Authoring Guide

Welcome editors! This page describes:

  • How to write/ edit this, or any WordPress site, using the Classic Editor.
    • WordPress also offers a newer Block Editor, and this makes some tasks easier (or possible). We have set up Medcal to default to the Classic editor, but you can switch to use the block editor if you are familiar with it. If so, you should do this from the very beginning of authoriing a new page, don’t try to mix! When the block editor is more established we may switch to using it first, but for now, ask an admin if you want to know more about it.

And links to

  • The specific Style Guide for Medcal content (this site)

Medcal is a cluster of websites created in WordPress, a Content Management System (CMS) for creating websites. The specialties are all shown on home page of the Mother Ship site at medcal.mvm.ed.ac.uk. It hosts concise lessons that can contribute to teaching a medical topic, from undergraduate to postgraduate levels.

Contents

How to add content on WordPress

You’ll need an authoring/ editing login from a site admin. Within Medcal it will usually give you access to just your specialty site.

  • As an Author you can create new posts, edit and delete your own posts.
  • Editors can do the same for anyone’s posts, within that website.
  • Different levels of Admin can do all that and more.

Detailed  info on roles from WordPress

SECURITY – IMPORTANT!  Because it is so widely used, WordPress is constantly targeted by robotic attempts to crack passwords in order to insert malicious links, ads, code, or other devious content that you don’t want to see on your pages. Use a very secure, unique password, and don’t share it. Use of secure password-remembering tools is highly recommended.

Log in

You should click on Editors login at the bottom of any Medcal page and then enter your login details (as shown below)

You will be taken to the editing dashboard. A black navigation bar appears at the top of the page.

From here you can go two ways

  • If you click on View Site from the menus in the black bar at the top, you can navigate to any post or page, then click Edit Page/Post in the same black bar. Or you can click on New … Post
  • If you use the menu to the left, you can click on Posts to view all, and you can edit one of them by clicking here. Where there are a lot of posts, they may be listed across several pages and you can search for one. If it is a published page in a well-populated specialty, method 1 (browsing the site while logged in, then clicking on Edit Post) may be simpler.

Create something new: page or post?

There are two types of new content in WordPress: Pages and Posts. This (that you are reading right now) is a Page, but in MedCAL, Lessons are POSTS.That is what you will mostly be creating. Posts were originally envisaged as a way of writing a blog, but they can be adapted to any number of purposes.

Difference between Posts and Pages:  Posts can belong to Categories, and have Tags. This makes it possible to call up all posts on a particular topic with a single click. Use the menu to the right on the live site (not the editing dashboard). So for instance, on the Renal pages you could list all lessons (posts) on Clinical Physiology.

Add/edit text

The default ‘Visual‘ view is similar to the actual webpage, but fonts may not be identical. In this view you can use the simplified text editor to do basic formatting:

[screencast]

The alternative ‘Text’ view allows you to edit the html code directly, if you like that sort of thing. It is necessary for some tricks, and it may be necessary (for example) for fixing a nice table, or for embedding some videos.

Preview/Save; Public/not

At the top right of the editing window, a big blue button lets you Publish or Update. Before you click on it, check you’re happy with the settings above that. You can make it visible to all who can see the site, or only to logged-in authors/editors.

We may add the option to show some pages only to EASE-authenticated (University of Edinburgh) users. At present the options are public – available to anyone; private – hidden so you only find it if you know the url, but can do this without being logged in (useful if showing it to colleagues before release); and login-only (users must have a log in to get to it).

Adding media

By clicking here you can:

  • Add an image
  • Post a video
  • Create an image
  • Create a video

Add other things

Table – not as easy as you’d hope. For a one-off, ask us to slot one in and you can edit it. More to follow on this.

Accordions/quizzes can be added using block editor, but please speak to us first about this. We’ll add more later.