Sagamore PTA Wordpress notes

Wordpress specific notes for the Sagamore Hills PTA website

Styling

Bother John Lenz to make it 'perty.

Plugins

Site change notifications

So folks know when the website has been changed, the Wordpress plugin: Email Post Changes comes in handy.

Redirects

• WordPress › Redirection « WordPress Plugins (chosen over Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin (2014-09))

Calendar

You can just embed Google Calendars, but they're ugly. Instead, use a plugin to pull and present calendar data.

Tried Google Calendar Events 2014-09, but it was buggy (Dave)

Facebook

See: Sagamore Facebook

Setup

How a new installation was setup for the PTA website reset 2014-09

Fresh install

1. Login to the Sagamore Hills PTA Dreamhost account and install Wordpress
   1. Manage Domains → Add Hosting to a Domain/Sub-Domain

      Do you want the www in your URL?

      Remove WWW: Make http://www.example.com/ redirect to http://example.com/

      Run this domain under the user

      sagamorehillspta

   2. One-Click Installs → Wordpress (without Deluxe Install)
2. Wordpress installation setup (at web address)

   Username

   sagamorehillspta

   Email

   communications@sagamorehillspta.org

3. Settings

   General

   Tagline

   blank

   Timezone

   America / New York

   Discussion

   Default article settings

   Deselect all 3 (notify, trackbacks, comments)

   Media

   Uploading Files

   Deselect, "Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders"

   Permalinks

   Common Settings

   Custom Structure

   /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%

   ("Day and name" minus the trailing slash)

4. Delete default example content: comment (comment 1 from Mr. Wordpress on post Hello World), post Hellow World (id=1), page Sample Page (id=2))

Import old content

Notes:

• Posts (pages) will maintain their Wordpress post IDs if possible (they aren't already taken on the new site), so fewer broken links!
• Media files (attachments) will only import from an "All content" export
• Since "All content" includes elements you might not want to import, like comments or navigation menus, try pruning the XML export file of those elements before importing

1. Old site, Tools → Export → All content (save somewhere)
2. New site, Tools → Import → Wordpress
   1. Install plugin as prompted
   2. "Activate plugin"
3. Tools → Import → Wordpress (select saved export)
   1. Assign posts to an existing user (sagamorehillspta)
   2. Download and import file attachments

Plugins

1. Delete unused default plugins:
   • Akismet
   • Hello Dolly
2. Install
   • Email Post Changes
   • Redirection

Old ideas

Don't do these!

Change starting post ID

Not needed if content is imported

From Sagamore online goals 2014#URL_redirects:

Make the new Wordpress installation use post IDs we haven't used before to avoid collisions (terms and users weren't utilized enough on the old site to bother with), then setup .htaccess redirects from the old to the new as desired.

1. On the new Wordpress database:

   ALTER wp_posts AUTO_INCREMENT = 2001 ;

Assigning post IDs

Don't use: Although the following is possible, it's probably better to just import old content and/or use redirects for old content (ala Sagamore .htaccess) and make new content use unique post IDs by doing #Change starting post ID.

• migration - How can I assign post a specific ID on creation? - WordPress Development Stack Exchange
• wordpress - insert post ID with wp_insert_post - Stack Overflow
• Function Reference/wp insert post « WordPress Codex

• Might want to know how to execute from the command line too

When importing content, it may be easier for sake of redirecting to assign posts/pages the same ID they had on the export site (especially if the export site exposed IDs in its URL (like the PTA site from 2012-2014)).  : This happens automatically with Wordpress's Tools → Import if the IDs aren't already taken!

Page Tagging & Categories

Of the two default content types in Wordpress, Pages (unlike the other, Posts), cannot have Tags or Categories associated with them by default. It is relatively simple to change that with some code or a simple plugin:

• Pages are Posts (I like that one for its simplicity)
• Post Tags and Categories for Pages

Only add Tags (not Categories) to Pages:

• Tag Pages
• Page Tagger