Getting started with your new website

This page will help get you started building your website. If you follow all of the steps below carefully, you should be ready to start creating content. Make sure you read all the way down this page and follow every step. Remember, for most of these steps you'll need to be logged in and have administrative privileges.

Step 1: Enter your Site Information

Your Site Information is located at [yoursite].unt.edu/admin/config/system/site-information. You can also get there by clicking the "Configuration" button in the black administration menu at the top of the page, then clicking the "Site Information" link. Filling out your site information is a very important step since this data determines most of what you see in the header and footer of your website. Make sure you enter information for all items listed below.

When you first arrive on the Site Information page:

• Site Name - This is the name of your (this) website. This will be the site name that appears in the header of your website. For example, "Office of Awesomeness".
• Slogan - This is not currently used by your website's default UNT "Greenlight" theme. If you provide a slogan it will not display anywhere on your website.
• E-mail Address - Enter the primary email address to be associated with this website.

In the "Department Information" tab:

• Department Name - This is the name of the department, school or division your website is associated with. It will appear in smaller text above your site name in the header. For example, the Office of Awesomeness is a part of the College of Greatness, so we would type "College of Greatness" into this field. Note: You may leave this field blank if necessary. Also, please don't type "UNT" or "University of North Texas" into this field.
• Department Link - This is the URL (web address) of the website associated with the department, school or division you typed into the Department Name field in the previous step. In our example, you'd type in the URL of the College of Greatness website.
• Building Location - Select the building that your organization uses as its primary office location. In most cases, this is the building that the Physical Address field below refers to, and will be paired with that information in the "Visit Us" area of your website's footer.
• Mailing Address - Enter the mailing address for your department. For example:
  
  1155 Union Circle #311070
  Denton, Texas
  76203-5017
   
• Physical Address - This is the address people would use to visit you or drop off a delivery. For example:
  
  101 Eagle Alley
  Denton, Texas 76203

In the "Contact Information" tab:

The information you enter in this section will appear in the "Contact Us" area of your website's footer.

• Contact Phone - This should be the primary phone number for your department.
• Contact Email - We suggest you use the primary email address for your department.
• Technical Contact Email - We suggest using the email address for the individual most responsible for tending to your website.

In the "Social Media" tab:

• Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. - These fields were created so that you could enter links to your social media/networking profiles and accounts. If you add a link, it will automatically show up in the footer of your website. If you don't enter ANY links, the links to the main UNT social media accounts will be used.

Step 2: Decide how you'd like to lay out your pages

Your Greenlight theme uses Display Suite in lieu of the Omega base theme's built-in layout options to set the layout for your website's pages. Display Suite allows you to select a layout for a single page, pages of the same type, or all pages within your site. Left sidebar? Right sidebar? Both? Custom layout? It's all baked in. Learn how to use Display Suite.

Step 3: Start adding content to your website

The best way to get started adding content to your website is simply to create a new page and start typing. For this example, we'll create a new page using the default "Basic page" content type. A content type is essentially a template for creating similar pages. If you'd like all the pages in one section of your website to use the same layout, but use a different layout for all other pages, the easiest way to do it is to simply create a new content type for that section.

Here's how to create a Basic page:

• First, click the "Add content" button in the gray shortcuts bar along the top of the page.
• Click the "Basic page" link.
• Fill out the "Title" field.
• Add your page content to the "Body" field.
• Every page you create has many options available for adding to menus, changing the URL path, etc.
  • Menu Settings - Here you have the option of placing the page in your website's navigation menu system. Click the "Provide a menu link" checkbox, then fill out as many options as you need. The "Parent item" dropdown allows you to select which menu and/or menu item this page will be listed under.
  • URL path settings - Here you can tell Drupal to either automatically set the URL (web address) for the page you are creating, or you can un-check the checkbox and set your own custom URL.
  • Revision information - Drupal allows you to create revisions. Ideally, you should plan on creating a revision every time you edit your pages. This will prove useful if you need to revert to a previous version of your page or go back an look at what the page looked like in the past.
  • Comment settings - By default, we've turned off "Comment settings". We urge you to refrain from using comments on standard pages. Unless you have someone that can constantly monitor your comments, you may find unwanted spam.
  • Authoring information - By default, we've turned off "Display Authoring Information". If you'd like to display the author's user name and date the page was created, you must edit the "content type" for Basic page.
  • Publishing options - This is where you can tell the system if your page should be published or not. For instance, you may need to create a page but need to have it reviewed before you make it visible to your audience. The default setting is for your page to be published, so uncheck the "Published" checkbox if you're not ready to have people see it. You can also promote it to the front page (if it's part of a system where it's being used as such), or keep it sticky at the top of lists.
• Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page and you're done!

Step 4: But I wanted a cool content slideshow, image gallery, etc.!

Drupal 7 is a powerful, scalable, open-source Content Management System (CMS). So, in order to try and shorten the learning curve a bit, we've baked in some of the essential functionality that you can use to build your website. Take the slideshow at the top of this page, for instance: it's powered by Nivo Slider. We went ahead and put in a bunch of "styles" and tweaked the settings so that it will work and look great, right out of the box, just for you. Here are some other pieces of functionality that we created to help you get started:

• Inline Columns

  Lay out some ordered lists side-by-side, put some static content into columns, or lay out some calls-to-action directly in your code instead of using Display Suite.

• Typography and Inline Elements

  Turn yourself into a content layout pro by learning how to format your headers, create blockquotes and put other elements inline with your content.

• Collapsing Content

  Turn your content headers into togglers that hide and show content within your page when it's being looked at with a mobile device. This is perfect for really long pages.

• Image Galleries

  Create an image gallery for a sidebar or the content area of your page(s).

• Nivo Slider for Slideshows

  Spotlight featured content by addding dynamic slideshows to the tops of your pages.

• News & Calendar Feeds

  Set up RSS and iCal feeds to import news and events from online sources and add your own content to the mix.

• Images with Captions

  Want to add captions below your images? No problemo.

• People Directory

  Got a bunch of contact info, biographical info and glossy photos of your coworkers laying around the office? Upload, organize and share them with the world using our fully-featured dynamic people directory.

Not everything will be easy for you, and that's okay. If you need some assistance, especially with Display Suite, your Site Name* or any other facet of developing your website, we encourage you to come to our jointly held CWS/WDC "Office Hours" every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. in Room 250 of the Business Leadership Building. You'll be able to get help with theming, functionality and more.

* If your site name/departmental lockup doesn't look right, please contact Greg Altuna with the Web Development Center.