For those who have been asking for the ability to put news on your site or have announcements on the homepage sidebar, well it’s finally here. On 4/20 we rolled out “Posts” – they’re servings of content that are listed in reverse chronological order on your site from newest to oldest. Posts are intended to be used for short lived pieces of content, and because of this they will always have a date associated with them.

Posts also come with Categories and Tags which allow you to group related topics and create associations between posts. Categories provide a hierarchical association much like folders on your computer while tags are words or phrases that are important to the post. For more information read this help article.

In the upcoming weeks we will be holding a number of training sessions to explain how to use the new Posts functionality, but if you would like to get a head start and try creating some posts on your own, check out our newly added Posts section in the FAQ and then contact the Webteam to get your posts page created and start posting.

Thanks,
HSPH Webteam
webteam@hsph.harvard.edu

About three weeks ago we launched a new method of working with sidebars using “Widgets” to replace the current “Side Link Modules.” This new system allows the easy adding of text, basic html, images, RSS Feeds, Twitter Feeds, and more to the sidebars of your site in a drag and drop interface.

If your website was using this Sidelink Module system, you have been send a message that your site still uses the old side link module system.

This system will be completely removed in two weeks time on April 5^th.  In addition, any sidebars created using the side link module will be removed as well. At this point we would like to request that you migrate your old side link modules to Widget sidebars. A full description of the Widget sidebar system can be found here along with instructions on how to create new sidebars:

http://blogs.sph.harvard.edu/wp-doc/faqs/how-do-i-add-a-side-bar-to-a-page/

Thanks,
HSPH Webteam
webteam@hsph.harvard.edu

Links to Helpful Content
• How Do I … With WordPress? – We’ve built a FAQ database but if you have a question not answered here, use the question form!
• Training Schedule – If you need/want WordPress training, this should be your first stop!
• WordPress Dashboard Login

Questions You Might Have…
• What web address/link do I use to login to edit my site?
• Is my old Publisher site available? 
• Do we still use Publisher?
• Was my site migrated to WordPress?
• I’m a member of the Faculty or a Researcher; how do I login?
• I’m a member of the Faculty or a Researcher; was my site migrated?

Chris Ternan sent out an email earlier on behalf of Deane Eastwood and Julie Rafferty with our WordPress site go-live date and other pertinent information. In case you haven’t seen that email (please note that this email was only sent to site publishers!), here it is in its entirety. Please let us know if you have any questions!

———————————–

Dear HSPH Web Publishers,

We are writing to alert you that the new design for the HSPH website and move to WordPress has been extremely complex – but is nearing completion, thanks in part to many of you.  As a result, we have established January 9, 2013 at 4 pm as the date and time that we will officially flip the switch on the new website.

As someone responsible for updating content on the HSPH website, what does this mean to you?

1)      You should have completed WordPress training and been updating your website in WordPress in preparation for the switchover.
2)      Recently all the webpages updated in WordPress were switched over from the testing servers to the servers on which they will live from now on – so you should doublecheck your pages to make sure that all the changes you made have been migrated successfully. Pay particular attention that PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, JPGs and media files have been successfully migrated.   We don’t anticipate any problems, but we encourage you to doublecheck.  You can continue to update pages at hsph.andplus.com now through January 9 at noon.
3)      When the website “goes live” in its new design and format, the process will actually take perhaps as long as 8 hours to be universally visible across HSPH, on computers at home, on mobile devices, and on computers around the world.  This is the nature of the internet.  Do not be surprised if the sections of the site you manage do not all “go live” simultaneously, and some people report still seeing the old site while you see the new one.
4)      After the site has been launched, we encourage you to go through your site and check links as soon as possible.
5)      This is a big project — migrating nearly 12,000 pages from one system, design, and set of servers to a new system, design, and set of servers. Inevitably glitches will occur at launch and after launch.  We will be sending out an email to everyone at HSPH before the site launches letting them know this and providing you and them with information about how to alert us to any problems that occur so they can be quickly rectified.

We are excited that the process of unveiling the new website is nearing a conclusion.  We appreciate everyone’s hard work on this project, and have intentionally left you some time before and after the holiday week to make sure your site is accurate, looking good, and working as planned.

For the latest updates regarding the migration, please visit –

http://hsph.me/wp

Beginning on January 10 through January 31, we welcome publishers to use our bug tracking system to report issues/bugs discovered post launch, please visit –

http://blogs.sph.harvard.edu/wp-doc/bug-tracking/

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact any member of the IT web team at webteam@hsph.harvard.edu.

Julie Rafferty, Associate Vice Dean for Communications
Deane Eastwood, IT Director

We just posted a new Qualtrics training session on the Calendar; please let us know if you have any questions!

Oh; keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming Web Content Design and Management seminar! More information to come.

theWebTeam

As always, if you have a question, ask away!

We’ve got a new open door session on the 29th; please see the Calendar for more information.

We’ve just put a new training event (Dec 3) on the Calendar; it’s focused on using and enabling WordPress Analytics in your WordPress Dashboard.

Check it out!

Out on the Calendar, we’ve got a new training session up on how to use WordPress Forms; we highly recommend you check this one out.

Additional Office Hours and QA sessions have been scheduled; please see the Calendar for more information.

Jake@theWebTeam