Have you just been given a login for the website? Then this tour is for you. You don't need any experience, and there's not much you can break: most changes can be undone, and anything you aren't allowed to change stays locked.
Signing in
An admin creates your account for you. From there:
- Add /admin to the end of the website's address and open it in your browser.
- Enter your Username and Password. You sign in with your username, not your email address.
- Click Login.
If you forget your password, click Forgot password? under the form and enter your username. An email goes to the address on your account. After five wrong attempts your account is locked for ten minutes, so either wait or ask an admin.
Under the form you'll also find the Privacy notice. It explains what is kept about you and why, and it's worth a quick read.
Finding your way around
After signing in you arrive at the Dashboard. The sidebar on the left sorts everything into four groups:
- Calendar: Events, Recurring activities, Sermons and Sermon series
- Content: Pages, Blog posts, Announcements, Ministries and Navigation
- Media: Images and Documents, plus Fonts and Font licences
- Administration: Users, People, Locations, Newsletter subscriptions and the Security log, along with Site settings and Theme
Not everyone sees everything. The sidebar shows what fits your role.
Every item is laid out the same way. The content itself sits in the large main area, and the details that file it, such as its type, date or cover image, sit in the column on the right. Many items have the tabs Content, Related and SEO at the top.
The icon in the top right opens your Account. There you can change your password and choose, under Language, which language the admin panel uses. To sign out, look at the bottom of the sidebar.
Who can do what
Each account has one Role, and every role can do everything the one below it can.
- Contributors write and edit content: pages, blog posts, announcements, the calendar, sermons, images and documents. They can delete only what they created themselves.
- Editors also look after the site itself: Site settings, Navigation, Theme, Fonts, People, Locations and Newsletter subscriptions. They can delete other people's content too.
- Admins also manage users, change protected items and read the Security log. A few sensitive settings are theirs alone, such as Giving, Livestream and Analytics. They can also see who created or last changed something.
Pages and documents can be marked Protected, and then only an admin can change or delete them. The legal notice and privacy policy always are, and the home page can't be taken offline.
So if you find something you can only read, nothing is wrong. If it needs changing, ask someone with the right role.
Saving and publishing
Here's the one thing to remember: only pages and blog posts have drafts.
On those, you'll see two buttons at the top:
- Save Draft keeps your work. Visitors don't see it, so you can come back to it whenever you like.
- Publish changes puts it on the website, in both languages. The small arrow beside it lets you publish only the language you're working in.
You'll also see the Status at the top: Draft, Published or Changed. "Changed" means there's a newer draft while the website still shows the older text. Revert to published throws that draft away.
To take a page or post off the website completely, open the menu with the three dots and choose Unpublish. Its content stays safe as a draft.
Everything else, including events, sermons and announcements, has a plain Save button. Whatever you save there is public straight away, so give it one last read first.
Versions: your safety net
Most things keep a version each time they're saved, at least the last 25. If something goes wrong, here's how to get back:
- Open the item and switch to the Versions tab at the top.
- Pick a version from the list. You'll see what changed.
- Click Restore this version. On pages and blog posts, you can also Restore as draft from a published version and check it over first.
Images, documents, people, locations, Navigation and user accounts don't keep versions, so take a little extra care with those.
German and English
The website comes in German and English. At the top of the admin panel you'll see Locale and the language currently chosen. This isn't the same as the language in your Account: it picks which version of the content you're editing.
- Write and save the German first.
- Switch the Locale to English.
- Fill in the fields and save.
Fields that differ by language show the language's name after their label. Everything else, such as a page's URL path or a date, is shared by both. Where the English is still missing, the website shows the German, so you don't have to translate everything at once.
Where to go for common jobs
- Add a one-off event: Calendar → Events. Tick Announce on the website to create a matching announcement along with it.
- Look after a service or small group: Calendar → Recurring activities. Its events are created automatically.
- Cancel a single event: open it and set its Status to Cancelled. Events from a recurring activity can't be deleted.
- Add a sermon: Calendar → Sermons. It's linked to the next service on its own.
- Show a short notice: Content → Announcements, with Show from and Show until (inclusive). It disappears on its own afterwards.
- Write for the blog: Content → Blog posts.
- Design a page: Content → Pages, then Edit in the page builder.
- Upload an image or PDF: Media → Images or Documents. Give images Alt text, and remember that uploaded documents are publicly available.
- Change the menu: Content → Navigation (editors).
- Update the phone number or office hours: Administration → Site settings, Contact tab (editors).
Go ahead and try things. Test new wording as a draft, ask when something seems locked, and remember that on pages and blog posts you decide when it goes live.
