sozomai – Page 2 – My Online Church

Part 6 – Sidebars

If you are not already there go to your dashboard. If you don’t know how see Part 1 – Log In

Sidebars appear to the left and right (sometimes also above and below) of your website to display links to the various parts of your website. They also allow you to display short pieces of information. Where they appear, how many of them you have and how much room they have depends on which theme you have chosen.

1. Seven options down on the left menu of the dashboard you will see “Appearances” click on this link.

2. Now you will see more options under “Appearances” – one of them will be “Widgets” click on this option.

3. You should now see a table full of headers such as “Akismet” , “Archives”, “Calender”, these are all various widgets that you can put in your sidebar to display certain bits of information. For example if you choose the one called “Pages” you will see a list of all the pages on you website displayed on your sidebar.

4. To the right of this table of options you should see a column with a list of sidebars. Often there will be only one sidebar, but some themes will give you two or three.

5. To the right of the name of the sidebar there is a small triangle pointed down. Click this triangle. A dull grey empty box will now appear beneath the name of the sidebar.

6. Choose any information you wish to display in the sidebar from the options to the left and drag them over to the dull grey box beneath the name of the sidebar. Once you see a box outlined in dashed lines you can let the option go and it should stick to the sidebar. That option will now be displayed on your sidebar.

7. Once you have placed the option in the sidebar, you will often see a list of options appear underneath it. Change any of these options as you see fit and hit the “save” button.

8. IMPORTANT NOTE: Most sidebars have default settings, information they will display if you have chosen anything to be displayed in them. Once you have chosen any options for a sidebar all of these default settings will disappear. Therefore make sure that one of the options you place in the side bar is the “Meta” option. This will display a link to allow you to login to your site. If you forget to dispaly this option you may come back later to find there is no log in link. If this should happen, just type /wp-admin after the address of your website eg clclutheran.org/wp-admin, this will take you to the log in page.

You now have your side menus set up as you wish. In order to fill out and display basic church information such as Sunday Service times, see Part 7 – Church Info

Part 7 – Church Info

If you haven’t already log in to your website and go to the dashboard.

1. Seven options down on the left menu is “Appearance” click on this option.

2 You should now see more options listed under “Appearance” one of them should be “Church Info”, click on this option.

3. You will now see a page full of forms for basic Church Info. Fill out as much of this form as you wish too. For more information on filling out this form see Church Info Form

4. Now that you have filled out the information you want to actually display it on your website. Some themes may already automatically display this information. Other wise go to the “widgets” option and find the three options “Sunday Services”, “Weekly Events” and “Chuch Info” add these options to your sidebar. For more information on adding options to your sidebar see “Part 5 – Sidebars“. For more information on the various options you can choose from once you have added these widgets to your side bar see “Church Info Widgets“.

Now you have you website set up its time to learn how to add and edit pages which will allow you to display information. See Part 8 – Add and Editing Pages

Part 8 – Adding and Editing Pages

If you are not already there go to your dashboard. If you don’t know how see Part 1 – Log In

1. Five options down on the left hand menu is the “Page” option. Click this option.

2. You should now see a list of all the pages currently in use on your website

If you want to EDIT a current page, simply click on the title of the page you want to edit.

If you want to CREATE A NEW PAGE, click the “Add New” option under “Pages” on the left side menu.

3. You should now be at the page editor section of your website, this consists of six basic boxes.

The first long thin one on top is for the title of your page. Fill this out with the page title, keep in mind that this title will not only appear on the top of your page, but also on your sidebar menu as the link to click to see that page.

Directly below is is a larger editor box. This is where the actual contents of the page appear. Here you can edit the contents of the page or type in new content. For detailed information on how to use this editor go to Click Here. In the meantime here is a quick reference for some more important buttons.

-> One of the last buttons looks like three rows of tiny pictures, click this icon and you will get an extra row or options

-> Above the darker grey part of the editor are the words “Add media:” followed by four grey icons, the first of these will allow you to upload pictures and insert them into your page

-> the twelfth button on the top row looks like a page cut in two by a dashed line. This is the more tag. When you insert it into a page or post, it doesn’t show up on the website. People who visit your site won’t even know it is there. But on occasion your website may wish to display only a preview of a certain page or post. In this case the website will get all the information on the page or post up to the more tag. If you have no more tag, the site won’t know where to cut it off and will return the entire page. For this reason it is good to always insert a more tag after the first paragraph of every page and post.

-> If you know HTML you can click the HTML tab next to the visual tab and write the page in HTML code.

Directly below the editor is the “Excerpt” box. This box enable you to write a summary of the page’s contents. Sometimes with some themes this summary is displayed to let users know what the content of the page is.

On the top of the next column, to the right of the title box, is the Publish box. This box gives you three main options

-> Save Draft <- This allows you to save the page or post without publishing it. This means you can come back later to work on the page, but no one who comes to the site will see that page.

-> Preview <- this allows you to preview your current work

-> Publish <- This allows you to publish the page or post. This means the content is saved the page title is added to the menu on your website, and visitors to your site can see the page of post.

Beneath the Publish box is the “Attributes” box, for know the only option we care about is the last one, “Order”. Change this number to change the order that the page appears in the menus, IF you set the options on the page widget to display by “order” for more information on how to do this see: Part 6 – Sidebars

4. Once you have made all the changes to the page that you wish to make, hit the “Publish” button . You should get a message saying “Page Updated” or “Page Published” – if you don’t get this message hit the Publish button again.

You now know everything you need to maintain a basic website. Once you have mastered these skills, there are many more things that you can do with your website. To the right of this post is a sidebar. Near the top of this side bar is a list of categories. To learn more about using your website click on one of these categories such as “More Details” or “Advanced Web Options”. Over time I plan on adding posts to these categories gradually to teach you more about using this website, so if what you want to do isn’t listed there now check back later or email me request a tutorial on the subject you wish, email me at: sesoomai@gmail.com.

If you have questions or problems about your website check out the forum at help.clclutheran.org. If your problem or question isn’t covered here, email me at: sesoomai@gmail.com .