JACK WELCH is the author of “Winning,” an international best-seller. In 2001, he wrote his best-selling autobiography, “Jack: Straight from the Gut.” He began his career with the General Electric Company in 1960, and in 1981 became the company’s eighth chairman and CEO. During his 20+ year tenure as CEO, the company’s market capitalization rose from $13 billion to over $400 billion. In 2000, he was named Manager of the Century by Fortune magazine.

SUZY WELCH is a best-selling author, popular television commentator, and noted business journalist. Her best-selling book, “10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea,” is now published in 29 countries. Suzy has written about work-life balance and other issues for publications ranging from O, The Oprah Magazine to the Wall Street Journal. She is a commentator on television programs including Good Morning America, The View, Morning Joe, Your World With Neil Cavuto, Power Lunch and Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien.

MARIA BARTIROMO is anchor on CNBC’s “Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo,” and anchor and managing editor of the nationally syndicated “On the Money with Maria Bartiromo.” She has covered Wall Street for 20 years.

Posts Slider

You can now include pages or individual posts in the “Posts Slider” rotation, instead of just a single category. Under “Pages & Posts,” select the order you want the items to appear. The slider will pull in the featured image and excerpt from the item. Of course, you’ll want to make sure your photos are no larger than 900px wide and compressed for the web (need help with this? Try Pixlr).

Responsive Tables

Up to now, tables did not work very well on our new site because they were not responsive, eg, they looked AWFUL on a mobile device. Now, you can now insert tables and they will resize beautifully on smaller screens. Tables must be used for data only, not to design or lay out your page.

For example, here is the table at full width:

And the same table displayed on a mobile device:

To insert a table, use the new buttons in the editor. You should (probably) set the first row to be a header:

Embedding Videos

We can now pull videos directly from our online video library and embed them on a webpage. After you click “Add Media,” select “Brightcove,” then find the video you want. Once you “insert video,” it will appear as a shortcode, then as a video player once you publish the page. This functionality must be enabled on a site-by-site basis, so let Anna know if you need to embed customized videos or playlists and don’t see “Brightcove” available.

Of course, you can still embed YouTube or Vimeo videos simply by pasting the video’s URL on a line, but these Brightcove videos are branded with Wagner’s colors and, well, just look more professional.

Limit Editing Access

For sites with many managers, sometimes you’ll want to limit what pages individual users have access to edit. For example, within the “Academics” site, managers of ACE can manage those pages but do not have access to edit other pages. If you need this functionality, please let Anna know.

Google Analytics

We have used Google Analytics to track our site traffic for a long time, but now those analytics are more accessible to you as managers of subsites. If you go to the Dashboard, you’ll see graphs and statistics. If you go to “All Pages” or “All Posts,” you’ll see statistics for each page or post. Use these numbers to help fine-tune your content and understand what information people are accessing. This is also enabled site-by-site, so if you don’t see these statistics, please request access from Anna.

Photo Boxes

You can now add a photo box shortcode with a portrait image on the left, like this:

New and ImprovedHey look!, a new photobox.

That’s all, folks! Thanks for your patience as we work out the bugs in our new site and continue to improve its functionality. Let us know if there are specifics things you’d like to see.

As you probably know, our site is quite slow. Part of the problem is that we have a bunch of very large photos on the site that take a long time to download. If you upload a large image to your site, then resize it once it is on your page, the user will still have to download the entire large image.

So please resize your photo to the desired size before you upload it. You should also save the photo at a lower quality. You can do this in Photoshop or Preview, but if you don’t have those programs, give Pixlr, an online photo editing tool, a try. Photos should never be larger than 200 KB, and ideally more like 30 KB or smaller. Take a look at the Photos & PDF files tutorial for additional help on uploading media.

Links

Linking to other sites within wagner.edu is really helpful for users. It makes our site hang together better and facilitates navigation.

Also, when you create a new page or post, the URL for that page will default to the page title. So by default, the URL for this post is http://wagner.edu/communications/communications-news/new-web-functions-updates. That’s pretty long. Before you publish or update your page, you can edit the last part of the URL by clicking “edit” after the permalink, under the page title.

To link to an email address, the URL should be mailto:youremail@wagner.edu

SEO

“Search Engine Optimization” is a fancy way of saying “helping Google find your stuff.” When a search engine receives a query, it looks through top-level keywords and phrases attached to your website, and uses that to serve up pages to the user. We have a new plugin that will help you customize those keywords.

When you edit a page, scroll down below the content editor to “Infinite SEO.” Only site administrators have access to this. You may have to click the bar to allow the options to open. You can specify the “Title Tag,” write a description, and add keywords. Those are the most important settings. Use words and key phrases that you think people will use to search for your site content. Paying attention to the SEO of your top-level pages is most important; you don’t have to adjust these settings on all pages.

Social Stream

We now have a better way to integrate social media into your site. You can either commit an entire page to the stream, or add the stream to a widget. You can pull feeds from your Facebook page(s), Twitter, Google Plus, RSS (blogs), Flickr, Delicious, YouTube, Pinterest, last.fm, Dribble, Vimeo, Stumbleupon, Diviantart, Tumblr, and/or Instagram. You can customize the colors and change the number of results the stream brings in.

Find all these settings under Widgets > Social Stream. Only Administrators and Editors have access to this. Let Anna know if you have trouble finding your Facebook ID number or understanding what other settings mean.

If you use this plugin, you’ll have to copy and paste this code into the “Custom CSS” box under Social Stream Settings:

To use Wagner colors, enter the following hex codes:

• Green: #004331
• Gold: #A78E3D
• Maroon: #571C1F
• Navy: #023D61
• Brown: #563019

Calendar

We have a new calendar for campus events. If you are interested in having a similar calendar on your own website, let Anna know.

Appointment Scheduler

If you’re looking for a way for people to make appointments with you, or to schedule events, let Anna know and she’ll enable the plugin. See a demo and watch a video about this plugin first.

Block User Access

If you need to make certain pages private to a select group of people, we now have that capability. For example, Res Ed uses a private page for RAs to fill out forms, and the Education Dept uses a private page for student- and faculty-only access. Blocking access should be used sparingly, since we don’t want to make wagner.edu seem inaccessible to the general public, but it can be useful in certain cases. Work with Anna if you’re interested in this.

• While a page can be assigned a parent item, a post is based on categories.
• Posts are more flexible than pages and can be pushed into different areas of your site. More on that below. You may be familiar with RSS feeds — those are from posts, like a blog.
• A post is used most often for news and upcoming event items, but can also be used for writing on subjects. These web tutorials, for example, are all posts.
• The actual post editor looks basically the same as a page editor. You can use the same shortcodes, slideshows, forms, etc.

Creating a Post

There are a few important additional fields with a post, here ranked in order of importance:

A. Categories — This will place your post in a feed, and is the most important step. You should already have a news category. If you want to add a different category, just click “add new category” or go to “categories” under Posts on the left hand side.

B. Featured image — We’ve designed our feeds to show a photo along with the post title and excerpt. This photo should be landscape, about 900 px wide, and will be cropped to 16 x 9 dimensions if it’s not already. Click “Set Featured Image” to add this photo, and upload an image.

C. Excerpt — We put the excerpt in the Post Slider; it’s just a summary of your post and entices people to keep reading.

D. Tags — Tags are keywords or subject headings for your post and describe the content. Although we don’t incorporate tags in our theme at this point, you can use tags in the “tag cloud” widget.

Publishing Posts

Now that you’ve published a post, where does it go? There are several options.

Shortcode: Display posts on a page

Use the “Display Posts” shortcode to pull a specific number of posts from selected categories onto a page (or post or widget, for that matter). The featured image and first few lines will appear. You can adjust the order of posts, dictate how many should appear, and show or hide the date.

The shortcode will look like this: [wagner-posts numofposts="2" sentences="2" posts_orderby="title" posts_orderin="asc" specific_category=",web-group" show_posted_date="no" ]

Once you publish, it will display like this:

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Directory pages

The profile shortcode should be used for pages that list the faculty in a department, or the staff or administration in an office. Each box can link to another page, usually a more in-depth profile. [...] Keep reading →

---

Faculty Committee Minutes Tutorial

Here’s a short and simple video tutorial on how to update faculty committee minutes. It’s just about three minutes. [...] Keep reading →

Post Slider

Please refer to our in-depth tutorial on post sliders. You can put the post slider on any page (or post), and it will appear below the main menu and above your site menu and site content. This is a great way to feature news and stories about faculty and students.

Category Widget

You can also pull a category feed into a widget using the “Advanced Recent Posts” widget. That will display the most recent posts along with the featured image. If you have a lot of categories (like the newsroom), you could use the “Categories” widget, which will display a dropdown list of your categories.

Category in a Hyperlink or Menu

At the bottom of every post, you will see something like “Posted in Web Group on Nov. 19, 2012.” If you click the link to that category (like Web Group), you will see a list of all your posts in that category. You can share that link with others, use it as a hyperlink on your page, or even add it to your main menu.

RSS feed

You can pull a feed from any category from any site using the “RSS” widget. The URL for my Web Group category is http://wagner.edu/communications/category/web-group/feed. Follow the same formula to find the correct URL:  http://wagner.edu/yoursite/category/category-name/feed.

1. Create your form.

Once you log into the back end of your site, go to “Forms” and click “Add new.”

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A. Hover over form title and click “Edit” to change the title and description.
B. Select the type of field you want to add to your form. For example, click “Radio Buttons,” and the default settings will be added to your form.
C. Customize the field options — again, hover over the new field and click “edit,” then type in the choices you’d like to add. Check “required” if that field is mandatory. For a drop-down list, you may want to add “Select One” as the first option.

Repeat B & C until you have all the fields you need. You can drag and drop the fields to rearrange the order at any point.

The “Advanced Fields” contain pre-formatted address, email, and other fields, so you don’t have to create those yourself. The “Post Fields” connect to posts in your site; if you include “title” and “body,” for example, when someone submits the form, a draft will appear in your list of posts. All you would have to do is copy edit the post and publish it with the appropriate category. This is great for soliciting alumni stories or news items from your visitors.

If you have a large list of custom choices that you will need to use in many forms, you may want to save custom items under “Bulk Add / Predefined Choices” so that you can retrieve this list on future forms.

Under the “Advanced” tab, you can enable conditional logic if you want the form to change based on what people fill out.

Once you finish setting up the form, click “Save form.” You can preview the form, or go ahead and set up email notifications.

2. Set up notifications.

When you set up email notifications, you are basically building the email that you will receive when someone submits the form. Enter your email address, the “from name” that will display on the email, and so on. You can leave most of these settings to the default value.

You can also tell the form to email different addresses depending on what people submitted. Use “Routing” to set this up. You can set up multiple routing rules for as many fields as you like.

3. Add form to a page, post, or widget.

Now that your form is built, create a new page or post (or open the existing page/post where you want the form to appear). Click “Add Form,” then select the form that you just built and insert the form onto the page.

Before you publish the page, all you will see in the content editor is something like this:

[gravityform id="3" name="Website feedback"]

That is a shortcode that will pull up the entire form and embed it onto that page. Go ahead and publish (or update) the page, click “view page,” and see your beautiful new form ready for submissions! You should fill it out yourself to make sure everything works accordingly.

If you’d like a form in a widget, use the “Form” widget. Keep in mind that long forms will not work well in the widget area; this would be best for a short “contact us” form or something similar.

4. View or export entries.

If you set up email notifications, you will receive an email every time someone submits the form. If you’d rather see all the entries at once, go back to “Forms” and select “Entries.”

You can also click “Import/Export” to export a .csv (Excel) file of the entries received. You can select which fields to export, and narrow down submissions by date.

5. Make any needed edits.

If you need to edit your form after you’ve already added it to a page, all you need to do is go back to “Forms” and edit the form there (see step 1), then click Save. The form on the page will automatically update.

PDFs, on the other hand, can slow down your site and are clumsy to open on phones and mobile devices. Whenever possible, content should be added as a new web page, not a PDF.

Uploading any kind of file works in the same way:

1. Prepare your file.

Make sure your file name describes the content, so that it’s easier to search for later. You must resize your photo to the desired size before you upload it. You should also save the photo at a lower quality. You can do this in Photoshop or Preview, but if you don’t have those programs, give Pixlr, an online photo editing tool, a try.

Photos should never be larger than 200 KB, and ideally more like 30 KB or smaller. If you upload a huge photo file, it will slow your site down, and who wants to wait around for a site to load?

2. Upload your file.

Click on “Add Media” then just drag-and-drop your file from your computer to the website. You can also select the file from that window.

Once it uploads, the file is added to the Media Library. You can access this library any time, so you don’t have to upload the same photo again and again. Add a title, alternate title, and caption (if you want it to appear below the photo).  Select how you want the image to align, what the link should be, and the size. You can change all of this later. For PDFs, the title will appear as your link; make sure to select “Media File” for link. Last, click “Insert into post.”

3. Make any needed edits.

If you need to change the size, alignment, link, or anything about your image, just click on the image and hit the photo icon.

 

That will take you to a screen where you can make those adjustments, then click “update.”

Creating the menu

1. Build your site menu first via Widgets > Menus.
2. Enter a new menu name. This will not show up anywhere, so make it descriptive.
3. Click “create menu.”
4. Check the pages that will be the main menu items, for example “Academic Programs” or “Faculty & Staff.” These pages should not have a parent item.
5. Click “Add to Menu.”
6. Under each page, check the box, “Automatically populate with child pages.”
7. Save your menu.

Adding the menu to your site

Now that the menu is created, go into widgets and add “Custom Menu [advanced].” Select the menu you just created and check the box “Use top parent item title.” Make sure this widget is at the top of the list.

Making changes

If you need to add or change a main menu item, go back to Widgets > Menus. You can check the page or category you want and click “add to menu,” you can drag and drop the existing menu items to rearrange the order, or you can delete existing menu items. Don’t forget to save the menu before you close.

Academic department menus

Academic departments should use the following standardized menu items. This will help our website be consistent across departments, and make it easier to navigate. Each department may add an additional one or two menu items, depending on its needs.

• Home
• Academic Programs (or “Undergraduate Programs” AND “Graduate Programs”)
• Courses
• Faculty & Staff
• Student Resources (or “News and Events”)

There are different levels of access you can assign to users:

Administrator

• User has full access to the site, and can publish new pages and posts, set options for the slideshow, add new users, edit the menu, activate plugins, etc.
• Only the main manager should be the administrator.

Editor

• User has nearly full access to the site, but cannot manage menus, add new users, activate plugins, or manage comments.
• Wagner College employees who share web management responsibilities should be editors.

Author

• User can create and publish posts, create new pages, and add new forms or slideshows. User cannot publish new pages (must be submitted for review first), edit others’ published pages or posts, or export form entries.
• Faculty, staff and GAs who need occasional but limited access to the website should be authors.

Contributor

• User can create new posts, then submit them for review.
• Faculty, staff, or students who only need to submit posts for news items should be contributors.

Subscriber

• User cannot see anything in the dashboard.
• Anyone who needs access to protected or members-only pages should be subscribers.

Custom

If you need a custom user role or want to customize any of the above roles on your site, please contact Anna Mulé (x4468).

Insert a shortcode via the     icon above your content editor. Fill in the relevant content, then click “insert shortcode.” In the text editor, it will look something like this:

[wagnerbutton size="medium" color="#004331" target="_blank" url="http://wagner.edu/communications" icon="ok" ]This is a button.[/wagnerbutton]

In the example above, anything in bold can be edited. After you publish the page or post, that same shortcode will magically turn into this:

This is a button.

If you need to edit the content, you can go through all the steps again, or you can simply edit the text within the brackets. See Troubleshooting, below, or leave a comment if you run into problems. Keep in mind that most formatting (especially headers) will break the shortcode. That’s because we’ve already added formatting, and your formatting is in conflict with that. Try using “paragraph” text.

Available Shortcodes:

Accordions

Text: [accordions ][accordion title='title 1']content 1[/accordion][accordion title='title2']content 2[/accordion][accordion title='title3']content 3[/accordion][/accordions]

Published:

title 1

content 1

title2

content 2

title3

content 3

Buttons

Text: [wagnerbutton size="large" color="#a78e3d" target="_self" url="http://wagner.edu" icon="noicon" ]A Wagner Button[/wagnerbutton]

Published: A Wagner Button

Color Box

Text: [colorbox title="Box title" color="#004331" ]Content for colorbox.[/colorbox]

Published:

Display Posts

Text: [wagner-posts numofposts="2" sentences="2" posts_orderby="title" posts_orderin="asc" specific_category=",web-group" show_posted_date="yes" ]

Published: 

---

Directory pages

November 19, 2012

The profile shortcode should be used for pages that list the faculty in a department, or the staff or administration in an office. Each box can link to another page, usually a more in-depth profile. [...] Keep reading →

---

Faculty Committee Minutes Tutorial

May 13, 2013

Here’s a short and simple video tutorial on how to update faculty committee minutes. It’s just about three minutes. [...] Keep reading →

iFrame

Description: The iFrame can be used for PDFs, webpages, and really anything that you want embedded on your site.

Text: [iframe url="http://wagner.edu/communications/files/2012/11/CopyCenter_Request_Form.pdf" scrolling="yes" width="100%" height="500" frameborder="" marginheight="" style="" ]

Published:

InfoBoxes:

Text: [infobox type="warning" clickable="yes" boldtext="Due soon." ]Applications are due at the end of the month.[/infobox]

Published: 

Notes:

Text: [note color="#fefcb1" ]Add a little color to your content.[/note]

Published: 

PhotoBox:

Description: These photoboxes link to another webpage, and are useful for landing pages or to highlight important sections of your site. Photos used here should be horizontal, and will be cropped to 16×9 dimensions if the photo is not already. If you want to display multiple photoboxes in a Pinterest-like grid, insert [photoboxes-container ] before the first box, and [/photoboxes-container] after the last box.

Text: [photobox-h title="Main Hall Renovation" align="left" width="" textwrap="yes" link="http://wagner.edu/give-now" imageurl="http://wagner.edu/communications/files/2012/12/HardHat-300x169.jpg" ]Main Hall recently received major renovations. Please continue to support our beautiful campus.[/photobox-h]

Published:

Main Hall RenovationMain Hall recently received major renovations. Please continue to support our beautiful campus.

Profiles — Wagner Profile:

Description: This shortcode should be used for all directory-type pages, including faculty listings and office staff. See detailed instructions here.

Text: [wagnerprofile name="Benjamin Franklin" title="Founding Father" emailaddress="pre.email@usa.org" phonenumber="718/222-3333" location="Boston, MA" link="http://wagner.edu" imageurl="http://wagner.edu/communications/files/2012/10/450px-Benjamin_Franklin_National_Memorial-150x200.jpg" ]Research interests: How to found a country, library creation, electricity, mapmaking.[/wagnerprofile]

Published:

• 
• Benjamin Franklin
• Founding Father
• what.is.email@america.org

  718/222-3333

  Boston, MA

  ---

  Research interests: How to found a country, library creation, electricity, mapmaking.

Tabs:

Text, option 1: [tabs type="lizatom-tabs-vertical" ][tab title='title 1']content 1[/tab][tab title='title2']content 2[/tab][tab title='title3']content 3[/tab][/tabs]

Published, vertical option:

Text, option 2: [tabs type="lizatom-tabs-horizontal" ][tab title='title 1']content 1[/tab][tab title='title2']content 2[/tab][tab title='title3']content 3[/tab][/tabs]

Published, horizontal option:

Tooltips:

Text: [tooltip position="top" color="blue" delay="0" tooltiptext="Get help." tooltiphead="" ]Please visit our web tutorials for help on awesome Shortcodes. [/tooltip]

Published (hover over link): Please visit our web tutorials for help on awesome Shortcodes. Get help.

Troubleshooting:

I typed in everything correctly, but the shortcode is not converting correctly. Some of these shortcodes are finicky. Try inserting the shortcode again from the icon on a new line.