Instructions

LOGIN

You will go here to login: https://5mercer.hamwebs.com/wp-admin/ using your username (marianna) and password. If you forget your password you can click “Lost Your Password?” to get an email to re-set it.

The login will open a dashboard where the options you need to update the site content are all in a black sidebar on the left. 

When you are logged in you (only you or other logged-in users) will also see a black toolbar at the top of every page and post in your live site, with links enabling you to edit pages and posts or create new pages and posts. The links to pages will only open the top-level (parent) page you are looking at, so if you are on an index page that includes thumbnail/read more content from child-pages or multiples posts, you will need to go to the individual pages (for individual events or artists) to edit anything. If in doubt, click the green “page instructions” link that will display on pages when you are logged in.

USING THE DASHBOARD

Briefly (more details are available via the green “page instructions” links you will see when you are logged in), you’ll be using:

Artists to add a record for a new artist or edit the record of an existing artist (artist name, up to six images in a carousel, bio &/or artist statement, c.v as pdf, phone/email/url)

Media to upload images and pdfs (particularly if uploading in large batches). You can upload one or many images directly to the media library before you start working on a page for which you need them or you can start working on the page and use the links there to upload images. Either way, you can always find images and pdfs you have uploaded in the media library.

Events to add a record for a new exhibition (one record per artist, even if there are two for the same dates)

Pages to edit the content of all the GALLERY and CONTACT pages

Image ALT Text to add or edit SEO-friendly descriptions for images

SEO Entry to add or edit search-engine-optimized page-titles and meta descriptions for each page or post.

Within any Dashboard section, there are multiple ways of filtering the items in the list and there is always “search” if there is one particular item you want to find and you know the title.

There is also a tab at the very top of the window for “Screen Options” and here you will find options such as changing the number of items per page in the dashboard list (pages, posts, images, etc).

On a single post or page, if you make an edit that loses some important content, you can also open the “Screen Options” via a tab at the very top of the dashboard for that page and display “Revisions”—from which you can select an older version of your content to revert to.  The default number of revisions saved for restorations for any post or page is 10.

Working with Images for your Website:

Please upload jpegs that are 800-1500px high and between 100-400kb.

Adding Image Captions

The image title and data (year, media, dimensions) are added in the caption fields available with the image itself. You can add them by going into the media library and clicking an image into edit mode there. Alternatively, when you are adding multiple images into a carousel “gallery” you will see, when the gallery is in edit mode, a caption field for each image and you can enter the captions there. To display the image title on one line and the image data on the second line, add this tag after the title: “<br/>”. Add the caption there and click “Update gallery”.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION WORK

Search engines rely heavily on the texts on your pages to determine whether or not your content is likely to be of interest to someone who has entered a particular search. Text that is styled as a header will be understood by search engines to be particularly important and phrases that occur with frequency will also be understood to be particularly important.

Wherever your website includes texts, it is worth looking at the text you have on the page to see if it includes phrases that someone who’d be interested in the page content might actually type into a search.

In addition to the on-page text (and especially if your pages are image-heavy, text-light), you should use the options for search engine optimization that allow you to add descriptions that don’t show on the pages themselves. This will make your site significantly more effective if you do it well.* These are as follows:

Image ALT Text

Here you should describe your images in a way that both describes the image content and is also a good additional hint for search engines about what the page content is about (use phrases that people are likely to put into search engines). For all images that have been used as “featured” images you can add/edit the image alt text via the link in the dashboard sidebar. You will need to do this image-by-image in the media library for images that are used only in carousels.

SEO Title and Meta Description

Neither of these is visible on the page itself but they provide the content for search engines to understand your pages and the title and probably also the meta description will show up in the search results in search engines. This can also be done page by page (in the Yoast SEO section; delete the default texts that are there and replace with more targeted phrases) but it can be easier to work from a list-page like the one available via the “SEO Entry” link in the dashboard sidebar. You can open the page or post by clicking on the title to copy/paste a bit of the text to use for the meta-description.

* Understanding how to really work the SEO for your site involves quite a learning curve. If you don’t feel confident handling this yourself or don’t know how to use Google Analytics to measure the success of your efforts, you can contact rhm@hamwebs.com for help.

Updating WordPress

When WordPress creates an update to their core code, they will offer you a link to click to go ahead and update your WordPress installation. 

Clicking the link will first give you this warning:

Important: before updating, please back up your database and files. For help with updates, visit the Updating WordPress Codex page.

At that page, you’ll see that WordPress advises that “The upgrade process will affect all files and folders included in the main WordPress installation. This includes all the core files used to run WordPress. If you have made any modifications to those files, your changes will be lost.”

When we develop sites, we don’t alter the core WordPress files. We create a custom theme with all the custom functionality coded up in those files and a WordPress upgrade won’t affect them.

It is possible that an upgrade will occasionally break some of our custom-coded  functionality or the functionality of a plugin. It doesn’t often happen, but if it does, the solution is to get the code fixed. It is unlikely to be major work.

It is a good idea to keep backups of the database and files—not only for the upgrading process but also as a protection against losing the site under any circumstances (eg a hosting or domain registration payment failure). This can be done manually or via a plugin. Of the plugins available we recommend Updraft Plus. This allows you to set the plugin to backup your site whenever you’ve made changes. It is best to set the plugin to store the backups in the Cloud (for which you need a Cloud account) and to delete old backups to avoid storing too many. We (HWD) can take care of your backups either manually or via plugin if you prefer not to do this yourself.

Updating Home Page


You don’t have to do anything to update the homepage.

When you create a new exhibition record (event), you will give it a start date and an end date.

If the start date is on or before the current date and the end date is on or after the current date, the event will display as a current exhibition at the top of the page.

When the start and end dates are both after the current date, the event is considered an upcoming exhibition. As long as there is at least one current exhibition to display on the homepage, the next one (or two, if concurrent) exhibition will be displayed as “Upcoming” (with a “View more upcoming exhibitions” link).

At times when there is no exhibition currently open (eg between exhibitions), all the upcoming exhibitions will display on the homepage (to keep it from looking empty).

Updating the Gallery Page


The gallery page is where you describe the history and mission of the gallery.

It is a simple text page to edit and you can use the “Edit Page” link to access it in edit mode from the website when you are logged in (or go to the dashboard and find it among the pages there).

Edit the text and click “Update” when you are finished.

Adding or Editing an Artist Record


To add a new artist

  1. Click Artists > New Artist in the sidebar in the admin dashboard.
  2. Enter the artist’s name in the Title field
  3. Create a gallery of images at the top of the main content field as follows:
    • Click the “Add Media” link.
    • When the media library opens, click the “Create Gallery” link from the links on the left.
    • Either choose images that have been already-uploaded to the media library or upload the artist’s images to the new gallery directly. Jpegs should be 800-1500px high and between 100-400kb.
    • When you have uploaded/selected all the images you want (ideal number is six but up to nine can work), click the “Create a new gallery” link.
    • The images will be arranged as thumbnails with caption fields beneath each one and the gallery will be in editable mode. Add captions to each image using a <br/> tag to force the artwork data to a second line in this format: [Artwork Title ]<br/>[ Artwork data (year dimensions media)]. If you want to re-order the images, you can drag/drop them into different positions while the gallery is in edit mode. When you are finished, click the “Insert gallery” button. You can go back and edit the images again by clicking on the gallery to activate it then clicking the pencil (edit) icon to open the gallery in edit mode. Don’t click the “X” icon on the whole gallery unless you actually want to delete the entire gallery. You can delete individual images within the gallery once you have the gallery open in edit mode.
  4. Beneath the gallery you can add any texts (bio, statements) you like. Make each different section-heading a “Heading 4“ header so that the page-styling remains consistent and add the paragraph content normally.
  5. Create a pdf for c.v. content and add it as a media file. Use the “Add media” link and the system will create the link to the file automatically. You can technically paste the details from a long c.v. into the content field but it is not advisable.
  6. Add phone number, email addresses and website urls in the fields provided below.
  7. Upload a representative artwork as the “Featured Image” (on the right). This will be the image that displays on the main artists page. It can be the same as one of the images in the gallery/carousel.

If in doubt, compare the page of an already-created artist record with the editable content in the backend.

To edit the content of an existing artist:

  1. Use the “Edit Artist” link in the black toolbar at the top of the pages if you are on the artist’s page when logged in or navigate from the dashboard sidebar “Artists” link and select the artist record from the list.
  2. Once the record is open in edit mode, you can open the image gallery into edit mode by clicking on any image in the main content gallery then clicking the pencil/edit icon. Once the gallery is in edit mode you can move images around, delete images, add new images and edit the captions. Remember to add a <br/> tag between the artwork title and the artwork data to ensure it will format as two lines.
  3. Edit any text content on the page by clicking into the field and changing the text.
  4. You can remove the current featured image and choose a new one to change the image that represents the artist on the main artists page.
  5. Click the “Update” button when you are finished.

To remove an artist

If you want to remove an artist from the site you can either delete their record or change its status from published to draft. Leaving the record as draft would make it easy to restore the artist if they returned (or you may like to keep their record as an archive).

Adding or Editing an Event


To Add a new event

  1. Click Events > New Event in the sidebar in the admin dashboard.
  2. Enter the artist’s name and show title in the Title field (this will not display on the page but it helps to locate the event in the list of events). You will create a full record for each artist, even when there are two artists exhibiting on the same dates. The Start date and End date fields will ensure that any two artists showing in the same current show are both displayed.
  3. Upload the image that will represent the show as the “Featured Image” (an option that is available when you have the editor set to “Document” not “Block”).
  4. Create a gallery of images for the event’s single page at the top of the main content field as follows:
    • Click the “Add Media” link.
    • When the media library opens, click the “Create Gallery” link from the links on the left.
    • Either choose images that have been already-uploaded to the media library or upload the artist’s images to the new gallery directly. Jpegs should be 800-1500px high and between 100-400kb.
    • When you have uploaded/selected all the images you want (ideal number is six but up to nine can work), click the “Create a new gallery” link.
    • The images will be arranged as thumbnails with caption fields beneath each one and the gallery will be in editable mode. Add captions to each image using a <br/> tag to force the artwork data to a second line in this format: [Artwork Title ]<br/>[ Artwork data (year dimensions media)]. If you want to re-order the images, you can drag/drop them into different positions while the gallery is in edit mode. When you are finished, click the “Insert gallery” button. You can go back and edit the images again by clicking on the gallery to activate it then clicking the pencil (edit) icon to open the gallery in edit mode. Don’t click the “X” icon on the whole gallery unless you actually want to delete the entire gallery. You can delete individual images within the gallery once you have the gallery open in edit mode.
  5. Beneath the gallery add the press release text, using a “Heading 4” header for the text so that the page-styling remains consistent and adding the paragraph content normally.
  6. Create a pdf if you want to add additional catalog content and add it as a media file. Use the “Add media” link and the system will create the link to the file automatically.
  7. Add the event details in the custom fields below the main content field as follows:
    • Artist (artist full name)
    • Show title
    • Start date (as date)
    • End date (as date)
    • Date Description (exhibition dates as a text description)
    • Reception date & time
    • One-line description (option for one additional line of info on index pages)
    • Artist page url (add the url of the artist’s page in this site without the base domain—eg “/artists/annette-morriss/”)


This information will be displayed on index pages as well as on the event’s single pages.

If in doubt, compare the page of an already-created artist record with the editable content in the backend.

To edit the content of an existing event

  1. Use the “Edit Event” link in the black toolbar at the top of the pages if you are on the artist’s page when logged in or navigate from the dashboard sidebar “Events” link and select the event record from the list.
  2. Once the record is open in edit mode, you can open the image gallery into edit mode by clicking on any image in the main content gallery then clicking the pencil/edit icon. Once the gallery is in edit mode you can move images around, delete images, add new images and edit the captions. Remember to add a <br/> tag between the artwork title and the artwork data to ensure it will format as two lines.
  3. Edit any text content on the page by clicking into the field and changing the text.
  4. You can remove the current featured image and choose a new one to change the image that represents the event on the homepage or main events page.
  5. Click the “Update” button when you are finished.

Editing the Contact Page


The Google map is hard-coded in.

You can use the “Edit Page” link to access the contact information in edit mode from the website when you are logged in (or go to the dashboard and find it among the pages there).

Edit the text and click “Update” when you are finished. Remember to set the email link to open in a new window if you change it.

The Footer

The content in the footer is hard-coded. Contact hamwebs to change this.