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First steps

New projects come without navigation menus, and the main sidebar (right column) by default contains only the search box for searching inside your project's text content. We recommend leaving this search box in the upper right corner of the sidebar. Most readers of your pages will probably like that.

Here's an introduction on how you may set up or change page layout and navigation menus for your project.

Logging in to the dashboard

To be able to edit a WordPress blog, your university account must

  1. be imported into the central WordPress installation
  2. and be assigned to you specific blog.

To log into your website's dashboard, visit your project's web address (URL), followed by /wp-admin/ and enter your credentials into the login form.
(For security reasons your computer must be within the university' network to log in. If it isn't, you can still log in using either a VPN or a remote desktop connection.

After login, you will see the admin bar at the top of your browser window, which will allow you to switch between the front- and backend ("dashboard") of your project.

Assigning additional editors

There are two steps required: assign the Members to your rights group and then import this list into WordPress.

Details to the two step user import

Add content

If you are starting to build the contents of a new project, plan

  • building the navigation menus,
  • what to display in the page header,
  • what to display in the main sidebar (right column) of the three column page layout,
  • whether the first page to be displayed should be a static page or a list of the newest blog posts,
  • the text of your own imprint page
  • a contact page, and, in case you need it, a data privacy declaration.

Changing the number of columns

The default page layout has 3 columns. You can change this general layout setting for all your project's pages and posts under 'Appearance' -> 'Theme options' at any time.

Modifying the page header layout

The JGU logo in the upper left corner is a mandatory, and may not be changed unless your site address is not part of the domain uni-mainz.de, or if your project is a cooperation project with partners outside of Johannes Gutenberg University. In those cases we can activate a child theme for your project which will not display this logo in the upper left corner. If your project requires this, please write to webmaster@uni-mainz.de with a short explanatory statement.

For the upper right corner of the page header you may choose between:

  • leaving that area blank
  • inserting text
  • uploading your own logo/image (668 × 90 pixels)

Please find those settings under 'Appearance' -> 'Theme options' in your dashboard.

Creating navigation menus

Creating navigation menus requires that there are pages to add to your menu. So before you start creating menus, go ahead and create and publish some pages.

In a new website, we already created one menu for you. In most cases, this suffices for all basic needs. You can define as much navigation menus as you like, but since there are only two locations to show them, avoid a situation where there are more than two menus.

The theme layout provides two menu locations:

  • 'Level 1 Navigation' at the top of the page, right underneath the page header. It can display up to 2 structural levels of any navigation menu, and the
  • 'Left column navigation' in the left column of the default 3-column page layout. It can display any number of structural menu levels.

A single menu  may be assigned to both locations, but we do not recommend this, since it doubles the information and makes your site needless complicated.

If you have an abundance of information, define two separate menus, and assign each one to a different theme location.

You find the menu in the Dashboard by selecting Appearance → Customise

Content of the right column

Unless you have decided to not display the right column at all, you may choose between having an identical right column on all pages and posts (this is the default setting), or setting an individual right column for individual pages (not posts).

To do this on any individual page, set that page's template to: 'Rechte Spalte spezifisch' (this is important), and then use the Shortcode [rechtespalte]the content of my right column goes here[/rechtespalte] inside the text editor to mark the part of your content that should be displayed inside the right column.

 

Adding an index and sitemap

These pages exist in a new Website. If somebody deleted them, you create new pages with those names. The content for these pages will then be provided dynamically. They will be added to your meta menu automatically as soon as they exist.

To add an index or a sitemap in other places of your website, use the [jgu-theme-index]and [jgu-theme-sitemap] shortcodes.

 

Overriding the footer bar (icons, legal notice, data privacy declaration)

The footer bar contains icons as well as links to pages with a 'Legal Notice' and a (data) 'Privacy' declaration. These links will point to default pages provided by JGU university unless you define your own pages within your WordPress project for this purpose, containing your own (modified) text about these issues if needed. Just name the headings of these pages Legal Notice and Privacy.

For any new web project please consider creating a page called 'Legal notice', add all necessary information to it and keep it updated. If you don't, then the link 'Legal notice' in the footer bar of your pages will point to the university's general legal notice page.
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