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About this site

This website runs on a free, open-source application called WordPress, as do more than half of all websites online today. The content (text, images) is held in a database made up of tables and columns, like a giant spreadsheet. The WordPress database holds most of the content – pages, posts, media (images, audio, pdfs, downloadable documents), events, menu items, etc. in a single table within the database. Administrators and Editors will most frequently be dealing with Pages, Posts, WooCommerce (future store).

Pages and Posts can best be differentiated by the concept of Pages being generally “static”, rarely changing and always present (About, Contact, Services, etc.).  Pages are “standalone” items and don’t have categories.

Posts are most often content that is chronologic (like News) or part of a category containing multiple entries (such as Projects). There are special page templates customized to display these posts in different ways depending upon their content. Posts are presented chronologically by default. When a new post is created, it pushes the older ones down a notch. If you filter a Post category, you can also drag-and-drop those posts into a specific order. This technique is best reserved for Posts that don’t depend on being in chronologic order.

Front end versus back end – The front end of a website is where visitors view pages. The back end is where content is edited.

When you are logged in and viewing pages or posts on the front end (visitor view), you will see an Edit link at the bottom of each page or post. If you click on this link, you will be taken directly to that page or post’s Editor window in the back end (WordPress admin area). This link is invisible to site visitors – only logged-in administrators or editors can see it. You can also edit a page or post by clicking the Edit link in the Editor menu bar at the top of the window.

Editing

Locating the Post or Page in the back end

Once you are logged into the backend as Administrator, any page viewed on the front end (what the public sees) will have a button that when clicked will take you to the Post or Page to be edited in the WordPress admin area. For themes that were designed by Vizou, the Gutenberg block editor (drag-and-drop editor) will be disabled. This editor has been in development for many years and is still not ready for use on your site. When you “edit” in the WordPress admin, you are simply providing the basic, unstyled, undesigned content. The way it looks in the Editor is NOT how it will look on the front end to visitors, so keep it simple!

Customizing the editor screen

If you scroll all the way to the top of your screen (when you are logged into the back end), at the top right you will see a little white tab labeled Screen Options. Clicking on this tab drops down an array of options for the screen you are viewing (the options will be different when in a Page, a Post, a Product, etc.). You can check the boxes for items you do or don’t want to see while editing. You can also control how many columns appear on your screen (helpful if editing on an iPad versus a huge monitor). If you select Screen Options while viewing a list of Posts or Users, you can also designate how many you see on a single screen, which can be very helpful if you have a lot of items. Enter a number and click Apply.

Editing Pages

In the main menu on the left, visit Pages/All Pages. If you hover over a page title, you can view a few different options (Edit, Quick Edit, etc.). If you click on the title, you will open the page and find yourself in the Page Editor.

Generally speaking, you shouldn’t be creating new Pages without consulting the theme developer or webmaster.

You can view the basic HTML code for any Page (or Post) by clicking on the Text tab at the top right of your Editor window where it says “Visual, Text”. This lets verify whether or not you have accidentally pasted in unwanted HTML or tags from other editors and you can see how your headers, bold, italics, links and lists are described by the HTML. Click back on Visual to return to the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) view of your content.

Changing page order – Some main pages (like the Home page) also have sub-pages, called child pages. You can see which is the parent page in box on the right in the editing screen. You will never add content to a parent page nor will you change the relationship of a page to a parent. The order of child pages can be changed by hovering over the page and dragging it to the new order.

Editing Posts

Posts are at Posts/All Posts and can be opened for editing the same way you open Pages. If you need to create a new post, you can either visit Posts/Add New Post or click the Add New Post button at the top of the All Posts page view.

When you create a post, you should first select what category it should go in, then give it a good, search-engine friendly title. The title will automatically be used as the page permalink, for example, the title “Large orange cat removed by local rescue team” would create a URL (permalink) like this – “https://yourdomain.com/category/news/2025/07/large-orange-cat-removed-by-local-rescue-team”. You can manually edit the permalink (also called the “slug”) to be more or less detailed depending on your needs.

Steps when creating a new post

1. select Post category (Posts can be in multiple categories but it depends on your site structure)
2. create an SEO-friendly title
3. verify permalink (slug) is also SEO-friendly and descriptive for search engines
4. upload a “Featured Image” (upload from link in right column usually)
5. add your post content using the least amount of “design” possible
6. Publish, Schedule or Update your post

Pasting from external sources

When pasting text that has been copied from another source (as opposed to typing directly into a Post or Page), be sure to first select Paste as plain text from the icons in the Post or Page editor window (it looks like a little “T”). This strips out any invisible tags that Word, HTML or other text sources may contain (they may be invisible to your eye).

Applying custom Post templates

When you are creating or editing a new Product or Project Post, you first need to check the Post category so that any special fields will appear. Then, in the righthand sidebar you will see a “Post Attributes” meta-box. Select the appropriate post template there. News posts don’t have a special template.

Styling

When adding content that requires headers for different levels of information, start with Header 2 and work your way down (Header 3, Header 4 and so on). Header 1 is generally reserved by the theme template for page and post titles. The header sizes are “described” by the stylesheet (CSS). If you want something to be bigger, smaller or different, let the web designer know so they can update it.

Images

Media Library

All images and other media uploaded to WordPress end up in the Media Library (in the main menu at left).

If you are creating a Post (or a Page) it is advisable to upload from the Editor while creating it, as the media will then be “attached” in the Media Library and easier to keep track of.

It is much easier to manage your images and other media uploads if you give them clear names that you can search for later on when you have many images to wade through. Avoid the common pitfall of images with names like “Untitled.jpg” or “12345678.jpg”.

Before uploading your image, make sure that it is the right size (not to big, not too small). A good background or large images size is 1280px wide at 72ppi (screen resolution).

If you can optimize (shrink but retain quality) your images prior to upload, your site will load faster. Today, all modern browsers can display “webp” images which retain detail and are much smaller than traditional jpg or png files. There are free apps for both Mac and PC, as well as online sites that can optimize your images for you. But jpg or png files are okay, too. Just be sure that your jpg files are “compressed” at least a bit (80% quality is decent).

All images uploaded will automatically have different sizes generated for them by WordPress. If they are large enough, there will be a Large, Medium and Thumbnail size at the very least. Depending upon how your Settings/Media is configured, thumbnails will usually be square-cropped, while Medium and Large images will retain their proportions.

How to set the featured image

Posts should generally have a featured image (or they’re boring!). Open the Post or Page, click on Set Featured Image (lower right of screen) and either add a new image (drag and drop or choose file) or select an existing one from the visible images, then click the Set Featured Image button in the lower right of the Media window. You can also remove or change the featured image the same way.

Background/header images

The large image you see in the site header or behind pages is the image you set as Featured Image from within the Post or Page. You’ll get the best results if you make it at least 1280 pixels wide. Category pages do not have a background image, nor do “child pages” (sub-pages), unless they will sometimes be viewed as a standalone page and not just as a child page of a “section” (parent page).

Adding and defining new background/header images – Create an image that is at least 1280 x 720 pixels and name your file with the word header at the beginning (ex. “header-giant-fiddle.jpg”). That way, you’ll always be able to search for “header” when adding it. Upload it to the Page you want it on or to the Media Library. When looking at All Pages, you can see the Featured Image (or text if none was selected) on the right. Click on it and choose your new image. The same applies to Posts. For categories, go to Posts / Categories and you’ll see a similar setup.

Changing thumbnail cropping

To change the crop of the square thumbnail (and ONLY the thumbnail), click on the image either in Add Media (in the Post or Page) or directly in the Media Library, then on the button to Edit Image. You’ll see several options there for cropping and scaling. Be sure to Apply and Save after doing your edits.

Working with images in Pages or Posts

A good source of legal, royalty-free imagery is https://unsplash.com. Don’t ever use an image that you find in a Google source unless you know for a fact that it is in the public domain. Wikipedia can also be a good source for public domain imagery. There is also a free plugin called Instant Images that lets you search and download images from Unsplash and other royalty-free sites directly from the Add Media window when editing your Post or Page.

If adding an image to a Post or Page, put cursor where you want the image to be, then click on Add Media (just above main text area). A window will open. You can immediately drag the image onto this window and it will upload or you can click the tab Upload Images and choose the image from your hard drive. WordPress will automatically create multiple sizes (thumbnail, medium, large) of the uploaded image (original size permitting). Once uploaded, be sure image is selected in window, then click on Insert Image (bottom right of window).

You can optionally choose positioning, etc. before inserting. Once an image is inserted you can click on it to change size, positioning and linking. By default, the image should be linked to Media File (ex. the thumbnail size image will link to the original size image in the Media Library) so that when clicked by a site visitor, it will open up to the larger size in a floating “lightbox”. Be aware that if you give a caption to an image, it is more difficult to move the image around within a Page or Post as the caption won’t automatically come with it when you drag it to a new position.

Whenever you add an image, you should also write a desctiption in the alt text in the field on the right hand side of the Add Media window. This text is what speech-to-text readers will access to let a visually-impaired visitor know what the image is about.

If adding an image to a Post or Page, put your cursor where you want the image to be, then click on Add Media (just above main text area). A window will open. You can immediately drag the image onto this window and it will upload or you can click the tab Upload Images and choose the image from your hard drive. WordPress will automatically create multiple sizes (thumbnail, medium, large) of the uploaded image (original size permitting). Once uploaded, be sure image is selected in window, then click on Insert Image (bottom right of window). You can optionally choose positioning, etc. before inserting.

Once an image is inserted, you can click on it to change size, positioning and linking. By default, the image should be linked to Media File (ex. the thumbnail size image will link to the original size image in the Media Library) so that when clicked by a site visitor, it will open up to the larger size in a floating “lightbox” window.

Be aware that if you give a caption to an image, it is more difficult to move the image around within a Page or Post as the caption won’t automatically come with it when you drag it to a new position.

Updating the site and plugins

When the Dashboard and Menu (on left) show that there are updates needed, go to Dashboard/Updates and start with any plugins first. Click to select all plugins needing to be updated, then click on Update. Wait until the updates are done; there will be a confirmation on the page when done. If WordPress itself needs an update (important security updates are done automatically), you can safely click the button to update since backups also happen automatically. If you are hesitant to do updates, you should let your webmaster know.

Be sure you have a database backup available before doing a major WordPress or Woocommerce version update. It’s usually safe, but once in a while weird things happen – usually not serious, but requiring the webmaster to get the site back online.

Things NOT to do

Styling

Never “design” in the Editor – keep things like bold, italic, etc. to a minimum and do NOT use all caps anywhere (except acronyms). Never, ever bold a heading (Header 1, Header 2, etc.). The stylesheet is in charge of design. If you want to change something (color, size of type, etc.) talk to your web designer.

Never, ever center an image (or anything else). Just don’t.

Publishing mode

Do not put old Posts into Draft mode when their info has become outdated. The whole idea of a “blog” is to document chronological content and keep it as an archive. New posts will always kick older ones down a notch, and depending upon how many are slated to appear on a page, eventually visitors to the site won’t see the old ones without going to the “See all posts” view of the category (if you offer one) and paging/loading old Posts. Do not put Posts or Pages into Private mode – it serves no purpose and looks very bad on the front end of the site.

Site structure

A general rule of thumb is to always check with the web architect before creating new pages or menu items. These areas should be carefully planned in advance, not done at a whim.

Permalinks and slugs

Do not mess with Settings/Permalinks or you may break your site or destroy all links to elements within it.

Plugins

Don’t remove, turn off or activate plugins without first talking to your web designer. You could definitely (at least temporarily) break your site.