to the URL options/Regex box, and select Ignore Slash and Ignore Case (this should be there by default).

The Pos column (stands for Position) tells you the order in which the rules are processed. Lower numbers have higher priority.

You can only redirect URL’s for your own domain.

Adding a new page does not automatically add it to the menu. To add a page to a menu, choose the menu you want to edit, then click Pages in the Add Menu Items in the left column. Click the Search tab, and type the name of the new page. Check the box next to the page, then click “Add to Menu.” The page appears at the bottom of the menu you’ve selected, and you can drag and drop it where you want it to appear.