What the heck is WordPress, anyway?

WordPress is a publishing phenomenon that allows people with no programming skills to publish on the Internet.  This is what people refer to as a blog, but don’t be put off by the term.  It’s really just an online newsletter.  If you can use a simple word processor and a web browser, you’re good to go with WordPress.

We’ve implemented WordPress on the District 7040 website in order to allow district leaders to publish directly to the district membership through electronic newsletters.  You can find them under the Newsletters item on the district website menu.

WordPress newsletters can have two types of content.

  • First, we can have pages which are fixed information, more or less permanent in nature, like the front page of a club website.
  • The second is a post, which is a periodic posting, more chronological in nature, like a daily diary entry or a monthly newsletter.

We can choose what visitors see first when they visit a blog on our site; a page or the most recent post.

In order to help you get the most of this, I’ve prepared a few tips to remember, and a list of resources to help you learn how to use WordPress.

Learning Resources

Here are some links to use WordPress;

Types of Users: Admin, Editor or Author

There are various types of users in WordPress.  The District Webmaster is the admin or Administrator user.  Comittee chairs are likely to be authors which allows them to add and edit their own pages or posts, or editors, which allows them to do that edit thier own or other peoples posts.

Posting and Administration

Simply visit your newsletter and add ‘/wp-admin/’ to the end of the address to access the administrative facilities.  Enter your username and password, then click ‘remember me’ so you’ll stay logged in.

If you want to change your email or password, click your name in the top right corner of the page, beside the word ‘howdy’.  (A little corny I know, but I didn’t put it there!)

Tips

  • WordPress operates as a series of Posts, or articles, that can be added at any time.  These are ideal for periodic newsletters, meeting minutes, and any other information that you want to pubish from time to time.
  • We can choose to have pages which contain more permanent information, like a page that describes a Rotary program.   Being more permanent in nature doesn’t mean we can’t edit it from time to time as we wish!
  • Every WordPress newsletter has certain authorized users.  The people who write and translate the newsletters will have Author privileges enabling them to write and edit posts on the newsletter applicable to them.  The district webmaster will have Administrator rights on all newsletters.
  • You can work on WordPress from any where you can access the internet with a web browser.
  • You can start a post early, then work on an unpublished draft often as you want and publish it when you’re finished simply by clicking ‘Publish’.
  • Published posts can be edited after they are published.
  • If you are working on WordPress, you’ll be given an account in WordPress with Author’s rights.  If your newsletter is to be published in two languages, the translator can be given author rights on the alternate language newsletter so they can publish the translation directly.

Uploading Documents

Here’s a good article on uploading documents to make them available through your WordPress newsletter.