building yourcloud website.

a complete guide.

Introduction

What Can I Control?

How Can I Do This?

Who Can Do These Things?

How Do I Add Content To My Site?

How Do I Change The Appearance of my Site?

How Do I Change The Menus and Sidebars?

Is There Anything I Shouldn’t Do?

Can I Have Some More Help?

Contents

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Find your way around.

One of the most vital parts to your realsmart cloud is your schools publicly viewable website. This is almost always the first thing students and teachers will see when logging on to realsmart and should be used as the hub for information and news on your school. The website and its functionality are designed by smartassess through the popular Content Management System (CMS), WordPress.

WordPress is a relatively simple way to update website content quickly and efficiently. It also allows smartassess to provide mechanisms for you to manage and maintain any other web services you use, such as realsmart and Google apps.

You can find out all about WordPress at: http://wordpress.org/

IntroductionWhat is your cloud website?

Your Site

Here at smartassess we realise every school is different. The smartassess WordPress theme allows for plenty of user customisation so you can really make it your own. There are six main elements you can change to influence the appearance and content of your school’s site.

The elements you can control are:

1. Logo

2. Title and strapline

3. Website menu

4. Carousel pictures and descriptions

5. Website content

6. Sidebar widgets and links

What can I control?You have the power!

Customising your Site

The logo area is the perfect spot for your school’s logo.

The title is usually the schools’ name and the strapline is great for a school motto.

The main menu is how you organise your site, fill it with the pages of your choice.

The slideshow is the place to put images of your school, staff and students.

Your content is anything that you post to your site through posts and pages.

You can edit which links display on your sidebar such as Google & Cloud apps.

Logo

ImageCarousel

Title andStrapline

MenuBar

WebsiteContent

SidebarContent

Your website will already be set up to have a log in box, and you will have been given a username and password.

When you log in to your cloud site with your username and password, you will gain some extra links in your sidebar. If you are allowed to change the website, you will have a WordPress link that says “Website Admin”. If you want to edit your site before we have user data you will need to contact us.

If you cannot do this step, please contact the person in your school that maintains your website, or if this is you, contact support@smartassess.com

Clicking on this link will take you to your WordPress dashboard, where you can control the appearance and content of your website. Remember, the dashboard is the hub of your cloud site. From here you can edit anything relating to the website of your school.

How can I do this?It’s really quite easy...

You control who can change what in WordPress.

When a realsmart cloud user logs in, their WordPress user (and other services such as Google apps) is provisioned (created), and given the “role” of subscriber.

It is up to you (or another administrator) to promote users’ roles.

WordPress has the following roles:

Administrators - have complete access to all functionalityEditors - can post, publish and edit all contentAuthors - can post and publish their own contentContributors - can create posts, but not publish themSubscribers - can only comment

All users can comment on posts that allow comments.

All comments are moderated (ie they don’t appear on the website until someone has approved them). Administrators and Editors can moderate comments.

You have to be logged in to the website (ie you have to be a registered user) to make comments.

You can manage your site’s users by going to USERS > USERS.

You can manage your own profile by going to USERS > YOUR PROFILE.

You can change the way your name displays eg from John Smith to Mr Smith, or Smiffy if you prefer!

Who can do thesethings?You have the power!

User Permissions

The main activity you will do with your website is add content to it. This can be done in two ways, through “Posts” and “Pages”.

POSTS are related content eg Newsletters, Activity days etc. These are added frequently at relevant times as things are happening in and around your school.

PAGES are static content. Information on your site that is posted once and is then generally left for users to view eg How to find us, How to contact us etc.

Media

You can add media such as pictures, video, audio etc using the tools above the post/page body text.

To embed web 2.0 items such as youtube or vimeo videos, issuu pdfs or powerpoints, google maps etc, create your items in the app of your choice, then copy the ‘embed code’ of your item.

Select the HTML tab at the top right of the post body text, and paste your embed code into the post.

Adding Posts

To add a new post or page, in your Wordpress dashboard go to POSTS/PAGES > ADD NEW.

A basic post consists of a title and some body text although you have a range of options to improve your post.

How do I add contentto my website?Adding to your cloud site.

Posting Process

Categories

You relate posts by selecting Categories to tag them and therefore link them together. To display posts and pages in your website, you need to make sure a Menu Item links to either the related page or category.

The category “Front Page News” is the default home page category.

Publishing

You can PREVIEW the content before publishing it in the PUBLISH area (top right). Here, you can also control when a post will appear / disappear, by controlling its publish dates.

Discussion

You can decide whether other people on your network may comment on the post by checking/unchecking the ‘Allow Comment’ box in the ‘Discussion’ section.

Post Title

Post Body

InsertMedia

HTML Editor

Categories

PublishingTools

DiscussionTools

In your Wordpress dashboard, click SMART OPTIONS on the sidebar. From this page you can change virtually everything about the visual appearance of your website.

Header

In the header sub-section you can change the Site Title, edit the website’s Tagline, and upload your own School Logo (which must be 75 x 75 pixels). You can also customize the website’s header in this area.

Slideshow

In the slideshow sub-section you can customise the image carousel that is located under

your school’s logo and site title. Here you can change the

image itself, the title and the description. You also have

the ability to add a hyperllink to each image which can be

another great way to make navigating your site very simple and user friendly.

Carousel images must be 960 x 260 pixels.

How do I change theappearance of my site?Branding your page

Designing your Site.

Custom Colours

In this area you can customise the 5 main colours that are used in your website. These are the site background, ink colour, title colour, sub-title colour and the body text colour.

Advanced CSS Editor

The advanced CSS editor gives you an incredible amount of control over the appearance of your cloud site. With the editor you can tweak a variety of elements, from the size of your header or carousel, to the default font your website uses.

NOTE: Please remember it is very easy to make mistakes in CSS that will effect the visual appearance of your website. If you are unsure how to use CSS we suggest you refrain from editing this section. It is always a very good idea to create a backup of the code in this box before you make your changes, this way, if things go wrong, you can easily revert back to it.

Remember to check out our support blog at http://help.realsmart.co.uk for guides, tutorials and resources on using the CSS editor.

How easy your website is to navigate tends to be determined by how you organise your main menu and sidebars.

How do I change themenus and sidebars?Making your site easy to navigate.

Changing the main menu bar

To edit the site menu, go to APPEARANCE > MENUS

The website menu is made up of three things:

CUSTOM LINKS - Hyperlinks to whatever you want to link to.

PAGES - Which link to WordPress static Pages.

CATEGORIES - This lists all the posts tagged with the specific category.

To add an item menu, you create a link, or select a page or category, and add it to the menu. The item will be created at the bottom of the menu, and you drag and drop the item to where you want it to be, dragging left to right creates an indented menu.

PLEASE NOTE: Do NOT create an item that is indented more than twice as it may not be compatible with future developments of the menu.

Menu tips

If you don’t want a menu item to do anything (ie it’s just a title or placeholder), create a LINK item and put # as the link

When creating your website, think about which areas will be pages (static posts that don’t have periodic updates e.g. How to find us, Our Ofsted report etc), and which will be categories (things that will have more than one post e.g. Newsletters, Activity Days etc)

About Us is for a general visitor, and links to the category “Front Page News”.

Try not to make big lists in the menu, such as POLICIES > (a big list of all your policies). Instead, create a page (or category) that displays the big list of things.

Changing the sidebar widgets and links

Go to APPEARANCE > WIDGETS

Here, you’ll see three widget areas on the right hand of the screen. These are for:

SIDEBAR - For widgets that will appear on the website to users even if they are not logged in

SIDEBAR FOR LOGGED IN USERS - For widgets that will appear to ALL logged in users

SIDEBAR FOR LOGGED IN MENTORS - For widgets that you only want mentors to see

You can drag and drop widgets from the left hand side to any of these sidebar areas, and if they have settings, you can edit them there.

CAUTION:

Do NOT get rid of the SMARTASSESS SSO LOGIN FORM - it will already have your smartassess site ID in there. If you do get rid of it by mistake, you will have to contact us for this number.

You will mainly be managing LINKS in the widget sidebar. Links have categories, like posts, and when you add a LINKS widget, you can choose the link category to display. You create and manage your links by going to LINKS. They’re quite straight forward to manage.

You can add an image to your links by uploading a 20 x 20 pixel image to your MEDIA and pasting the URL when editing a link in ADVANCED > IMAGE ADDRESS.

Cloud Apps

Cloud Applications bring the power of free apps through the web to your realsmart cloud. Rather than purchasing a product and installing it on individual machines, you can access these applications quickly and directly through any computer with access to the internet.

To add Cloud apps to your site you simply create a new link using the applications URL, and then add it to your sidebar. Easy!

Remember to visit our support blog at http://help.realsmart.co.uk for more resources, including our favourite cloud app recommendations!

DO NOT change the THEME of your website. The smartassess theme is specifically developed with functionality built into the theme. If you want to change anything about the appearance of your site that isn’t covered in this document, please contact us first.

YOU CANNOT add any WordPress plug ins yourself. If you want to add a plug in, contact us, and we can do it for you.

YOU CANNOT update WordPress or BuddyPress to the latest version. We will keep an eye on any updates and when we’ve thoroughly tested the upgrades, we will upgrade your site.

If there’s anything you are unsure of then please visit our support blog athttp://help.realsmart.co.uk. Our blog is frequently updated with new step-by-step guides and tutorials. If this cannot answer your problem then please let us know and we will update the blog ASAP!

Alternatively, feel free to contact us directly on support@smartassess.com for a quick response and solution to your issue

Enjoy your realsmart experience!

The realsmart cloud team

Is there anything Ishouldn’t do?

Can I have some more help?

Just a couple of no-go’s

For when you haven’t found what you were looking for.

smartassess ltdThe Innovtion Centre217 PortobelloSheffieldS1 4DP

T 0114 224 2334F 0709 286 5248E support@smartassess.com

www.smartassess.com