Articles – Page 8

Nov

2011

Text hyperlinks

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.

Firstly, go to the web address or page you want to link some text to and “copy” the web address from the browser. You can then “paste” that address when inserting the link as described below.

Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page title of the page you want to add/edit a link.
In the editing box that contains your page content, double-click the text you want to link (or highlight the text with your cursor), then choose the icon to “Insert/edit link” (in line of icons above editing box), then insert the URL of the web address or page you want to link to. Then click the “Update” button to update the page. To link to an external website, while editing the link, choose from the “Target” options, “open link in new window” to make the browser open a new window for the linked website.

Adding an Email hyperlink
Select the text you want to create an Email link to, then choose the icon to “Insert/edit link”. Add link of mailto:info@redbackgraphics.com.au (your email address preceeded by “mailto:”, no spaces) and the link is done. Click Update to update the page as normal.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated link.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Aug

2011

Adding widgets

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.
Firstly, what is a Widget? A Widget allows you to add, arrange, and remove tools, plugins or content from the sidebars and/or footers of your website. Widgets make it easy to customize the content of your website sidebars and footers. Typically used for Categories and Posts from a Blog, they can also be used for traditional website content including images, advertisements and News items.

This is to add a Widget Area to your sidebars or footer areas. Not all websites have both sidebars and footer widget areas, but by adding a Widget you will quickly find out what areas you have available for Widgets.

On the far right side of your screen you will see all of your available Widget areas. Expand any Widget Area and drag and drop one of the “Available Widgets” into that Widget Area (ie “Right-1” will be the far Right Sidebar). Adding a Text Widget is one of the most useful Widgets to install. You can edit its Title, and insert any text or html. Click “Save”, then view your website to see your new Widget in action.

If you want in insert images into your Text Widget area, see Inserting Images into Sidebars to get the html for any image you want to insert.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website..

Apr

2011

SEO content and images

Adding descriptive Titles to your images, and/or specific strings of text within your content, will greatly increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you name your images with an exact string that you might expect someone to “Google”, your image (and your website) will then rank higher in any Google results. Making the Title specific, but also unique will give excellent results. For example, if you were to name an image “twitter free zone”, then anyone Googling twitter free zone would quickly find your website. Your challenge is to predict what people will be Googling (exact string), then include an image you can name accordingly. The more correctly named images you have, the higher the Google ranking for those strings will be. Do NOT try and trick Google by adding excessive images with blatant SEO Titles, Google will recognise that and blacklist your website completely. Just include relevant content, with relevant images with descriptive titles, and Google will love you, and people will find you.

Updating/adding relevant content to your website, through images, documents, videos, text, etc will increase your Google ranking. Google visits and indexes your site periodically, automatically. If nothing has changed when Google comes back, the period until the next visit will increase, each time. That is how your Google ranking drops. To maintain or increase your Google ranking you must keep an active, relevant website.

Please see also Website title and SEO article.

Apr

2011

Gallery images

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website

To create a new gallery on a page
Select or create a page for your gallery. Edit that page.
Place your cursor where you would like to place the gallery on the page (eg. above or below existing text).
Click the “Add Media” button above upper left corner of the editing box.
Choose “Create Gallery” from options in top left corner.
“Upload files” from your computer or select images from the media library. Ideally images should be resized and optimised for web viewing, and for a consistent look it is recommended that images be a uniform size, eg 800 x 600px or 600 x 800, 1200 x 800 etc Unless you must have bigger images, 800px wide is max recommended. Then choose “Create New Gallery” (button bottom right corner). Once the images have uploaded to the page, you can rearrange images by dragging and dropping, then click “Insert Gallery” (button bottom right corner).
“Update” your page.

To add an image to an existing pre-installed gallery (with navigation/scrolling thumbs and arrows on the page) (Type A)
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Media”, then near “Media Library”, click once on “Add New” button. Choose “Select Files”, locate them on your computer, select the file (or multiple files), select “Open” (or hit enter), wait while it “Crunches” the file/s (uploads). At this point you can (not necessary) edit Titles, description, captions etc. This can be done at any time, so no need to do it right now. Then click “Save all changes”. You will then be back in Media and can see a list of the images now in your Media collection.

Any image/s you just uploaded (you can upload several images at a time) will not be “Attached” to any particular page. In order for them to appear in a gallery on “a” page, they must be “attached” to that page. Check the select box for all images you want to “attach” to a particular page, then click “attach” for one of those images (all images with a check/tick will ALL be attached to the same page that you now select). In the “Find posts or pages” box, type a few characters of the page name you are looking for, then select “Pages” and “Search” to locate the correct page you wish to attach those images to. Select that page, and you are done. The image will now be added to the existing gallery on that page.

To add an image to a normal gallery (no navigation/scrolling thumbs and arrows on the page, just thumbnails) (Type B)
Login to your “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page your gallery is on.

Click once within the gallery area on that page, then the “Edit Gallery” icon. Click “Add to Gallery” button (on left), find or “Upload” the files to add, select the files, then update the gallery. While you are still editing the gallery you can drag and drop to rearrange images. Make sure you “Update” the gallery after making any changes.
Once back on the page, “Update” your page.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Tip 3
Adding descriptive Titles to your images will greatly increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you name your images with an exact string that you might expect someone to “Google”, your image (and your website) will then rank highly in any Google results. Making the Title specific, but also unique will give excellent results. For example, if you were to name an image “twitter free zone”, then anyone Googling twitter free zone would quickly find your website. Your challenge is to predict what people be Googling (exact string), then include an image you can name accordingly. The more correctly named images you have, the higher the Google ranking for those strings will be. Do NOT try and trick Google by adding excessive images with blatant SEO Titles, Google will recognise that and blacklist your website completely. Just include relevant content, with relevant images with descriptive titles, and Google will love you, and people will find you.

Mar

2011

Images into sidebars

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website
This is to add an image (such as a sponsors logo) to a sidebar, or bottom of page Widget area. This assumes you already have a Text Widget installed to a sidebar or bottom of page Widget area. To add a Widget Area, see Adding Widgets.

Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then create a new page or open a page that you use for “testing” that isnt visible to the public.
In the editing box that contains your page content, insert the image that you will want to appear in your sidebar (or bottom of page Widget). The image should be the correct size before inserting so you can insert at original size. It “may” be inserted and then scaled, but it is better to insert at exact size.

Make sure this page is “Excluded from Navigation” so that it does not appear in your menu/navigation. Update the page, and view the public version to ensure the image previews correctly. You can view the web page via its Permalink URL (shown under the pages title)

The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image.

Once you are happy with the image size, and while still in the page editing box, note two tabs on the right hand side, just above the editing box. One labelled “Visual” and other “HTML” or “Text”. Click on the “HTML” or “Text” tab to view the html code for that content. Copy (CTRL+C) the ENTIRE code for that image. That will include code “Tags” and will look something like:

While you have that code in your clipboard, go to “Dashboard”, then “Appearance”, “Widgets”, select the side or bottom of page Text Widget you want to insert the image into, open the content of the text widget and CTRL+V or Paste that code into the Text Widget. Click the blue Text Widget “Save” button, and your image will appear (if the code has been copied correctly, it must be EXACT).

You can also add hyperlinks to the image, so that anyone clicking on the image is taken to another web address (ie sponsors website). See adding hyperlinks to images.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.