The Office

… Welcome Backstage! … Explanations and tutorials:

Rules for a Healthy website, long term

When you’ve read all about Posts and Pages below, come back here now and then and reread this first part. This stuff is what makes a Quality website in the long term.

1 Your work space is at Panel > Posts

This is where your work on the website begins and ends. This is the Grand Table of ALL the Posts ever created. You don’t need to know all about it, but you will learn 3 things, apart from creating new Posts:
Quick Edit (where you change Categories and Tags in a Post)
Edit (how to change text and photos in an existing Post)
Filtering the table (navigating via filtering is gonna be “helpfuller and helpfuller” as you add more and more Posts)

What you’ll typically be publishing is new Posts: they can contain a random piece of news, a new staff-member with photo+bio, info about an upcoming weekend course, etc.

Almost everything you see on the site is either a Post or a Page. (The Pages carry the more “static” and basic content, and will certainly need to be updated once and again, though you’ll rarely have to create a new one.)

2 SLUGS: *internal* links to Posts and Pages, *within* the web site

The last part of a web address to one of your Posts or Pages is called a “slug” (or “relative link” if you’re oldschool), and starts with the first slash. A Page slug you’ll never edit, as it would mess up our menu, and worse: it would make all links leading to the page suddenly go kaput.

… So, here’s an example slug: /studio That’s the link address you’ll type, it’s super short and convenient! But it works only for linking locally to other Pages and Posts WITHIN your website, N.B.!

You create a link by marking the text you want clickable, and then click the Link icon in the toolbar. (One click on a link when you’re in EDIT mode will display a popup telling you where that link leads.) The link text is a separate thing, and can be anything that pushes clarity to the limit – like this: Check out what’s new in our fabulously fresh Studio

Check the Post’s slug before you hit the Publish button. Use unique Post titles (= Not Too Short), to make life easy, and get nice unique slugs. Post slugs can be edited after publishing, but you’ll try to avoid that as the link to the Post, if you’ve already sent it out to people, then would take them nowhere (= probably to an Error-Not-Found page).

3 Writing News about your Pages

When changes are made to a Page and you want to tell about it, you CANNOT make the Page show up in your “News”. What you’ll do is to take out a few lines from the Page, Put them in a New Post, add a SLUG link to the updated Page at the bottom of the new Post, make sure to tick the Category News, pick a Tag, and hit Publish when you’re ready.

4 Linking to Posts, *externally*

You can always send out a link to a specific Post/Page to people via email, facebook, etc. (Then it’s the full address that’s gonna work, not the slug.) Please make sure, however, that the link is exactly the right one. It should always say “https://timspilates.se/ONLY-THE-POST-NAME”, because then it will function in the future, even if you’ve changed the Post’s Category from News to something else.

Pages: forget about them. Almost!

If it’s not a Post, it’s a Page. Though the difference is pretty subtle, a Page doesn’t come with a date on top of the Title, and thus pages are not sorted chronologically or anything. They just sit there, often with a menu link leading right to’em. They’re for the less volatile content, you update them when you HAVE to, or really feel like it. (Exception: the RATES page, that has to reflect your pricing/offer whims.)

Oh, and pages are where your posts are displayed. This happens through the magic “shortcodes” that live at the bottom of pages; Shop, Schedule/Book, Workshop/Course, Staff. Every shortcode is customized to filter your Posts, and display those with a matching Tag (any tag) + Category (News). So: Don’t touch the shortcodes!

In the WordPress Panel, Pages get to live in their own place, where they can be filtered, edited, deleted and so on. In every way just like the … Posts:

Posts: they are all you need to know. They make up your News and Feeds. They show and hide on your command.

Every Post that you publish should be considered a li’l “News nugget”, whether it’s a discount, a schedule change, a new staff member, or an upcoming party.

Create (Plus sign at the top when logged in) and publish a POST (hit blue Publish button), and it will show up somewhere, IF you’ve assigned to it the Category “News”, AND a Tag (right column: choose Shop, Book, Workshop, Course, or Staff, depending on which page you want it shown). With just a line of code, another News area can be added to any page. https://displayposts.com/

(On the Home page the code for displaying News was removed when we added the long-scolling front page, because now the news do show soon enough on Schedule/Book, right under Home)

RSS Feed: Every Post in the News Category will be included in a Feed (that we supply the link to in the page footer, all across the website). Tags don’t matter here, it’s the News Category that gets it done.

  1. The BEAUTY of this setup is that it’s so efficient, you’ll be able to write things in one place only and have it displayed on several pages. Have to edit the Post? In a single place. Want it hidden away? Piece of cake, remove the Tags. (It’s even auto-retirable on a set date&time!) Want it to go away completely? In Panel > Posts > Quick Edit you’ll change the Category to Stash, or Save as Draft (see 4.) Want to show it only on the Book Page? Just Quick Edit from Panel > Posts, and work the Tags!
  2. The default Category for a Published Post, until you manually change it, is “Brewing“. This prevents careless/accidental publishing and ensuing headaches! (NB, the post will get online, but it won’t show in your most common pages and feeds.)
  3. Tagging: If you assign the TagBook” to a post, it’s diplayed on the page BOOK/SCHEDULE, next to the second-newest post with the same tag.
  4. Unpublish is what I recommend as your default action for old stale News you no longer wish to display. How? Edit the post status,  there’s a tiny link near the top right corner!
  5. “Stashing” a Post would mean ONLINE archiving. The Post would keep showing up in Google searches, via Post Tags, etc. The stashing is done via Panel > All Posts > Quick Edit, by:
    – unchecking the News category
    – checking the Stash category
    – removing all Tags before hitting the blue Update button!
  6. Worth noticing is, that the PageRates” will always need to be actualized manually, for maximum clarity about current/discounted class card prices and display of ALL the current class/session/workshop/course items …
    – The Page Workshop/Course might also need some manual work, unless all it does is showing the Posts with either Tag; then all the content sits in those Posts.

More about Posts and feeds

  • Anyone can subscribe to your posts and news via an RSS feed. Check Category: News when posting, and it’ll show up under https://timspilates.se/category/news/
  • And the Letters go in a separate feed. Check Category: Letter when posting, and it’ll show up under https://timspilates.se/category/letter/
  • IF someone would go to timspilates.se/news … they’ll get the “OOPS!”, not-found-error. Because: we don’t want to display the post categories “Brewing” and “Archive”. Hmm.
  • “PREV” and “NEXT” links on posts/pages would occasionally show even  “Brewing” Posts and “Archive” Posts …. so we got rid of those links.
  • Theoretically, anyone could subscribe to ANY post category: They’d just need to know its name. And, really: A visitor clicking a Tag at the bottom of a Post will see ALL Published posts with that tag!
  • Automated cross-posting to facebook (etc) can be set up, if you wish. Letters: via Mailchimp (OR maybe via “IFTTT”, OR something WP internal.)

The Monthly Letter

Monthly letters are also Posts.

  • FIRST, the letter is composed here on the website, as a Post, and published in the Category “Letter”.
  • That will make it show in all the right places and RSS feeds etc. Every new letter will be displayed on top of the page at https://timspilates.se/category/letter/  – a link that all clients have received now.
    (Letters need no Tag, unless you’d like to display a letter among the “News nuggets” on your web pages. BUT: A letter looks terrible in a 2-column layout, it would need its own shortcode for displaying nicely!)
  • THEN, though Mailchimp, the Letter is pasted into a new Campaign and sent off to the list of subscribers like this:
  1. You create an Excel file in Mindbody, with the ppl who AGREE to recieving emails. At LEAST for “Account management emails”. (The list for agreed isn’t dorrect for some reason. Everyone who opts out is manually unchecked from receiving any further emails.)
  2. In Excel, you save as CSV, and then import to MailChimp.
  3. You go through the nice Mailchimp procedure of assigning column values (you’ll want email, first and last name, and phone). Save the list with a proper name like “Tim’s Pilates Parlor – Letter Nov 18″. Go with the nice option *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|* … as shown below:
  4. Important: To check the box for receiving Unsubscribe notifications (and supply the address where they go). For each unsubsriber, look up inside Mindbody (search with email) > Contact > Untick all notification emails, BECAUSE those who Unsubscribe will do it only from the (temporary) list inside Mailchimp, and you’re gonna import a new list from Mindbody for your next Letter!
  5. Send the Letter off, and follow the progress at Mailchimp!

A PDF version of the Letter? This didn’t happen the first time. We made a pdf, but with Mailchimp, we wouldn’t attach it. We COULD still have pdf:s sitting on the website, as a “Print Friendly Version”, but should we? It’s extra work, and for Whom?

Links. And: Adding Mindbody Links

The News feed is always here, while there’s no link to it in the top menu:
https://timspilates.se/category/news/

In Mindbody, there’s something half clever going on with links, that we don’t currently use. It’s just wordpress shortcodes, and it’s called “Branded Web”.

In the MindBody Manager tools, you find the correct product and schedule links, for sharing in emails etc.:

All series and memberships:
https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=408195&stype=-7&sView=week&sLoc=1&sSU=true

All gift cards:
https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=408195&stype=42

Schedule:
https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=408195&stype=-7&sView=week&sLoc=0

A Schedule starting Dec 1st:
https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=408195&stype=-7&sView=week&sLoc=1&date=12/01/18

Filtered:
There are also ways of creating “filtered” booking links, showing the schedule for any staff member etc. … it’s all under Management tools in Mindbody.

Home page settings
The first Home page links were these, then I disovered the 2017 theme’s options for an extra-long scrolling homepage.

Theme, plugins, and style tweaks

codex.wordpress.org/Twenty_Seventeen

One and Two Column Layouts

“On pages, Twenty Seventeen allows you to pick between a one and two column layout. This can be changed via Customizer > Theme Options. The theme defaults to the two-column layout, which displays the page title in one column, and the page content in the other.
Note: this feature only becomes available after setting a static front page.”

www.billerickson.net/code/

This is left

This is right

Is Gutenberg the right choice?

Gutenberg is still beta software. There are many small bugs, and plugin updates can bring breaking changes. I’ve had to update a site three times in the past two months because Gutenberg updates to the Columns block broke content already built with columns.

You have to consider the value proposition for each project. We currently lean towards using the classic editor unless there’s a compelling reason to use Gutenberg.

Changing the way Links look in WP Theme Twenty Seventeen

In Panel > Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS,  add this:


.entry-content a, 
.entry-summary a, 
.widget a, 
.site-footer .widget-area a, 
.posts-navigation a, 
.widget_authors a strong,
.entry-content a:hover, 
.entry-summary a:hover, 
.widget a:hover, 
.site-footer .widget-area a:hover, 
.posts-navigation a:hover, 
.widget_authors a strong:hover {
    box-shadow: none;
}

To “remove” the Prev/Next links

…from single Posts: In Panel > Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS,  add this:

.post-navigation {
    display: none;
}