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Archive for content management

Change the Order Posts Appear in WP

October 5th, 2015

If you use the blog function of your WordPress site as a news feed, or if you are using the Recent Posts widget (like we do in the sidebar, below signups), you might occasionally want to change the order of the posts – either in the blog or the widget.

The ordering of the posts in both of these locations is automatically controlled, and determined solely by the date of publication. Older posts automatically appear at the bottom, while the newest post automatically appears at the top – a “reverse chronological” structure.

To change the order where a post appears, you need to change the date of publication for that post – making it earlier in date than the posts you would like it to appear below, and later in date than the posts you would like it to appear above.

Published on

To change the date of publication for post, go to the post editing page, and on the right sidebar, immediately above the blue “Update” button, look for the “Published on:” line.  Right beside that will be a blue link to “Edit”.  Click this link, then select a new publication date.  Be aware that you may have to select a time as well as a date of publish to get your post exactly where you want it.

While changing the order of the posts in the blog or widget might be something you need to do once in a while, you don’t want to end up micromanaging this order too much.  Changing the order more than once a month or so might mean that you need to take a look at creating a publishing schedule to be more organized in the order you originally publish posts.

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Open Links to Other Sites in a New Tab/Window

August 17th, 2015

chainWhen you add a link to your website to another OUTSIDE website, it’s best practice to have that link open in another tab/window. This allows YOUR site to stay open for the user, increasing the likelihood that they will continue looking around on your site after they finish with the link that opened.

Keeping people on your website will not only increase the chance that they will learn more about you and perhaps connect with you in the future – it also has a positive impact on your search engine (Google) rankings.

For links that are WITHIN your website – say, from the Home page to the About page – you should leave the link in its default state, opening in the same browser tab and window. You want to encourage a user to click around from page to page in your site, and opening a new tab or window for every click would be incredibly annoying!

Whether a link opens in a new tab or a new window is determined by the settings that an individual user has made to their browser. Website managers can set links to open in what ever “new” option the user has chosen.

How to set a link in WordPress to open in a new tab or window:

WP Link popupSetting a link to open in a new tab/window in WordPress is easy!  When you are creating a new link, simply tick the check box under the title bar titled “Open link in a new window/tab”.  That’s it!

The hardest part is that the next time you open the Insert/edit link popup, the “Open link a new window/tab” will be checked by default.  You will want to develop the habit of making sure this box is checked/unchecked as needed.  Staying on your own site: unchecked; taking the user to another website: checked.

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Send Posts Automatically to Facebook (and other social media)

July 20th, 2015

facebook logoIf you are using the blog of your WP site as a news feed for dated content, you might want to set up having your posts go over onto your FB page automatically.  There are a number of plugins to help with this, but you can take the load off your website by using IFTTT, a handy service that integrates two separate online apps or services.

On IFTTT, any action that happens on one app/service can trigger an action on another/service. These triggered actions are called “recipes”. Here’s how to set up WP posts showing up automatically on your FB page.

  1. Start by creating an account at ifttt.com.
  2. The different services that can be integrated are each called “channels”. Search the channels for “WordPress”, And click the big blue “Connect” button.
  3. Set up the WordPress channel by putting in the requested information. “Blog URL” is a link to your domain name, including the HTTP part at the beginning, something like: http://mychurch.org.  (Only include “www” if that’s how your site appears on the web.)
  4. Search the channels again, and choose Facebook pages (not just Facebook). You must be an administrator on the Facebook Page you want posts to be published on. Enter the requested information for your personal Facebook page. Facebook will ask you to give some permissions, and you can feel free to check everything except the top option, which will be required.
  5. On the second FB persmissions page, it will ask you “IFTTT would like to post to Facebook for you. Who do you want to share these posts with?”  It’s ok to leave this setting as “Friends”.
  6. The next page will ask to manage your Pages, simply click through with an “Okay”.
  7. If you are an administrator on more than one Facebook Page, the next screen will ask you to choose which page you would like to let IFTTT manage. Be sure to choose the correct one.
  8. Now create a recipe with two channels: click first on “My Recipes” at the top of the page, then on the blue button for “Create a recipe”.
  9. Click on the link for “This”, to add the trigger channel – in this case WordPress, and choose “Any new post”.
  10. Click on “Create Trigger”, then on the “that” link, and choose Facebook Pages.
  11. Choose “Create a link post”.
  12. A new page will open where you have some options about how to configure what you want to display. By default, the FB link URL will be set as the “PostUrl”, and you won’t want to leave this as is so that your post has a link back to the website.
  13. The “Message” box is what you want to display in the FB area ABOVE the link.  Click on the blue flask to see some options, but to start with, we recommend you leave the Message box blank. This will post the link to your Facebook page, along with any image in the post, without a message above the post.
  14. If you would like to have a bit of the content showing on FB, then in the “Link URL” section, click the blue flask, and add “PostContent” after “PostURL”.

Once you get into IFTTT, you will see that you can use it to share your organization’s content automatically in a variety of ways.  Let us know in the comments if you find or create a helpful recipe for faith communities or nonprofits!

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Content Should be “Forward-facing”

April 20th, 2015

calendarEffective websites keep their site content “forward-facing” – that is, any dated content should only be dealing with the present and the future.

Keeping past-dated content on your website makes it seem like you’re not keeping your website maintained, which conveys that you don’t have much interest about informing newcomers. Old, past-dated content just does not convey hospitality.

Certainly, if your church or ministry just won an award earlier this week, that’s present-tense news.  Put that up on your site! But in another couple of weeks, this information is old news, and should be taken down.

On church websites, the information on static (not changed very often) pages should be current. The days and times for regular group meetings or info for contact persons may be posted on these pages, but should be updated whenever there are changes – even if that means changing this information at the beginning of the summer (when groups might be taking a break), and then changing it back when the fall programs kick off again.

There are two exceptions to this:

The first is that you don’t need to take down any past dated information from a grid-style calendar on your site. Most of our ACWP participants use Google calendar. Leaving up your old events on Google calendar is fine because users will intuitively know that old events are already over.

The second exception is similar: you don’t need to take down old content is if you are using the blog function of your site as a newsfeed. Because these blog posts normally have a “posted on” date, they don’t convey the same inattention to hospitality that content on static pages can convey. The key however, is that you have to keep making new blog posts, so that your most recent news feed post is always within the last week or two.

The added benefit to leaving these “old-news” items up in these two locations is that the website user can scroll back through your news feed posts or calendar to see what your church has been up to in the recent past.

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“Chunk” your Content

April 5th, 2015

Don’t add too much content to any one page.  A user should only have to use two or three scrolls to get to the bottom of most website pages.

There are two reasons for this:

  1. Users don’t “read” web-sites— they scan content for relevant information.
  2. Users on mobile devices find long pages difficult to manage and give up quickly.

“Chunking” content makes it easier to scan. Make your paragraphs short— 3 sentences.  These paragraphs may not be the “coherent idea” type that you learned in high school English, but they will make it easier for your users to scan.

Use bold and italic text to highlight things you want your users to pay attention to, but never use underlined text, which will look like links to another web page.

When it seems reasonable, use bullet points or numbered lists to organize your content.  These, along with bold & italic text give quick, visual clues that aid in scanning.

 

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Avoid the Website Sneeze

October 4th, 2014

sneezeJonathan Malm had a great post this week about how a snapshot of you sneezing captures you at your worst, and how lots of churches give visitors a snapshot of themselves sneezing on Sunday mornings–the visitors leave, but they can’t unsee that snapshot.  Do read his post here.  It will help you think about Sunday mornings and visitors.

But also think about your website.

Every single time someone visits your website, they get a snapshot of your church or organization.  And it’s not just limited to Sunday mornings, it’s 24/7. That’s why it’s so important to keep your website updated and tidy.

Are your website visitors catching you sneezing?  Here are some common sneezes:

  • Dozing Sneezes: the website content is outdated
  • Cold Shoulder Sneezes: the worship times are not up front & visible without a scroll
  • Boring Sneezes: long blocks of text that do not get quickly to the point, especially about the history or theology of the congregation.

The visits to your website matter! They may be your only chance to connect with a potential visitor. Be intentional about your website. Do your best not to let them catch you sneezing!

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Using Headings in WordPress

September 16th, 2014

Headings in WPYou may have noticed a drop down in the bottom row of the WordPress toolbar that will allow you to quickly change the fonts in your page or post. (It’s displayed in the picture in this post.)

You should not use the Headings to change your font size simply to emphasize text. Heading 1 down through Heading 6 are used to change the font size (and perhaps the font colors, or even the fonts themselves), but their usage should be reserved for actual headings.

Search engines use your headings to index the structure and content of your web pages. It is important to use headings to show the structure of the content on your page or post. Heading 1 is for the most important heading, Heading 6 is for the least important heading.

Users skim your pages by its headings too.  Using headings helps your users move intuitively through your content.  They won’t be able to do this if you make entire blocks of content display as headings.

When you need to emphasize text, use bold or italics. Never use underline for emphasizing text on the web–your users will mistake it for a link.

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