This page has some general help for managing WordPress websites. If you are a client of ours you should have a dedicated help page which you should look at first.
FAQs (if you have a problem)
Enter starts a brand new ‘paragraph’ (with space between this and previous paragraph).
Shift+Enter starts a new ‘line’ (with no space between this and previous line).
Like this. Note: the new line is still part of the same ‘paragraph’ as the previous line.
Missing part of Toolbar?
If you can’t see the second line of toolbar – click on button as shown in picture …
Copy and paste
When copying and pasting anything in, make sure the ‘Paste as Text’ button (clipboard with a white T in it) is clicked/selected. Otherwise you risk a lot of extra, hidden code coming in with it.
Formatting and Headings
The Toolbar allows you to choose options and formats. Bold is fine, but avoid Underline (reserved for links) and font colour (to keep site looking clean and consistent).
Choose ‘Style’ from drop down box on far left. Note: these affect a whole paragraph – so you don’t need to select the whole line/paragraph first – just click anywhere in it:
- Paragraph: normal text.
- Heading 1: generally reserved for title so avoid
- Heading 2, 3 and 4 can be used
More help
Video on Editing a Page in WordPress
Starts with editing a page or post (at 2.25) (also contains inserting an image at 5.25)
PDFs (along with images) are stored in the ‘Media’ section of your website.
You can upload new PDFs there and insert links to them in Pages and Posts.
Upload PDF
- Go to ‘Media’
- Click on ‘Add New’
- Either ‘Browse’ or click-and-drag image
View all existing PDFs
- Go to ‘Media’ – Library
- Enter PDF in the search box
Insert a link to a PDF
- Click where you want the link to go
- Use the ‘Add Media’ button just above your toolbar
- Choose your PDF (you can also upload new PDFs from here)
- Fill in the appropriate details:
- Title – what people will see (e.g. list of prices or click here to download list of prices)
- Link To: ‘Media file’
- Click ‘Insert into page’
You can finally choose whether the link opens in the same window/tab or in a new window/tab (my preference).
- Click on link
- Click on Pencil to edit link
- Click on Settings (cog image)
- Choose ‘Open in new Tab’
For example: click here to open ‘Tips for using Google’ PDF
Extra fancy
- You could take a screen shot of the PDF
- Upload it to your site
- Insert the image in place of the link
- Add a link (to the PDF) to the image (see image far right)
All photos, images and PDFs are in the ‘Media library’ of your website.
You can upload new images there and then insert them into Pages and Posts.
What size should an image be?
Basically, “large” images look great, but can take a long time to load. Most people won’t wait.
Upload the largest size you think you’ll need (but ideally not large than this).
Reduce the size, if necessary, before uploading
When you come to insert a picture from your Media library into a Page, WordPress will reduce the size further, depending upon where it is used and what you choose.
Images have: file dimensions (width and height, in pixels) and file size (Kilobytes KB or Megabytes MB). A number of programs will help you reduce the size while maintaining most of the quality (e.g. photoshop, irfanview and many online ones).
Below are some approximate guidelines (and don’t get hung up on these, unless your site is a commercial one – just slows loading of your page a little)
- Full screen images [2048 pixels wide / 200 – 400kb]
- Banner images across the top [2048 pixels wide / 100 – 200kb]
- Smaller images within/next to text [800 pixels / 30 – 100kb]
- Featured images (used for Posts) [800 x 600 / 30 – 100kb]
Here’s a site with detailed explanations on all this
Rename file before uploading
SEO is helped by media files having sensible file names, Titles and Alt Text entries. So rename it before you upload it (you can’t change this later).
Upload image
- Go to ‘Media’
- Click on ‘Add New’
- Either ‘Browse’ or click-and-drag image
Insert image into page
- Click where you want the top of the image to be
- Use the ‘Add Media’ button just above your toolbar
- Choose your media (you can also upload new images from here)
- Fill in the appropriate details
- Title – your chance to add sensible, short phrases that will help your SEO
- Alt Text – ditto for Title (this is used by screen readers for people with sight issues)
- Caption (optional) – appears underneath your image
- Alignment: ‘Left or Right’ – will wrap text round the image. ‘None’ – puts image on its own with text above and below (but not wrapped around). Note you can then centre it on the page if you want.
- Link To: ‘None’ (other options ‘Media file’ = on click image opened over top of page / ‘Custom URL’ = on click goes to the URL you specify)
- Size: Avoid Thumbnail. You’ll get used to which size you want. And you can resize it once its inserted.
- Choose the smallest size (loads quickest) that you then reduce (if necessary).
- NEVER, expand an image as it will look grainy and poor quality.
- Click ‘Insert into page’
Image alignment
‘Left or Right’ – will wrap text round the image.
‘None’ – puts image on its own with text above and below (but not wrapped around). Note you can then centre it on the page if you want.
Editing an image once its been inserted
Click on image and then …
- Click and drag corner handles to change its size on the page
- Choose word-wrap alignment from menu that appears and if you choose ‘None’ you can then use alignment tools in main editing toolbar (see image)
- Click the ‘Pencil’ to Edit other aspects of image
More help
Video on Editing a Page in WordPress
Starts with editing a page or post – inserting an image starts at 5.25
You can change the thumbnail facebook uses for a video. This image will be displayed when your video isn’t auto playing. You can select an auto-generated image, upload a custom image or choose a still frame from your video.
Click on the video- Click on the menu/three dots ‘…’ (bottom right?)
- Click on ‘Edit Video’ (see picture)
- On the next screen click ‘Thumbnail’ and you’ll see a number of options you can use to choose/create your own thumbnail …
FAQs
