Notes for editors and contributors. Be clear: these are guidelines, not instructions.

Note that the links below are all examples of Page Jumps - links that go to another block in the same page.

Page Layout / Page Ownership / Table Layout
Use of Analytics / Use of Contact Pages / Use of Notices / Use of Page Jumps / Use of Posts / Use of PDF / Use of Sidebar
WordPress menu

Page Layout

The main thing is that content should look good on the page - not just on a PC but on a phone as well. Once that objective is met it is good practice to keep content fairly tight to avoid excessive scrolling. Ideally, all the the content that the user needs should be on one screen, but we can't always achieve that. As an example, where the old website had

September 2023
Monthly Meeting

the new one has

Monthly Meeting September 2023

Screen real estate is always at a premium.

It's always a good idea to check a new page on a phone, nit just on a PC.

Page Ownership

One of the lessons learnt during migration is that it can be very useful to know who owns a page, in case we need to query or update the content. Where the owner is known, I'm suggesting that we record it at the foot of the page, as on this page. Use a contact page if the owner is willing to be contacted, otherwise plain text.

An example of 'orphaned' content is this 'What Can We Do?' document, linked from the Climate Matters page. We can tell from the file name that it dates from Jan 2023, but that's all that we know about it.

Table Layout

I find that variable-width columns work better than fixed-width. Where a table has many columns, consider merging some of them: for example, the table in Books originally had four columns (Title, Author, Description, Publication Date) but it works better with two.

Use of Analytics

View analytics and export them as PDF from the WordPress menu. The various metrics are explained here. Of course these metrics are only useful if they lead us to take editorial decisions. I don't expect this will happen very often.

Use of Contact Pages

If you want to enable readers to email members of the group, use a contact page. This means that the recipient's email address is not exposed to potential spammers.

To create a contact page go to the WordPress menu (the W inside a circle, top left), scroll to u3a contacts, then add contact. A contact has a number of attributes but you only need to specify the name and the email address. You enter a contact link in a page like this: John Baxter. (Open this page for editing and you will see the syntax used.)

A given individual with different roles can have several contacts: for example, John Baxter, Subject Adviser, and Webmaster all send to the same email address. This gives us flexibility to easily change things if (say) somebody else takes over the role of Webmaster.

The WordPress menu includes a Contact Log which when enabled will record any use of contact pages. It is to help in the detection of spam and is currently disabled.

Use of Notices

A Notice is a short piece of text used to bring something to a user's attention. Each has a start date and an end date, and disappears on the end date. At time of writing there is just one notice block, on the Home page.

Admins can add a Notice from the WordPress menu (W)). Don't go mad, we don't want to see dozens of these things. The text that appears on the Notice Block is called an excerpt and is set from the sidebar. Keep the excerpt as short as you can.

Use of Page Jumps

A page jump is a link that goes to another place in the same page - there are examples at the top of this page. The destination block has to be labelled with an anchor - this is added in the Advanced section at the bottom of the sidebar. The anchor name is arbitrary and must be unique within the page, but it makes life easier to have some kind of naming convention: for example, the anchor for 'Use of Page Jumps' above is uoPageJumps and the link to it is #uoPageJumps.

Use of PDF

Upload of documents as PDF is to be discouraged, as it is impossible to maintain them or fix typos. They are also invisible to Search. Some docs migrated from SiteBuilder have broken links that point to the old website. Consider converting text in PDFs into a SiteWorks Page. (I know that there are PDF editors online, some of them free, but I'm not sure that I trust any of them and I don't see why we should have to learn them).

Use of Posts

A Post is a block of text, generally smaller than a Page and usually of more topical interest - a 'news' item. On this website they are visible on the Posts page.

Use of Sidebar

The sidebar is used to set attributes of the current Page or current Block. It is hidden and unhidden using the icon to the left of the Save button.

WordPress menu

On this page 'WordPress menu' means the W inside a circle, top left.

Page owner: John Baxter