WordPress Help Guide

Are you a faculty member who wants to use WordPress for a course? The Educational Technology team can help you design effective assignments, incorporate blogging meaningfully into your course, and provide instruction in using WordPress to students in your class.

Here's how the process works:

• Make an appointment with the Educational Technology team to talk about your plans for using WordPress with your class.
  • Bring examples of what you'd like to do if possible.
• In order to set up your site, we will need to know:
  • A site title
  • A word or short phrase to be included in the site url
  • the Moodle course or courses that the site will be associated with

What to expect:

• At minimum, we will schedule one 20-minute visit to your course, in which we get your students oriented to using WordPress. This visit may be longer if you're having your students create digital objects, which can be more intensive.
• You will need to contact your students to have them log in to WordPress to create their accounts. We will then use your Moodle roster to enroll them in your WordPress site just prior to our class visit.
• If desired, we can plan to return to your course near the end of the semester for a questions/troubleshooting session. You may also may want to make an appointment for a consultation with the team yourself at that time, to wrap up any loose ends.

• To start, be sure you're logged in to your WordPress site.
• Hover over the title of the site in the black menu bar at the top of your screen.
• Then click on “Dashboard” to visit the Dashboard and add your post.
• Working in the Dashboard, select "Posts" and then "Add New" from the menu at the left.

Here are a few things you should know about writing your post:

• You can type, or copy and paste, your work into the new post.
• You can save drafts and preview the content before publishing. Save liberally!
• There many Settings options down the right-hand side of the editing window. You can typically switch between Post options (which affect the whole post) and Block options (which affect the piece of the post you are currently writing).
• Set a featured image for your post, so that it will appear with the image on the posts page! This can be found under the Post options.

If you are working on a course project, your instructor may have a specific Category where they ask you to place your post. Categories control where your post will show up on the final site. Set the correct category by looking in the Settings panel on the right-hand side of the editing window.

• At the top of the column, make sure the "Post" tab is selected, then look for the "Category" heading.
• Click on Category to open it
• Then check the box for the appropriate category.

When you have added any additional needed content to your contribution, click Publish to complete your post. You can always come back to the "All Posts" view in your Dashboard if you need to make changes later.

More on the WordPress Editor 

You may want to become familiar with available blocks. 

1. Hover over “Howdy, [Your User Name]” in the upper right corner.
2. Click “Edit My Profile”
3. On the profile page, enter the information you’d like to display in the First Name and Last Name fields. If there is already information listed there, make any adjustments you need to.
4. Find the “Display Name Publicly As” setting. From the dropdown list, select the version of your name you would like to have displayed on all your posts.
5. Click “Update Profile” when you’re finished.

Visit the Dashboard and create a new H5P object using the “H5P Content” option in the left-hand menu.  If you're new to using H5P, we encourage you to choose one from the following list:

• Interactive Video
• Image Juxtaposition
• Image Hotspots
• Image Slider

Clicking on the “details” button to the right of any tool will let you see a little more about what it does, including a “content demo” that shows you the expected result. You can also visit h5p.org to see more demonstrations of the types of content you can create.

Once you have selected an H5P option, a new set of tools will appear. You’ll most likely see a dialog box that asks you to upload, name, and organize any content you plan to use. Have images and other content prepared ahead of time so that you don’t lose your work halfway through. There is no easy way to save a draft.

Creating an H5P Object

Follow the steps in the dialog box to build your content, and click “create” at the top right when finished.

Upon creation, you will see a sample of your finished object, and at right, a “shortcode”. Write down or copy the shortcode in its entirety — brackets and all. You will need the shortcode to place your H5P object within a page or post.
 

Once you have your H5P object created to your liking, the next step is to add it to a page or post.

Working in the Dashboard, select “Posts” (or "Pages") and then “Add New” from the menu at the left. You’ll open up an editing window for a new contribution to the site.

Once you have your settings how you like, you can insert your H5P into the post by typing or pasting in your shortcode.

Be sure to save regularly!