Computer Center

Before you can start using your WordPress site, you’ll need to go to your site’s administration page, which should have an address like http://YOUR_WEB_SITE.umf.maine.edu/wp-admin/, and log in with your eCampus username and password. This will bring you to the “Dashboard,” the administrative interface for WordPress.

Note that WordPress is currently only used for departmental and other official UMF web sites. It’s not available for personal (H: drive) web sites, student organizations, etc.

Everything you need to know about WordPress is in this tutorial. It isn’t very long, and most of what you need is in the first section, but if you just want the short answer on how to edit a page:

1. On the left side of the WordPress interface, click Pages, and you’ll see a list of all pages in your web site. To edit an existing page, just click the page title.  To create a page, click “Add New” over in the left menu (below Pages).  For more detailed help, consult the Basic Page Editing tutorial. For additional tricks you may or may not need to know, try the Advanced Page Editing tutorial.

2. Then you’re on the editing screen. The smaller box at the top is the page title, and the larger box below the title is where you edit or write the main content of the page.

3. When you’re done, click the blue button on the right that says “Publish” (for new pages) or “Update Page” (for existing pages).

If you’re completely new to WordPress but have edited traditional web pages (using Dreamweaver, etc.), it helps to understand how WordPress is different:

• First, there’s no special software to install on your computer.  You just go to your site admin page, select a page from your web site, and edit it online.

• You don’t need to worry about file names.  Web pages are just called “Pages,” and you find them in  the Pages list, based on the page title.  (For example, the title of this page is “Wordpress Tutorial.”)

• When you’re editing a page, the options are more limited.  Though this can take some getting used to, the trade-off is the editing process is simpler, and it ensures that all parts of the UMF web site look consistent and professional.  The idea is to separate web “design” from content editing, so you can focus on what’s most important: providing accurate and timely information.

• You don’t directly edit anything on the left navigation menu.  Every page you create is added there automatically, though you can optionally arrange them using instructions in the Advanced Page Editing tutorial.  It is possible (though discouraged) to add links to other web sites in the left navigation, as described in the Links Toolbar tutorial.  Finally, you can’t directly edit the contact information at bottom left, so if that information changes, contact the Computer Center.