Local Groups/Guide/Website

Welcome
If you are reading this page, you are probably in the process of getting set up with your own Local Group website, such as http://gr.okfn.org for OKFN Greece. If so, congratulations and welcome to the network! Below are some quick instructions for how to get things set up on your Wordpress-based site, including how to customise it for your needs. This is also a place for other Local Group coordinators to share tips and tricks encountered in their own experiences. Have something to add? Please do!

How do I access the site?
In order to get into the back-end of your Local Group website, you must be set up with an account on the Open Knowledge Foundation's Wordpress blogfarm. To do this:


 * Get an account at http://okfn.org/register/
 * Ping the Local Groups Manager to get you added to the website.
 * Go to http://{your-site-shortcode}.okfn.org/wp-admin and fill in your new user name and password. You should have either Administrator or Editor status.

How do I configure my site's theme and flavour?
The site theme is a very important part of the visual identity of webpages that are part of the Open Knowledge Foundation network, and its 'flavour' determines what version of the site theme is displayed for viewers. To set these up:


 * From "Settings / Appearance" left-hand menu http://{your-site-shortcode}.okfn.org/wp-admin/themes.php, activate “OKFN Master Theme”.
 * On this same left-hand menu, go down to "Appearance / OKFN Master Theme Options" http://{your-site-shortcode}.okfn.org/wp-admin/themes.php?page=functions.php
 * From here, you can set the display and other visual options for your site. The setting that has the biggest impact on how the site looks is the 'flavour', which determines the overall look (we recommend Classic).

Social media
On this page, you can also choose to display your group's social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook. Once configured, these will appear with nice icons on the top right-hand corner of the site.

Discussion list
You can also set up an easy form for people to sign up for your Local Group's discussion list on the top or bottom of the site. To configure:


 * Scroll down to the 'Mailing List' category.
 * Put the following "http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/subscribe/{your-list-name}" into the 'action attribute' portion of this category.
 * Toggle 'Mailman' instead of 'Mailchimp'.

How do I build new pages?
Pages are the viewable components that make up the content of your site. While posts only appear on your Blog page, Pages can be anything - from an internal page like "About Us" to an external URL. To set up your first page:


 * Go to the left-hand settings menu.
 * Find the "Pages" menu http://{your-site-shortcode}.okfn.org/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=page
 * Create a new page, give it a name, such as 'About' or 'Contact Us'. You can now populate it with content.

Sidebar and Footer
The right-hand column and the footer are populated by 'widgets'. To add widgets to your site, navigate to "Settings / Appearance / Widgets". Once there, drag your chosen widgets to where you'd like them to appear on the site. For more information see the WordPress documentation http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/

How do I set up a magazine-style blog page?
To create an image-focused magazine layout for your blog (such as the one on the Open Economics working group at http://openeconomics.net/blog/), do the following:


 * Create a new Page.
 * Choose 'Magazine' as its template (you can toggle this option on the right-hand side).

Magazine Mode will display:
 * The latest blog post which has the category "Featured". This category is important because it tells the blog layout which post you want to be at the top of the page. When you set up your site, you will need to create this category - just add it using the 'Category' option on the left-hand side of your post.
 * The latest four blog posts which aren't that featured beneath it.

Setting a featured image on blog posts
The algorithm which displays a picture in your posts via Magazine Mode looks for "magazine.image" in the blog post. So, to make sure your blog post is featured with the image you are using, add the following HTML comment:


 * You can stick this directly into your blog post - just make sure you do it under HTML view.
 * You can stick this directly into your blog post - just make sure you do it under HTML view.

Setting blog page as website home
Many Local Groups choose to make the magazine-style blog as the front page of their site, such as http://br.okfn.org/ OKFN Brasil. To do this:


 * Go back to Settings menu on left-hand side.
 * Under "Settings / Reading", change the setting "front page displays" to "a static page".
 * Now choose "Blog" (or whatever you have named your blog) as the static page. Ignore the "posts page" part - this is deactivated on the OKFN Mastertheme.

Using the Home template
To create a standard homepage that includes blog posts, you can use the 'Home' template. This template adds the four latest 'featured' posts (see above) to the bottom of the page.

How do I create my navigation menu?
Your navigation menu will appear on the top of every page of your website. It allows viewers to move around the site. To get it set up:


 * Go back to Settings menu on left-hand side.
 * Go to "Appearance / Menus" http://{your-site-shortcode}.okfn.org/wp-admin/nav-menus.php and create a menu. This menu will appear in the top navigation bar of your website.
 * Give the menu a name, then select it under the “Primary Navigation” dropdown.
 * Once you have created pages using the "Pages" menu (see above), you can fill it with both internal Pages and external URLs.

How do I set my website's tagline?
The 'Tagline' is a nicely-formatted visual statement that will go on the top of your website and say something like "a Local Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation". You can decide whether you want it to appear on just the main page of your website, on every page, or not at all. To customise:


 * Go to the settings menu on left-hand side.
 * Go to "Settings / General" http://{your-site-shortcode}/wp-admin/options-general.php and set the Tagline field to "A Local Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation."
 * To determine where you'd like this strapline to be visible, go back to "Appearance / OKFN Mastertheme Options" http://{your-site-shortcode}/wp-admin/themes.php?page=functions.php and scroll down to "Tagline Location".

How do I set my homepage?
You have several options for how to configure your homepage. Some highlights from existing Local Groups:


 * A magazine-style blog layout (as seen on OKFN Brasil http://br.okfn.org)
 * An introductory page explaining what your group does (as seen on OKFN Australia http://au.okfn.org/)
 * A regular blog layout (as seen on OKFN Belgium http://okfn.be/)
 * Something more complex, like a carousel (as seen on OKFN Czech Republic http://cz.okfn.org/) or a timeline (as seen on OKFN Greece http://gr.okfn.org).

Have a question about how to do one of these options? Ask your Local Group colleagues for tips on how they did it! First though, to set up a 'Page' as your homepage, do the following:


 * Go to "Settings / Reading" http://{your-site-shortcode}.okfn.org/wp-admin/options-reading.php and set the “Front page displays” part to “A static page” and select the desired homepage.
 * For example, if you want your frontpage to be the blog, set "Blog". Or you can choose another 'Page' that you've set up.
 * Note: Don't bother trying to set the "Posts page" option. This is deactivated on the OKFN Mastertheme.

How to make a carousel-style homepage
If you're really liking the look of the carousel homepage option like that of OKFN Belgium http://okfn.be, it's actually fairly simple to set up one of your own with a bit of HTML. Just paste this into the 'Page' you want the carousel to appear in (make sure you're pasting it using HTML view!):


 * Please note that one of these slides must always have class="active" applied to it, as this will be the first slide that is displayed.
 * There are also a few pre-defined classes can be applied to the carousel to alter the styling, such as:
 * Other supported attributes include setting a heading and caption. For example, to add a caption to a slide you would enter it as follows:

What are other shortcodes and display options?
For more advanced webpage builders, there are several more available shortcodes in the works on the OKFN Mastertheme ReadMe. You can keep track of the newest ones at https://github.com/okfn/wordpress-theme-okfn, and we also recommend sharing notes with other Local Group leads who have added other interesting modifications and widget options to their own sites.