To create a new post using WordPress: In the Dashboard, click Posts -> Add New.

Enter a title for the post which will become the headline on the final article.

Truncating: Keep in mind that CalPress is designed to truncate the headline when appearing on the front page, depending on where it appears.

• When an article is in the Featured spot on the front page, it will appear as-is without any shortening.
• When an article is on the front page, in one of the listed article boxes, the headline will be truncated to the first 10 words to keep the layout consistent.
• When an article headline appears as a link in a category block at the bottom of the front page, the headline will be truncated to the first 13 words.
• Articles in sidebar widgets may be truncated between 10 and 15 words depending on the type of widget used.

Writing an article and pasting from Word.

When writing an article, you have two drafting modes: Visual and HTML mode. The default can be set in your User Profile. Visual mode will display formatting in a way similar to how it will appear on the site. Some styles, like fonts and spacing, will NOT match exactly how the article will appear on the page. Visual mode is simply a guideline for general formatting rules.

If you are writing an article in Microsoft Word, it is important to use WordPress’s Paste From Word function, rather than pasting directly into visual mode.

In the formatting bar, click the icon the farthest right, called the Kitchen Sink. This will reveal a second row of icons, including an option to Paste as Plain Text or Paste from Word.

• Paste As Plain Text — This mode will strip out all formatting, and paste only the text. This is often the most ideal option when pasting text from other programs.
• Paste From Word — This mode will strip out Microsoft Word specific formatting, but will preserve links that were added in Word. This is ideal when drafting article in Microsoft Word. If other formatting is carried from Word, use the Paste as Plain text option instead.

Writing an excerpt

An excerpt is a short paragraph to lead-off the article on the front page. If there is no excerpt written in the post, CalPress will fallback to the first paragraph of the article. Oftentimes, the first paragraph of the article lacks context or doesn’t accurately describe the story. This is a situation where you should use the excerpt field, so the author to write a custom description to appear on the front page that is different from the lead of the article. The excerpt does not show up on article pages, only on the front page.

1. In the Dashboard, when drafting an article, click Screen Options in the upper right-hand corner.
2. Make sure the Excerpt box is check, which will display the options box below the post.
3. You must save the post in order to save the excerpt.

Adding one or more bylines

CalPress integrates nicely with the Co-Authors Plus WordPress plugin to allow for multiple authors in posts. When drafting a post, look for the Post Authors box to add additional authors. If the Post Authors box is not visible, turn it on using Screen Options in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

When drafting new posts, you will automatically be included as a primary author of a post. To change the primary author, click on your name and erase the text from the box, then start typing the name of the replacement author. You can add additional authors by searching the box that appears below your name. Co-Authors plugin will search for additional authors only after typing in two letters. It searches the following fields in this order: 1) user login; 2) user nicename; 3) display name; 4) user email; 5) first name; 6) last name; and 7) nickname.

To remove an author, click the red remove link next to author’s name. Note: the remove option only appears when there is more than one author, as every post needs to have at least one author.

To re-order the authors, click and drag the author names. The order from top to bottom will determine the order the names will appear in the byline of the article.

Adding Multimedia (Lead Art)

CalPress 2.0 introduces a brand new method of adding multimedia to posts. A new multimedia box in the post will appear giving the user multiple options for adding multimedia to a post. It is important to understand the structure of a post in CalPress before adding multimedia.

Posts in CalPress have two general spots for multimedia: the Lead Art area and the Inline Art area next to an article.

• The lead art area can only carry one piece of multimedia: an image, photo gallery, video or embed code.
• The inline art section can carry a maximum of 10 piece of multimedia: images, photo galleries, videos, audio pieces, links or embed code.

Adding a Featured Image as Lead Art

To upload images to a post, click the Upload/Insert button just above the post content area. Make sure to fill out the caption and alt sections of the image after uploading. Alt is used to describe the image for people who view the web with screen readers. The caption is a visible description that will appear below the photo to add additional information and context of the photo.

When uploading one or more photos, it’s important to specify one of the images as a Featured Image. If this is not done, the photos will not appear above the article. To specify one of the images as a featured image, click the featured image link just below the photo on the upload pane (see image below). There can only be one featured image per post, so clicking the link on a different photo will change the featured photo. The featured photo will appear on the right-hand side of the post to give a visual indicator of which photo is chosen.

CalPress will automatically default to a featured image for the lead art of the post. If there is no photo uploaded, it will change the lead art to None when the post is saved.

Adding a Photo Gallery as Lead Art

CalPress has an option for displaying a photo gallery in the lead art position. To display a photo gallery, use the upload tool to upload two or more photos (see previous section on how to use upload tool), then pick Photo Gallery for the lead art option. Photo galleries require a minimum of two photos.

Adding Vimeo or YouTube Videos as Lead Art

CalPress 2.0 adds new options for supporting both YouTube and Vimeo videos specifically in the lead art position. To add a video from either of these video sharing services, first select the service from the drop down menu for lead art. Next, enter the full URL to the video page.

• Vimeo URLs will start with http://vimeo.com/ and end with a number, like this: http://vimeo.com/2391019
  
• YouTube videos come in several different formats. It’s important to select the video from the page where only the video is shown (not a channel or playlist page.) One key to knowing if you have the correct URL is to look for v= somewhere in the URL. This is the part of the URL which specifies the video ID that CalPress uses to display the video.

Videos in lead art are automatically sized appropriately depending one where they appear.

Adding a Self-Hosted Video as Lead Art

If you prefer not to use a video sharing service, you can manually upload your video to a web server using and FTP client. Once on a Web service, find the Web URL to your video, and enter in the full url under the Hosted Video option. CalPress uses MediaElement script to display video, which supports a wide range of video formats. As of 2012, the recommended video format is H.264, with the MP4 wrapper. This will display on the widest range of devices. In order for the video to appear on mobile devices, like iOS, make sure to encode your videos with the baseline option turned on (if this option is available to you.)

In most programs, like Adobe Premiere, selecting the YouTube or Vimeo export presets is sufficient.

Adding Custom Embed Code as Lead Art

To add embed code from a third-party website on the Web, select the Embed Code option from the multimedia lead art section. Embed code option is also useful if you want to embed videos from other video sharing sites other than Vimeo and YouTube, or to embed a Google Map.

On the third-party sharing site, look for a link or option—typically under a “share” menu—to view the embed code. Copy the HTML embed code, and enter it as the lead art media under the Embed Code option.

If you see a width and height specified in the embed code, it is useful to change this to 100% for both values. This will ensure the embedded element fits properly in the lead art spot, as well as on mobile devices.

Adding multimedia (inline art)

Inline art displays beside the post at 300 pixels wide. You can have a maximum number of 10 inline art items. The first inline options is always shown. If you need more, click the “Add another inline element” link to add additional piece of inline art. If you ever change your mind after saving a post, and wish to remove a piece of inline art, change the inline art option to none and save the post, this will remove this piece of inline art. The order of inline art items displayed next to an article will be determined by the order they were added.

Adding a Photo Gallery as Inline Art

To add an inline photo gallery, make sure two or more photos are uploaded to the post and select Photo Gallery for the inline option. Even though there is a box for media, leave it blank. Add a title and caption as needed. (this box will be removed in future versions)

Adding Vimeo, YouTube or Hosted video as Inline Art

To add a YouTube, Vimeo or Hosted Video inline, follow the instructions above for each media type. In the Media box, include the URL to either your Vimeo video or YouTube video. For self-hosted videos, enter the full url to your video.

Adding Custom Embed Code as Inline Art

To add embed code in the inline spot, choose the Embed Code option and paste your embed code in the Media section. If there is a width specified in your embed code, it is ideal to change this to 300 pixels wide in order to fit properly in this inline spot. The height option can be set to anything, but the most ideal will be a value from 250 to 400 pixels depending on how tall you want your embedded element to appear.

Adding an Image as Inline Art

To add an inline image, you need to specify the full URL to the image you wish to embed. If you’ve uploaded a photo to the post, you can get the full URL to the image by clicking the Upload/Insert button above the content of your post, and finding the image your uploaded (sometimes listed under the gallery or media library section). Find the button that says “File URL” and copy the full URL to the image. Paste this URL in the media box of the post.

You want to make sure to use a URL to the full-size of the image. CalPress uses a pop-up box to display a larger version of the image when clicked.

Adding Audio as Inline Art

To add a piece of inline audio, enter the full URL to the audio file in the media box after selecting inline audio from the drop-down menu. Audio files should be encoded as MP3s. If your audio file is short in length and has a small file size (usually less than 2mb) it is possible to upload the audio file using the same Upload/Insert media option that is used for uploading images.

But if your audio file is more than 2mb, you will have to upload your audio file to an external Web server using an FTP client, like CyberDuck. Once you get the full URL to your audio file, paste it in the media section.

Adding a Related Links Category as Inline Art

WordPress has a build-in method for storing a collection of hyperlinks. With related links category option, you can specify an ID number for this category, and it will display this reusable collection of links next to your story. This is useful when there is a series of stories on a particular topic, and you want the same collection of links to appear next to each one. These links will also dynamically update for each article as you add more links to the collection, without going into each post.

1. To add a new links category, click on the Links section in the WordPress Dashboard, and select Link Categories.
2. Fill out the information on the left side for adding a new category, or click on the name of an existing category on the right side.
3. When viewing a link category page, look at the URL, and you will see tag_ID= somewhere in the URL. Make note of the the number after the equals symbol. This is the value you need to enter into the media box for this inline art item. Using this tag id, CalPress can display all links associated with this category next to your post.
   
4. To add more links to the collection, or rather “category,” click the Add New option under Links in the WordPress Dashboard.

Adding Manual Links as Inline Art

In CalPress, there is an option to manually add links that will appear in the inline spot of your post, without using a links category described above. This is a good way to add links or resources to an article on an individual basis, especially when you don’t think other articles will be reusing these links.

To enter manual links, we use a type of syntax formatting called MarkDown. To enter a link, first type in the linkable text surrounded in square brackets. This is the text that will appear to the reader of the article. Then, immediately adjacent to the square brackets, paste in the URL that should be linked to when the reader clicks on this text, surrounded in parenthesis. Here is an example of the formatting:

[A link to Google.com](http://google.com)
[This links to WordPress.org](http://wordpress.org)
[Find out more information about this article](http://calpresstheme.org)

It’s important to enter each link on its own line, or the CalPress will display an error when saving the post. You must follow this format exactly.

Advanced Options for multimedia

Under the advanced options link, we’ve included a few fields for including some features for customizing the look of a post using JavaScript or custom CSS.

• Extra CSS — To include some custom CSS styles, type them here. Do not include any <style> or <link> tags, as these will be added automatically. Any CSS styles added using this option will only appear on this article page. If you need to link to an external stylesheet, you will have to add the stylesheet URL using custom fields, and using extra_css as the value of the custom field.
• Extra JS — To include some custom JavaScript, type them in this field. JQuery library is added automatically to CalPress and is available to you in no-conflict mode. This means if you wish to add some jQuery, you need to add your document ready handler like this: jQuery(document).ready(function($){}); Then you may precede each statement with the dollar symbol as needed within this document handler.

Showing Sidebar — Checking removing sidebar will prevent the sidebar from displaying on this post. This causes the lead art to consume the full width of the page. This is ideal for special packages and features.

Removing Checks — CalPress preforms a series of validation checks when adding multimedia to make sure it’s viable for display. If any of these multimedia items do not pass the checks, CalPress will display an error message when saving the post. If for some reason this feature is not working properly, and you know that the media is properly formatted, you can check this box and it will temporarily remove validation checks when saving the post, and accept anything entered in the multimedia fields as-is.

The following items are checked:

• Checks to see if Vimeo video exist and is not password protected.
• Checks to see if YouTube video is correctly formatted and publicly accessible.
• Checks to see if feature image is specified on post.
• Checks to see if more than one photo is uploaded for photo gallery.
• Checks to see if hosted video URL is valid (does not check video format)
• Checks to see if inline audio is valid AND is correctly formated as audio (mp3 or ogg)
• Checks to see if related links category exists as a link category, and it’s a number
• Checks formatting for manual links, and that there is one per line

The MissionLoc@l site contains an event calendar and iCal subscription feed that allows users to subscribe to existing and future events using their iCal calendar. The way the feed is setup, they have to manually subscribe within the iCal program, and all of the events will automatically be transfered as calendar items into a new calendar.

Step 1) Open your iCal program, and under the “subscription” section, right-click (or control-click) the area just below any existing subscriptions, then click the “Subscribe…” option.

Step 2) In the Calendar URL, enter http://missionlocal.org/?ical=events as the calendar you wish to subscribe to.

Step 3) A settings window will come up. Make sure to set the auto-refresh setting to Every Day. Setting this to more often can reduce performance, as the calendar database is very large and is process intensive.