Site Theme

The Theme adopted for your blog is Nisarg. This has been chosen as it is simple to customise and is a responsive theme that can be viewed on many different devices – desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and phones. There are other themes that can be installed but these instructions cover customising Nisarg.

You can access the Theme’s settings from the Dashboard using Dashboard  Appearance – Customise. The settings menu includes the following.

Site Identity: this allows you to set the Site Title and a Tagline. This is the text that appears over the image at the top of your blog. The tagline is optional. Type in the text that you want to display and select Publish to save it to your blog. Changes you make to the settings are not saved until they have been published.

You can also set a Site Icon: This is a symbol that will appear in browser tabs, bookmark bars, and within the WordPress mobile apps. It has not been set. The Select Site Icon button will allow you to select a site icon from the images in the Media Library. Before you can perform this step you will need to select a suitable image and load it to your Media Library. Site Icons should be square and at least 512 × 512 pixels.

Colours: This allows you to set the Theme Skin as Light or Dark, and to control General Colours such as of the Header Text, Background, Header Background and Accents. You can leave the default settings, or try different colours to create a style you feel comfortable with. Your choice may be affected by your choice of Header Image (see below).

Typography: You can choose different fonts and weights your Heading, Body Text, and Primary Menu. Again you can play with these or just accept the default settings.

Header Image: The Header Image is the photo that appears in your banner. This is currently a template image that you should change. To do this you need to upload an image of your choice to the Media Library. There are some Suggested images shown of the settings page, and a few images in the Library you can practice with. 

Select the Add New Image Button and you will be taken to the Media Library. Click on the image of your choice and then select Select and Crop. You will be presented with a view of the image with a suitably shaped cropped area across the top of the image. You can drag this area down the image to select the portion you would like to display, and then select Crop Image. The cropped area will appear as your banner, and will also be added to the list of Previously Uploaded images. To remove a previously uploaded image, select it and then click on the cross in the top right corner. Both the original image and the cropped version will remain in the Media Library. Remember to select Publish to update your blog with your new image. You can also access the Media Library from the Dashboard Media – Library. 

Background Image: This allows you to select an image to appear on all of your Pages, behind the content of the page. No image is set, but you can select Select Image, to add one if you wish. The process is similar to selecting a Header Image except the image isn’t cropped and it is repeated to fill the extent of your Pages.

Menus; When you create Pages you can add these to menus and sub-menus that appear above your banner. They can be customised at any time from the Dashboard Appearance – Menus. See the Static Pages and Menus section below for more details.

Widgets: Widgets appear in your site Sidebar. These can be customised from the Dashboard Appearance – Widgets. The default Widgets selected for your Blog are discussed in the Widgets and Sidebar section below.

Homepage Settings: Does the Home page show Your latest posts or A static page? The Blog is set to show Posts, but you can toggle between the two’

Additional CSS (own code): This is not used, and you are unlikely to need it for a standard Blog. 

Post Options: You can select to show a Post Excerpt or the Full Post on the post listings page.  If Post Excerpt is selected about 6 lines of your Post will be shown shown in the post listings, together with a Read More Button. See Posts under Examples of Use for more on how to control the size of your Post Excerpt.

WordPress Settings

Review the default WordPress settings. You can leave most of the settings as they are, but there are a few things to consider. Select Dashboard Settings to reveal the following submenu items. 

General: Ensure the Administration Email Address has been set to the one you want to use and correct it if necessary. Also the Site Language is set to English (UK), and the Time Zone is set to London (UTC+1). You may need to change these to match your location. Date Format is set to 24 June 2023 which you can also change if you wish.

If you do change the Administration Email Address a confirmation email will be sent to the new email address. This email will contain a link to the General Settings page. To confirm the change click on the link. An email will then be sent to the original address confirming the change.

Writing: The Default Post Category is set to Post. Post is the only category defined. If you wish to categorise your Posts by subject, you can create Categories. Categories are set and managed from Dashboard Post – Categories. Then you could select a different default Post category.

Reading: Here you have options to change your homepage settings, including what Your homepage displays, and whether to show full posts or Excerpts. These have already been addressed in Theme  customisation..

Discussion: These settings define how Comments are handled. You can leave the settings unchanged but it is important that you review them. The default settings allow people to comment on Posts, and state that you will be emailed whenever a Comment is received or held for moderation. Comments are held for moderation and only placed on the website when you Approve them. However, once you have Approved a Comment from a user, that user’s future comments will be accepted without being held. Other settings control the appearance of Comments.

To see your comments go to Dashboard – Comments for a list of Comments with the most recent on top. Hover your cursor over a comment to bring up a menu which includes Approve/Unapprove, Reply, Edit, History and Spam options

The next three settings groups, Media, Permalinks, and Privacy should be left unchanged. A Privacy Policy Page is provided which links to the Guild Blog Project Privacy Policy,

Replacing the Guild Badge with Your Name and Image

The blog is designed to have your photograph at the top of the right-hand sidebar. Readers like to see an image of the person who is writing the blog. Ideally you need a photograph of 180 x 180 pixels. Upload this to the Media Library using Dashboard Media – Add New.

The image will be placed in what is called a widget. Select Dashboard, Appearance – Widgets. Look under Sidebar for Text: Member. if you cannot see this, click on the small down-arrow to open the contents of the Sidebar. If you have a Postholder blog use the Text: Postholder widget.

Click on the down-arrow next to Text: Member to open the Widget. Replace the title with your own name. Select the image of the Guild badge and then the small pencil (Edit) icon to open the Image Details window. Click on Replace to replace the badge with your own photograph. Select your photograph from the Media Library and then click Replace on the following screen. When you are back to the widget, click Save to save your changes. 

Still in the widget, you will see text below the image. Replace the bracketed text with your name. If you prefer you can rewrite the complete text. Select Save to save all the changes to the widget.

Your Profile 

Dashboard Users – Your Profile will open your Profile. Alternatively you can access it from a sub menu that appears if you hover you cursor over the Hi, user name menu item at the top right of your Dashboard.

Ensure that your Name and Email are correct. Enter your photo, and biographical details as required. Only the email and nickname are required. Whatever is shown in the Display name publicly as field will be your name on notifications of your Posts. The choices are limited to the administrators’ nicknames.

Static Pages and Menus

Your Blog has been set up with several static Pages organised into a menu to demonstrate the techniques of organising a Menu. Many of them will not be needed in the future so you will need to delete them when you have finished with them. 

Select Dashboard Pages – All Pages to see a list of the default pages that have been added. Hover your cursor over a Page name to see options to Edit, Quick Edit, Bin, or View the Page. 

To delete a Page from Pages – All Pages select the Page you don’t want and select Bin from the available actions. Then update your Menu. From Dashboard Appearance – Menus select the down arrow in the Page you wish to remove to expand it, and then select Delete. You should also check the sequence of any remaining Pages is to your satisfaction. 

To add a new Page go to Dashboard Pages – Add New and you will be taken to the Page Editor. For more detail on creating Pages and Posts see the Example of Use section.

Review the existing pages and make any changes that you require. Your changes will not be saved until you select Update.

The Pages provided are:

About: This is just a stub that you can edit to include information about you and your Blog. You are advised to keep it and update it to be relevant to you Blog.

Privacy Policy: This a sub-page of About and includes a link to the Guild Blog Program Privacy Policy. This page should be retained, but you can change its position in the Menu if you wish.

Contact Me: This is a page created with the WPForms Lite plugin that includes a simple form that allows users of you site to contact you. It incorporates a reCapture to weed out bots, and a Guild image to identify the email that you will receive as a coming from your Blog.

Configuration Guide: This is a page with several sub-pages that contain the content of this Configuration Guide. The Configuration Guide page also contains a link to the PDF version of this guide. Once you have accessed and printed the PDF version, these pages only serve as another example of a menu structure, and can be deleted when you have finished with them.

Content Page: This page contains further information on static pages and includes examples of linking to a PDF in your media library, and to an external website, in this case the Guild website.

Some Pictures: This is an example of a page with links to pictures in the Media Library. Both this page, and the Content Page use some of my own content for illustration. The techniques used apply equally to Posts. The pages and the content that they link to can be deleted when you have finished with them.

You are advised to expand the About page, and keep the Privacy Policy page, and the Contact Me Page. You can edit the text on the Contact Me page from Dashboard Pages – All Pages. To change the image on the Contact Me emails you receive go to Dashboard WPForms Lite  – Settings, and select the Email tab.Upload a new header Image from your Media Library using the Upload Image button.

You can add further pages as and when you wish.

Update the Welcome Post

Select Dashboard Posts – All Posts. There is one post provided, The Welcome to My Blog post. This post is defined as ‘sticky’ so it will always be at the top of your Home page. It is currently a welcome to you, the new blog owner, but if you wish to keep it you should select Edit and turn it into your welcome to your visitors. It also uses a technique to show all the post in the Home page, rather than the first few lines. This method uses the Excerpt box and is described in detail in the Examples of Use section.

The Post and Pages that are already set up are owned by the gbp-admin user. You may wish to reassign these to your own user id using the Author function in the side bar on the Page and Post edit page. You will need to select the Post or Page tab at the top of the side bar. 

Alternatively you can change multiple Pages from Dashboard Pages – All Pages. Click the selection box against each Page you wish to change. The current owner is  listed against each Page. Next select Edit from the Bulk Actions pull-down, and then click Apply. A Bulk Edit window will open that allows you change the Author to any other Registered User. Other options include changing the Parent Page in the Menu, whether Comments re allowed or not, and the Status of the Page. A similar facility is available for Posts that also includes changing Categories, Tags, and whether the Post is Sticky.

Test Your Site: Under the name of your blog there at the top left, select Visit Site. Check that your blog looks the way you want, and the menu works correctly.