If this is your first time using WordPress (you.stonybrook.edu), please visit you.stonybrook.edu to familiarize yourself.

Prepare the materials before you start this chapter.
If you haven’t done so yet, visit the How To Prepare page.

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You will receive an invitation as the Editor from your instructor or a web administrator.
From the link in the invitation, log in to your account with your NetID and Duo log-in code.
You are an Editor level user, who can upload files and publish the exhibition page as a post.
*Please do not change other people’s Media, Posts, and Pages.

Once you log in, you are in the Dashboard on the site.

In order to exhibit your works on the site, you need to publish a Post.
Posts are entries that are generally listed in reverse chronological order on a site in WordPress.
An instructor/admin will change the order of your appearance once everybody publishes their posts.
Don’t worry about the order now.

This example shows the Dashboard on the “SBU ART Honors Project” website, but yours may be different. Please make sure to log-in your exhibition websites such as “Senior Seminar”, “Experimental Printmaking”, and MFA’s “Alloway Gallery”, then, move on to the next steps.

 

Setting up a Post:

To add a post, hover over “+ New” in the Admin bar and select “Post.”

Once on the “Add a New Post” page, add a title.
This title will appear as the artist’s name on the exhibition page.
Make the title with your FirstName LastName (e.g. John Smith).
Between First and Last names, use SPACE instead of ( _ ) underscore this time.
WordPress automatically adds the underscore between First and Last names when creating the URL.
e.g. https://you.stonybrook.edu/honorsproject/2020/05/16/john_smith

• Make sure to uncheck “Allow comments” and “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page”
• Leave the Format as Video.
• And select the year of the semester under the Category field.

Now, you are ready to create your exhibition post.

First, click the Set featured image on the bottom right.

 

Upload an image for Featured image:

1. Now, the Featured image window pops up.
   
   • Click the Upload Files on the top left corner.
     For the Featured image, use the 600 (w) x 400 (h) pixels JPEG file. ( xxxx_xxxxx_feature.jpg )
   • Either drop the file to upload or click the Select Files button to select.
2. It already selects the uploaded image.
   Here, John_Smith_feature.jpg. 600 by 400 pixels.
   • Alt Text: you can leave it empty.
   • Title: it should be filled automatically with the file name.
   • Caption: leave it empty for the featured image.
3. Click Set Featured Image button.
   This image appears on the bottom right in the Post editor interface.
4. Click Save Draft.
   Save your Post when you leave the browser.

 

Building your exhibition Post:

WordPress has its own editor, the rich text editor, similar to Word. In order to keep a simple layout for the online exhibition, we recommend you to import in a plain text format instead of copying & pasting the .docx format. After you paste the plain text, you can edit/decorate it with the editor in WordPress.
(If you know how to edit text in WordPress, please skip to step 5.)

1. Prepare your statement .docx  file.
   Make sure you have a backup of the .docx.
   Some of you may have the images in the .docx file for submitting as a thesis paper.
   You can refer to the layout later for the exhibition Post.
   *When converting to plain text, styling for text and images will be removed.
   • Open the .docx file in Word.
   • In Word menu, select File > Save As…
   • Under the File Format, select Plain Text (.txt) from pulldown menu.
     This will remove all formatting and images from the .docx file.
   • It will automatically add .txt extension.
   • Save it wherever you like, then close Word.
2. Open the .txt file with TextEdit (Mac) / NotePad (Win).
   You will notice there is no style and images.
3. Select all texts and copy them.
4. Click the content area in WordPress, and paste the text.
5. Use only Paragraph format style for the contents. Do not use Heading 1 – 6.
6. Refer to your .docx file to change the style: italicize, bold, and so on, with the rich text editor if necessary.
7. Click Save Draft.

Next step is to insert the images.

 

Insert Images from Media Library:

You should already have the images in proper size after reading How To Prepare.
Now you need to upload them one by one.
The process is almost identical to what you have done for the _feature.jpg.
In addition to that, you will need the following in the captions: Title, Date, Dimensions, and Medium.

1. Open your xxxx_xxxxx_List.docx file to use as a reference, and prepare your JPEG images.
2. Move the cursor and Click between the paragraphs where you want to insert the image.
   *Check image below, the cursor will move to the beginning of the line after clicking the space between the paragraph. This is normal.
3. Click Add Media button on the top left under the title.
4. Upload JPEG files.
   If you don’t remember how to upload JPEG files, go back to Upload an image for Featured image.
   *If for some reason you can’t find your file in the Media Library, use Search. (It should be your name.)
   • Select a file and fill the following information.
   • Alt Text: You can fill the file name.
   • Title: it should be filled automatically with the file name.
   • Caption: Refer your xxxx_xxxx_List.docx file. You can copy and paste the Title, Date, Dimensions, and Medium from the .docx file if you keep them in one line. Otherwise, type the info.
     *Please make sure to add commas between the information (refer the RED circles).
   • Size: Keep Full Size for now.
     
5. Press Insert Into Post to complete.
6. Click Save Draft now.
7. The contents in the Caption box appears under the image when you insert it into Post. (Do not edit the caption here!! See the tips found in step 13)
   *It tries to keep one line and ignores you pressing the “return” key to start a new line in the Caption box. Therefore, the commas will help to divide the information.
8. Click the Preview button on the top right corner. A new window pops up.
   Now you can see the image is nicely formatted with a gray border and the caption in one line on the bottom.
9. IF you insert a 1920 pixels height portrait orientation image or a 1920 x 1920 pixels squire image, you may notice it is too large to show in your browser/display. If you want to fix the problem, go to the next step. If you see no problems, skip to step 16.
10. Close the Preview window now.
11. Go back to the editor window, and click the image.
    A Pencil icon appears in the small pop-up window. (Red arrow)
    
12. Click the Pencil icon.
13. Image Details window pops up.
14. Instead of keeping Full Size, use Custom Size and put Height 700.
15. Select Link to: Media File; your original image will pop up when the image is clicked on.
16. Click Update and, again, save your Post!
    If you need to correct the image information: Title, Dimensions, Captions, and Settings, you can fix it in Image Details.

For more information, go to Need Help? button on the bottom right corner of the WordPress editing window. and search for “caption”.

 

Create Gallery:

If you were to have an overwhelming amount of images within your exhibition Post, the Gallery view option makes it look more organized.

You already uploaded your images, so you can use the images to Create Gallery.

1. Click Add Media button on the top left under the title.
2. Select Create Gallery.
3. Open Media Library if it is not open, or upload new images.
4. Select images.
5. Click the Create A New Gallery button on the bottom right.
6. Edit Gallery window pops up.
7. Keep the Gallery Settings as follow;
   • Link To: Media File
   • Columns: 3
   • Size: Medium
8. If necessary, you can uncheck the image to take out from the Gallery.
9. Click Insert Gallery.
10. If you need to edit the Gallery setting, click the area of Gallery images.
    A Pencil icon appears in the small pop-up window. (Red circle)
11. Edit and click Update Gallery.
12. Click Save Draft.

Next step is to link the Video and Audio source if you have.

Keep working!!

 

Insert Video or Audio file from external source:

Some of you want to add video or audio file.
Even though you can upload the video/sound file to this server, we recommend you to link to an external website; for example, YouTube or SoundCloud.

1. Upload your video/audio file to service of your choice.
2. Copy a shared URL address of your material from the service.
3. Click Add Media button on the top left in the editor and click Insert from URL.
   Paste the shared URL address in the blue box.
   
4. Press Insert Into Post to complete.
   A moment later, the preview of the video appears.
   
5. Unfortunately, the caption doesn’t appear for video/sound external source.
   
6. If you need the caption for the video/audio or external source, you must write it manually in the TEXT editor (HTML).  Look at the top right corner in the editor. There are two tabs: Visual and Text. Right now you are working with Visual Editor. Click and select Text editor.
   • Find embed tag.
   • Write the highlighted texts below manually.
   • <div class=”wp-caption aligncenter”>
   • <p class=”wp-caption-text”> Title: xxxx, Date: xxxx 2020</p>
     </div>
7. Click Save Draft if you haven’t done so yet.

It’s almost done.

 

Publish:

You are almost done.

1. Here is a sample of entire page view.
2. From top, Full Size (original width 1920 px), Video from external link (with caption), Custom Size Height 700 px, Custom Size Width 700 px, and the small image is scaled down in Medium size (300px) in the Image Details window. The last 9 images are created as a Gallery.
3. Make sure to check over the text.
4. Make sure all images are ordered correctly.
5. Press Publish button to complete.

Congratulations!!! You created your exhibition Post.
If you find any problems, you will be able to come back and fix the problem until the week before the online exhibition officially opens.