Sagamore PTA Wordpress notes

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Revision as of 16:45, 10 September 2014 by Dave (talk | contribs) (→‎Setup: Plugins)
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Wordpress notes from the Sagamore Online gang (email • archives • subscribe & more), used for the Sagamore Hills PTA website.

Styling

Bother John Lenz to make it 'perty.

Migration

Importing content from another Wordpress installation can be done with the Tools → Export/Import options. Some notes:

  • Media files (attachements) 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
  • Posts will maintain their Wordpress post IDs if possible!

Addresses (URLs)

Address beautification

Be sure to:

  1. Admin → Settings → Permalinks → Day and name
  2. Then: Custom Structure
  3. Remove the trailing slash

(to get rid of the ugly "?p=#" and default trailing slash)

Change starting post ID

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 ;

Plugins

Site change notifications

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

Redirects

Calendar

Facebook

See: Sagamore Facebook

Setup

  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. Import
    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
      2. Download and import file attachments
  5. Plugins
    1. Delete unused default plugins Akismet and Hello Dolly
    2. Install

Old ideas

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.

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:

Only add Tags (not Categories) to Pages:

Further Reading

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