Fwd: Regional Access to Website!

[Christopher Kindig]

Here you go Chris! (And for Trudy to see as well!)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christopher Kindig <christoph...@ecovillage.org>
Date: Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 1:34 PM
Subject: Regional Access to Website!
To:
Cc: Cynthia Tina <cynthi...@gmail.com>, Carly Gayle <carly...@gmail.com>, herman Runbox <her...@runbox.com>, lovan...@gmail.com, Henny Freitas <hennyf...@gmail.com>

Hello to the IT representatives of the Regions!

*If you feel you have received this email in error, and someone else from your region is a better IT contact, please let me know!*

New Website Update

We are nearing completion of the website structurally and functionally so that it will be ready for launch by the end of March. 

We have now pivoted to building the Solution Library, and next will go to the listing form for ecovillages and events, and then a map showing ecovillage projects. There is a good possibility that we'll launch with a simple version of project listing form, and then later roll out the advanced/sustainability assessment version (with the data integration with ic.org).

Also, the staff of GEN is working to edit each page of the new website, to ensure everything is communicated well and is up to date. So if you notice any missing page content, don't fret; we're working on it! (If you do see anything broken though, please let me know!)

Accessing Regional Pages

So, finally, I am writing to ask that each Region start to edit your area of the website!

Can you have all of your main regional pages updated, or requests to us to update them for you, by Tuesday March 21st?

To gain access to your new Wordpress Regional Editor account, follow this link to reset your password using your email address: https://new.ecovillage.org/my-account/lost-password/ 

Then you can login here: new.ecovillage.org/wp-admin/

Introduction to Wordpress

For those not familiar with Wordpress, fortunately it's pretty easy. You can find most things on the lefthand menu. This includes Regions, where all regional pages are stored, as well as Posts (news, blogs, articles), Events, Projects, and Solutions (*coming soon). 

Here is a screenshot:

Media is also there to upload photos, videos, pdfs, etc. Or you can just upload media directly from the regional page or post. :) 

(Small request, please let's all clearly label any media when it's uploaded, so that it's easier for anyone to sort and find things. Thanks!)

Editing or Adding Regional Pages

Here is a really basic 10 minute introductory video to adding or editing Wordpress pages. Your pages are actually found under the Regions menu, but that is the only difference to this video. If a deeper education is preferred, here is a series of short videos that teach you the fundamentals of Wordpress. Let me know if there are any questions at all, and if I can provide any assistance or other resources.

Editing Page Footer Bar

At the bottom of each page are 3 boxes that show calls to action. If you leave them blank they default to forms to signup for the newsletter, a donation page for the region, and a volunteer form. You can switch these around, edit the text, and/or put totally new content there instead.

Here is what those menus look like (there are 3 of them this is just one) if you scroll down on a page you are editing:

If you'd like any help with this, please let me know. Otherwise, you can leave it as default and it will still work for your region. If there is any more extensive formatting you'd like to do, please just send a list over, so that either Mark or I can do it for you, or we will see about adding more editing functionality where it is in demand.

Editing or Adding Posts

Essentially the same as editing the pages, except you find them under Posts. Posts are any content you'd like to share like News, Articles, Photos, Videos, Newsletters, opportunities to share, etc. Each post is tagged by the region of origin, and is visible within the region where someone is viewing the site, or one can see all posts through the GEN International part of the site.

Editing Events, Projects, or Solutions

We are still working on completing each of these areas, so for now, we ask that you please focus primarily on editing the main page content for your site. You can also add and edit posts as freely as you'd like (but it might make more sense to wait until it's live). We'll have these other areas completed soon enough so that you will have full access to them as well! Same tagging and site visibility as the Posts.

Editing Contact, Volunteer, Newsletter, and Donate pages

Each region has their own page for each of these. The contact form, volunteer form, and newsletter signup forms are the same for each region. However you can edit the content at the top of that page, and/or change the page title, etc. Please let us know if you would need any editing of the main form. We can probably make adjustments that improve it for everyone, or if needed we can make some conditional logic so that if someone selects your region, specific questions show up. The Volunteer form has not yet been built, so I will update you when it is! 

For the Donate page, please add whatever content you might like there to ask for donations. We will then add special donate buttons for you!

Editing your Menu

Here is an example of the menu for regional sites:

GEN-I is still working on new logo concepts for the regions, so hopefully will have something for you before launch!

We do not have the tools to give everyone access to directly style the menu yourselves. However, we can make the adjustments for you!

The kinds of things we can easily style on this menu are colors (the background menu and text links), styling of links (they could look like buttons of a desired design instead of appearing as text links), text size, spacing, and the like. We request not to select a different font, however, because whenever we add a new font to the site it has to load every time, which slows down the whole site. That is the main reason, but also as a bonus reason, it might be welcome to site visitors that we maintain font uniformity throughout all navigation menus.

Submenus

You can also have submenus on your menu; you can select pages as child pages to other pages, so they appear indented under them on your menu. You do this by selecting the 'Parent Page' from the dropdown when you are editing or creating a page. There is just one level of submenus. One more limitation here, if you decide to style your links as buttons instead of as text links, the submenu feature will not work.

Order of Links in Menu

When you click on Regions to see a list of all of your regional pages, you can click on Edit to go in and deeply edit any settings or content of a page. Or you can click on Quick Edit and it opens up a little menu that gives you options to quickly edit things. It looks like this:

If you notice the Order box on the right -- if you number all of your pages from 1 to whatever, this will be the order they appear on your menu.

(You will also notice here that you can easily adjust the language(s) of your page, the parent of the page, the Author, date, status, etc.)

Menu Color Bar for Regions!

Due to popular request, we found a way to add regional color just below the main navigation menus, so that it is even more clear when you are on a regional page! (If it's hard to understand what I mean I apologize; it'll be clear soon!) Here is a bad mockup:

I am referring to that purple bar under the menu. It will be a lot thicker, and a different color for each region. These color bars have not yet been added, but will be appearing over the next week or so. We are using colors from an old style guide for the regions that we found, and then we can adjust them as requested. I am also asking Mark to go ahead and make your menu sidebar backgrounds the same color as those regional colors (or to be bordered by this color). We can then further adjust these however you might prefer.

Focus Your Efforts!

We recommend focusing the majority of your efforts on the actual content and visuals on your main pages! This is what people are going to pay the most attention to, and what will best get across the richness of your region's unique identity and activities the best!

Remember that you can always add more content later, and you can further refine whatever you put together.

Please do your very best to have all of the your main content pages ready to go by Tuesday March 21st. 

The sooner you email me with any questions or requests, the sooner I can help or give feedback. So please be in touch!

Alright! I know that is a lot of information to take in and digest. I will certainly be glad to clear up anything that may not be so clear. Please feel free as always to share your feedback, or to report anything you see as an issue with the website as you're working on it.

We look forward to seeing the regional pages built beautifully! Let us know how we can help with anything at all!

Thanks so much!

Christopher

PS - 

For GEN Europe, as you are looking at potentially moving from Typo3 to Wordpress. You could copy and paste to rebuild the content from your existing site page by page. I or someone on the IT team could help if desired. Or, there are software options such as this one, that look pretty neat, if you're interested: https://cms2cms.com/pricing/

I estimated the job at 50 pages and 250 posts, so 300 total. (Unless -- are these news and articles posts the same ones on ecovillage.org? If they are, we have already imported those to the new site directly!) I estimated 1,000 users, just as a guess. The total estimate with those figures to do the transfer using their software is only $60! Anything in this ballpark, and I am confident GEN could pick up the cost of this. Let me know what you're thinking you might like to do, and how I can help with anything. 

PSS - I am sending out a separate but similar email to NextGEN as well, who are no longer considered a region, but who will have similar editing capabilities for their own section of the website.

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	Christopher Kindig Director of Operations, IT Director Global Ecovillage Network (GEN International) Connect with us: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn Scottish Charity No. SC043796
Connecting Communities for a Sustainable World www.ecovillage.org

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	Christopher Kindig Director of Operations, IT Director Global Ecovillage Network (GEN International) Connect with us: Twitter - Facebook - Newsletter Scottish Charity No. SC043796
Connecting Communities for a Sustainable World www.ecovillage.org