Adding and updating a meeting

Creating a new post for an upcoming meeting

The following instructions explain how to create a new post for a specific group, using the groups pro forma.

  1. Login to the dashboard (backend WordPress editor).
  2. Select All Posts from the left-hand menu and filter to show only Private posts (such as this one).
  3. Select your group’s MEETING PROFORMA and click the Clone option below the post title when you hover your mouse over the title:
  4. This will create a new draft post which you can edit. To do this click the Draft filter at the top and you should see a new draft post:
  5. Update the title to as required – preserving your “Group Name – ” at the beginning so that visitors will know immediately where the meeting is taking place. The total title length should be no more than 50 characters ideally.
  6. Update the permalink below the title (by clicking Edit next to it) with the subject of the meeting. Again, preserve your group name at the start. The easiest way to do this is to copy your title from the previous step and then paste it in here (spaces will be replaced by hyphens automatically) and press the OK button:
  7. Open date editor in the Publish panel by selecting Edit next to where it says “Publish immediately”:
  8. Set the date (and time if different to your default):
  9. Replace the placeholder “=== REPLACE WITH MAIN BODY OF TEXT  ===” with the content for your meeting. Do NOT delete the “Come and join the discussion” section and other text at the end of the post. The placeholder texts in square brackets are called shortcodes and when displayed on the live site these will be automatically populated with the date of the event and our standard “We are growing” section. This means that you do NOT need to explicitly include the location, date and time in your own text as long as you use the correct pro forma and preserve the text provided. The only time you may need to edit this supplied text is if your location differs from your usual location – in which case you will have to replace the “See here for location.” paragraph with the relevant location details. If your location changes permanently – let me know and I’ll update the pro forma and map.
  10. When adding your content bear in mind that the first few words will be displayed on the web site home page in each panel and if they go over the limit you will see a “[more…]” indicator displayed at the end. Therefore try to get the key points across in the first 25 words (or thereabouts).
  11. When formatting your content use the built in options provided in the menu bar for the editor. The main headings in your post should be Heading 2’s and so on for sub-headings as we use Heading 1 internally for the post title. Avoid use of the colour picker and do not edit font-styles so that the website style sheet can keep the appearance consistent across the website. When editing using the raw Text rather than the Visual editor you can in theory add your own inline styles but again, do not do this to maintain consistency.
  12. Use the Categories panel to select one or more categories for the post. Meetings and your group name will have been selected automatically in your pro forma:
  13. Once finished, assuming this is a future meeting, click Schedule in the Publish panel.
  14. Optionally (any you can do this later) you can choose to send out updates via our newsletter subscribers as either a link to this post or as a full post. To do this go to the panel called Notify subscribers on save and select Send links or Send full page from the drop down menu. Then click the Schedule button again.
    IMPORTANT: When you click this button the emails will be sent out and this will take about a minute. Whilst this happens do not try to interact with the editor. Once the messages have been sent you should see a confirmation message in this panel – which will be present until you update the post or leave the page.

Adding your own image

Any post can have a “featured image” which appears at the top of the page. If you do not specify one then the default one will be used. If you set your own image remember that it must be a landscape image – and at the moment this should be in an approximately 4:3 ratio in order to look good on the home page. Any “key” information in the image should be centred vertically and horizontal in order to appear on the actual post page since it is stretched to fit.

If you add your own image it is vital that you have permission to use it and where necessary (and good practice anyway) provide an acknowledgement. We use free images from UnSplash and Pexels and these provide text you can copy and paste into the “Caption” field of any image you upload. This can include an html link back to the site – which is also good practice.

Editing an existing meeting post

Once you have created a post you can edit it, e.g. to change a date or update the contents. Please do not change the Permalink as this would confuse search engines.

Once the meeting has passed you can of course replace/remove the Come and join the discussion” section since the meeting will now be in the past. Please leave the “We are growing” section intact.

Comments and Questions?

Any comments or questions please let me know via email info@politicsinpubs.org.uk or call me on 07785 957071

Steve