How to use WordPress
You can safely ignore anything to do with tags or comments as the DIHA site does not support either of them. We don’t need comments as the forum covers that side of thing anyway.
WordPress and how it handles content
The content management system we use is WordPress. It has two different types of content, Pages and Posts. The news items you see on the home page are all Posts. Most of the static pages, the ones which are linked to in the menu a the top of the screen are Pages. They’re essentially the same thing, except that Posts can be placed into a category and will appear in the news archives.
Creating news posts
When you create a new post, it is important to assign a suitable category to it (in the right hand side of the admin panel when you are creating/editing the post). Posts in the ‘Local news’ category will be shown in the ‘Local news’ section on the home page, ‘Regional news’ category in the ‘Regional news’ section etc. etc.
Note: the categories system is undergoing development so it would be a good to make sure your posts do actually appear on the home page in case I screw something up.
How to add pics to my posts?
Instructions are available here (you need to be logged in to admin panel to see it):
http://dunedinicehockey.co.nz/thumbnails/
Can I copy and paste from Microsoft Word? Howabout from emails?
NO! Microsoft Word and other word processors attach code to anything you copy and paste from them. This code gets added to the website when you copy and paste and tends to cause all sorts of problems. Even if it looks okay to you, it may be adding unwanted code which affects obscure browsers, mobile devices etc. If you want to copy and paste from Word, your email account or anything like that, first paste it into a text editor or click the ‘HTML’ tab in the editor to make sure it hasn’t added any annoying code to the page (it probably will have). Copy and pasting from emails is usually okay, but definitely check the code beforehand or re-type it from scratch to avoid problems.
Can I make my page look pretty with extra colour and stuff?
Yes, but don’t. The site has a consistent look and feel, if you don’t like something just let me know and we can look at changing it across the entire site.
I had a brain fart and deleted everything on pages X, Y and Z!
Don’t panic, there are ways to get this stuff back
There is a ‘post revisions’ feature built into the software which allows you (or me, if you don’t have access) to revert anything done to the existing content. If you save over a post and realise you messed it up, you can access the post revisions near the bottom of the edit post/page screen. Just revert it and start editing it again.
If you really foul something up I DO keep weekly backups of everything, so as long as the screwup wasn’t over the top of something quite recent then it can usually be salvaged. I’ve never needed to do this and would rather avoid it if possible though.
Adding thumbnail images to the home page
You will see on the home page, that there are images for each post. Those images need to be manually added to each post. If you don’t add an image, a default image will be added for you based on the category you choose, however please try to add one for each post or they’ll all end up looking the same and our home page will look boring.To add a thumbnail, you need to either upload a new image of the appropriate size (a photo editor comes in handy for resizing) or you can choose from one of the ones on the thumbnails page.
You need to get the URL (hint: copy and paste) and in the editing panel you will see below the main editing box, an option called ‘Custom fields’. If there is nothing in the box, then click on it and it will expand to show you some information. You need to ‘Add new custom field’, select the option ‘thumbnail’. Enter the URL for the image into the ‘value’ box. When you update the page, that image will now appear on the home page beside the news item 
For the side-by-side boxes you will need a 100×100 image and for the larger ones at the bottom you need a 160×140 image.
I wanna a image for that big fancy looking box at the top. Tell me how damnit!
OK. Firstly, the posts in there are in the ‘Featured’ category, so you need to add your post to that category first.
Then you will need a thumbnail as per above as it all also appear in one of the smaller boxes on the home page. But this time you need to add an extra custom field called ‘articleimg’ and your image needs to be at least 608x300px. Don’t worry if it is a little bigger, the extra bits just get chopped off. Don’t go using something really massive though or the page will take too long to load. The 630×300 px images below are perfect for the job. When you update the page your shiny new image will appear!
Congratulations, you are now an expert at updating the home page, have fun
Oh, and there are a bunch of photos you may find useful (saves creating new ones each time) on the thumbnails page.
