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Help

Contents

1. Introduction

This website is based on pages that are all formatted the same way. This content management system (CMS) is based on WordPress, a public domain blog web system that can also be used for CMS. Within this system, every webpage is called a ‘post’. To show a post at a certain point in the website, it has to be assigned to a so-called ‘category’. For example, a post of a specific new IOPS project of a new PhD at Leiden University is assigned to the categories ‘List Current Projects’ and ‘List Projects LU’.

The main menu structure is based on special categories, for example, the catgeories ‘home’, ‘organisation’, ’staff’, etc. Each of these categories may only have one single post (not more) that will be shown when the menu item is clicked. If by accident more posts are assigned, for example, to the category ‘home’, then after clicking the ‘home’ menu item only the most recent post is being shown. Therefore, each category that corresponds to a menu item should only contain one single post.

Some pages contain automatically generated lists, such as the staff, projects, home (with news items), etc. Items that appear in these lists are posts that are assigned to categories whose names start with ‘List’, such as, ‘List Projects UU’, ‘List Projects 2009′, etc. By changing the category of a post or assign it to the category will make the post appear automatically in that list.

2. How to change a page?

Before you can change a page (or view this help), you have to login. Then, two new links appear at bottom left of the page (next logout): ‘Edit this’ and ‘Help’. Pressing ‘Edit this’ opens the WordPress editor of the post shown on the present page. Make the changes and press the ‘Update Post’ to publish the changes on the website.

At the bottom of the edit page of the post, you will see previous versions of the post. By clicking on the previous version, you can access them and revert to this version.

At this moment you are still in the WordPress Dashboard. Clicking on ‘Post’ in the upper left corner will give a list of all posts. Here it is best filter the posts of the category that you are interested in. For example, by filtering on the ‘home’ category will only produce a single post that is shown as the home page.

2.1 Adding an attachment to a page

To add an attachment to a page, first edit the post. Then, click to one of the symbols to the right of  ’Upload/Insert’ just above the edit box: for a pdf-file, click the star (Add Media), for a picture click the first icon (Add Image). Then a special box appears that allows you to choose the file and upload it. The next step is to press the ‘Insert to post’ button. Make sure that the Link URL field is not empty (if it is empty, click ‘File URL’ and then again ‘Insert to post’). For a pdf attachment, change the title field into the text used for the link.

Once a pdf-file or image is uploaded, they can be easily inserted in the post by clicking again on the ‘Add Media’ or ‘Add Image’ icons and choosing the Gallery tab. This tab shows all the uploaded files for this post. Click on ‘Show’ of an upload to allow inserting the file in the post.

2.2 Do not delete a post or a category

If a post is deleted, then it cannot be retrieved anymore. Therefore, never delete a post, certainly not those of the main pages. Categories are the center of this website. Never delete a category: it may give unpredicted results and can be difficult to repair.

2.3 Getting rid of MS Word formatting

When copy and pasting content into a post from MS Word, the formatting of MS Word can mess up the post. To clean the post from MS Word formatting, make sure that you are in the Visual tab of the editor (not the HTML tab), the select the part of the text that you would like to clean and press the Remove Formatting icon (next to the Paste from Word icon).

3. Specific pages

3.1 Maintaining news items

The home page will automatically show the five most recent posts in the ‘news’ category. To add a new news item, make a new post and tick the ‘news’ category. When a news item is not recent news anymore, then untick the ‘news’ category of the post and tick the ‘allnews’ category.

3.2 Organisation pages

The organisation pages consists of a single post in the ‘organisation’ category and other posts in the ‘organisation items’ category. These are listed alphabetically as submenu items in the left column of the page. The labels of the submenu items are the titles of the posts.

3.3 Staff pages

The staff page contains two lists: one list of generated of posts in the category ‘Staff Associated Institutes’ and a second list of posts in the category ‘Staff Participating Universities’. Each of these posts contains a bulleted list with member information for the particular institute or university. The titles of the posts are the ones that are listed.

3.4 Student and projects pages

Each project is a separate post. The title of the post should contain the surname and the first name, for example, ‘Hickendorff, Marian’. The content of the post can be found in one of the projects currently listed on the IOPS website. The title of the project should be repeated in the excerpt field (below the edit box). Each project should be allocated to one of the categories referring to the host university (’List Projects LU’, ‘List Projects CBS’, etc.), to the category  ’List Current Projects’ if it is a current project or ‘List Projects 20xx’ (if the project has finished in 20xx),  and to the ‘List Students’ if it is a current student.

If the student has finished the project, simply untick the categories ‘List Current Projects’ and ‘List Students’ and tick the year of  the category ‘List Projects 20xx’ if the project has finished in year 20xx.

The lists in the student page and those in the project pages are generated through these categories.

3.5 Courses page

The courses page consists of a single post in the ‘course’ category and other posts in the ‘courses previous years’ category. These are listed from most recent as submenu items in the left column of the page. The labels of the submenu items are the titles of the posts, e.g., ‘Courses 2009′.

3.6 Other pages

The remaining menu pages (conferences, jobs, agenda, contact, and links) all are pages with only a single post in the respective categories having the same title as their menu item.

4. Search

The search facility is used by typing a search string in the box. Simply press enter to do the search. A set of posts is shown one-by-one that have the search string. Pressing ‘Previous Post’ or ‘Next  Post’ will give the other research results.

5. Troubleshooting

• An unexpected post appears after clicking one of the menu items.
  This is caused by having more than one post assigned to the category corresponding to the menu item. Go to the Word Press Dashboard, click on posts, and filter on the specific menu category. Instead of one, at least two posts will come up. Untick the menu category of the posts that are wrongly attached to this menu category.
• A post does not appear in a list that I expect.
  This is caused by the post not having the category ticked that is used for the list. See the description of the lists in Section 3 for the specific pages.
• Why are some links formatted with a strike-through line?
  WordPress automatically checks whether the links are valid. In case a dead link is found, WordPress shows this in the site by formatting it as a strike-through line. By either removing the link or updating the link with a proper URL, the strike-through will disappear.