Well, now that our site is live and beginning to get user registration from the students at UAT.edu, it is prudent to add a little “how to” to get everyone unfamiliar with the WordPress site ready to add content.

For starters you obviously need to register on the site; as soon as you complete the registration you will be added as a “Subscriber” (normal viewer), I will be checking the site regularly of course to bump members to the “Author” status so you can begin adding content. PLEASE: Register with your @uat.edu e-mail address so I know you are a student here, if you don’t know your actual e-mail address (it is very understandable seeing as how the schools e-mail site handles things via our names instead of our e-mails), click the “My Personal Info” link on the main menu once you’ve logged into the intranet. I want to say right from the beginning that posting on this site live (without an administrator having to manually “approve” each of your pages) is a privilege and not a right. I’m sure this won’t be a problem, and I do not mind a little foul language here and there on the site - just watch yourselves and do not go overboard, remember this is a relatively professional environment. Also, any “overly-negative” comments on another persons work will get your posting privileges revoked; constructive critisism is DEFINITELY wanted and needed, but posts like “Holy crap, why the fuck did you make such a shitty level?” will not be tolerated (again, I’m sure this doesn’t really need to be said anyway).

Now that you have an account, and are an Author, you can begin to add content to the site. To do so, click the “Site Admin” link on the side menu. This will bring you to the WordPress back-end. I want to take time here to harp on where exactly you should place certain things. If you are posting an actual scored review of a video game, place it in the correct review section. However, if you are posting general thoughts on a game (for instance, your opinion of the direction World of Warcraft is headed; or your general disappointments with a title) please post this in your BLOG. I’ll be manually adding a blog for everyone as you register to the site. Anyhow, onto the back-end. Along the top you want to find the “Write” tab, which will bring up “Write Post.” Before you begin to type away, please take the time to notice a few things.

1. Took me a while to realize this personally; however, if you look in the lower right-hand corner of the Page Content box (the main area you type into), you can actually drag it to make it larger. This was a very large help once I figured it out (tiny edit boxes are no good).
2. Along the right-hand side of your screen should be a “Categories” section; please tick all appropriate categories (so if it is a blog entry, click Blog and Kyle’s Blog; if it is a PC game review, tick Reviews and PC Games).
3. Directly underneath that you will find Discussion; I’m actually not sure what “Allow Pings” does, so just leave it checked I guess. However, feel free to disable commenting if you wish (though, a major part of the idea behind this site is to collaborate and help one another improve).
4. Visal / Code tags are found just under the Page Title input box. For the most part you can stay in visual, there is little reason to go to code instead of just using the WYSIWYG editor.

And now a few tips on making your article fit thematically with the site.

1. First, make sure you ALWAYS include a more tag after the first paragraph of your content, or it will be giant on the main page. This is accomplished by clicking the icon that looks like two white pieces of paper with a blue dotted line in between them (just left of ABC).
2. The advanced toolbar has many helpful options, to open it click the icon all the way on the right (looks like a color pallet).
3. When pasting into the document, often times your computer will have pasted the text preformatted - this is rarely a desirable result. To fix this click the white eraser icon found in the advanced toolbar.
4. For now, the only H tag I have styled specifically for article content is h6 (I’ll be doing more shortly). This is the orange sub-section header you should use in situations like defining a new section/score of a review for instance (this can be seen in the PC review for Hellgate: London or the PSP review for DnD: Tactics).

H1 Demo

H2 Demo

H3 Demo

H4 Demo

H5 Demo

H6 Demo - notice how Address rides up on h6 like that? I’ll show you why right after the rest…

Preformatted

Paragraph

Okay, so this is a bunch of normal text right? It will appear just like the rest of the plain text on the page. However, I want to add a h6 in between this and the next paragraph. So I hit enter on my computer once

Then I type out this line, and then hit enter once more…

And type out this line. Now, I use my cursor to highlight the sentence “Then I type…” and use the “– Format –” drop down to select h6. In the editor, it looks like this:

Sentence 1

Sentence 2 (H6ed)

Sentence 3

However, as you can see on the page H6 pulls the equivilent of “Sentence 3″ closer to “Sentence 2″ , this is how it should work in the average article. This is because anything not wrapped in <h6> is wrapped in <p> (paragraph), which has a large margin between itself and other tags. Instead of making paragraph have no upper-margin, which would mess with the look of the site in areas without H6, I made h6 have a negative bottom margin. Hopefully this looks like I think it will, so it should make sense.

When you have finished writing and formatting your page (no formatting is necessary if you do not want, feel free to just type and post), click the Publish button along the bottom to add the page to the site. If you do not wish to publish at this time (a work in progress for instance), click the Save button.

Update 1: How to add a file to your posting, such as a level for Warcraft III.

1. Ensure the file is archived (in a zip preferably so most people can use it).
2. Go to “Write Post” like you normally would.
3. Underneath the “Page Content” text box is a section for uploading files.
4. If you have typed anything into the Page Content section of the site - be sure to click “Save and Continue Editing”
5. Browse for your file, type in a Title and Description.
6. Click the “Upload” button.

Once you have uploaded your file, you will automatically be changed from the “upload” tab to the “browse” tab. To add a link to the file you just uploaded to the page you are working on, select “File” from the “Link to:” radial, and then click “Send to editor” with the blinking cursor where you want the link to appear in your article.

Uploaded File Demo - This is an example of “File” selected from the radial menu.

If you want to link to a page that includes your file, a tumbnail (if the file was an image), and the title/description you typed, select “Page” from the radial instead.

Uploaded File Demo - This is an example of “Page” selected from the radial menu.

You can also add files you have previously uploaded, or files that another person has uploaded by clicking on the “Browse All” tab of the upload pane, then selecting an individual file.

If the file you added to the site, or are adding to your article happens to be an image, you will have 3 other options before sending a link to the site under a new “Show” radial category.

- This is a demo of “Thumbnail” selected with it linked to the File.

- This is a demo of “Full Size” selected, with it linked to the file. Please note that it is 600px wide, and you should probably not add a full size image of anything wider than this, as it will “break” the page layout to make room for the image.

inDevs.net Concept Art 1 - This is a demo of “Title” selected, with it linked to the page.

- This is a demo of thumbnail again, but this time the image links to nothing.