WordPress Content Management

• Post Types
• CCEH Post Types
• CIHD Post Types
• Changing Post Types
• CCEH Content Submissions
• Prepping Content CCEH Submission Posts for Publishing
• Sharing Content Across CCEH and CIHD Sites
• Custom Styling
• Custom Javascript
• Troubleshooting

Post Types

CCEH Post Types

Posts

This is the default WordPress post type and is used for 'News' items.  Utilize this post type for announcements and messages and any news to be displayed on the site. 

Creating Posts

• There is not a standard format or template for these types of posts.
• It is useful to have a featured image assigned so that it can provide context and interest in the news grids.

Events

This post type utilizes 'The Events Calendar' (TEC) WordPress plugin.  Event posts automatically have some event-specific meta data fields added to them such as: date, time, location, etc.  Events are displayed under the events calendar and on the sidebar where present.  The events calendar plugin provides functionality for users to subscribe to calendars or to save events to their own calendars.

Creating Events

• There is not necessarily a standard format or template for these types of posts with the exception of Seminar Series Events
• A featured image creates interest and visual appeal in the events lists, but it is not necessary
• Make sure a timezone is correctly assigned - for example, the multiomics monday seminars take place at 4pm Eastern time. So New York should be selected in the TEC timezone dropdown.
• For special events, you can mark them as 'featured' or 'sticky' to emphasize them or make sure they are always visible.

Seminar Series Events

• A seminar series talk should be of post type Event and should be assigned the appropriate seminar in the Events Categories taxonomy.
• When the above is implemented, the Seminar Series Fields will be visible and editable when editing the post.
• The Seminar Series Fields meeting date and time should be added in addition to the TEC date and time, and the values should match. 
• Presenter Name should have their credentials following their name. For example: 'Jane Doe, PhD' or 'John Smith, MD, PhD'
• Institution can be in the format [Department],<br>[Institution]. The template will automatically add the line break in the place of the html break.  For example: 'Department of Pediatrics,<br>Cincinnati Children's Hospital' 
• The post Featured Image can be set to be the presenter's image.  This just makes it show up in some of the post grids and looks nice. 
• Featured publications and core facilities can be marked to be highlighted in a specific newsletter. This can be done by assigning the 'Newsletters to be Featured In' taxonomy on a featured publication or core facility.

  

For seminar talks that have already been given:

• Update the template to 'CCEH PAST Seminar Event Page' (delete all the page content beforehand and replace it all with the new template), 
• Update the post type to 'Post',
• Make sure the seminar series is selected for the post category,
• Update the Meeting URL to the YouTube recording link

Centers*

This post type is to represent each of the Centers associated with CCEH. 

Cores*

This post type is to represent Core Facilities that are associated with CCEH.

Featured Publications*

-- Coming soon --

Job Postings*

-- Coming soon --

Newsletters*

Newsletter post types are for the quarterly newsletters that CCEH publishes and can be found here.  

Creating Newsletters

• The title of the post can just be the month and year of the newsletter
• The issue number in the 'Newsletter Fields' box should just be incremented for each issue.
• The Newsletter Date should be in the form [Month] [Year].  For example: 'February 2025'
• Newsletters utilize many components and may take a little time to get it looking ok.
  • ---More here later---
• The Featured Image should be set to a screen shot of the first little bit of the newsletter. This shows up on the newletter landing page and gives a little sneak preview.

P&F Projects*

This post type represents all the projects funded by the CCEH Type A or B funding awards.  They can be found via the link under the 'Funding' menu of the website which leads to the project page.  This page allows people to filter projects by year.  The year filters are accomplished via a Tabs widget. Each tab has a Post Grid (another WP Widget - and the grid item design is defined in the WPBakery Page Builder -> Grid Builder) are defined in set up to display posts of type 'P&F Project' for the particular year.  The Post Grid has an option to include a filter as well and that is set up to allow filtering by Associated CCEH Center. 

Protocols*

This is a simple post type that stores information about protocols shared by CCEH centers.  Protocols are displayed in the protocol directory using the 'Posts Table Pro' plugin. The protocol table is defined in the Post Tables settings which can be found in the Post Tables menu for site admins. Protocols are also listed under each center.

Creating Protocols

• The title of the post should be the title of the protocol
• Other details are filled out in the 'Object Details' box.
  • The Logo, Highlight, and 2 description fields can be ignored as they are not applicable to protocols
• The URL to the protocol (ie the YouTube link) should be defined both in the 'Website/Link' field and in the 'Page Links To' box and should be marked to open in a new tab. 

  

  • The Page Links To box comes from a Plugin that allows you to define the URL for a post as something other than the default wordpress link to its content.  This is useful for videos and protocols because they have no defined 'page' on the website but rather reference external URLs where their content lives.
• If the Protocol is associated with a specific Core Facility, that can be selected in the 'Protocol Relationships' box.
• To properly associate the Protocol to it's parent CCEH Center, the 'Associated CCEH Center' taxonomy should be assigned. This is found in the right hand column when editing a post.

  

Videos*

This is a simple post type that stores information about different videos CCEH has posted.  Videos are displayed in the video directory using the 'Posts Table Pro' plugin. There are various tables defined for each of the main video topics.  The settings for these can be found in the Post Tables menu for site admins

Creating Videos

• The title of the post should be the title of the video
• Other basic details are filled out in the 'Video Details' box.
• The URL to the video (ie the YouTube link) should be defined in the 'Page Links To' box and should be marked to open in a new tab. 

  

  • The Page Links To box comes from a Plugin that allows you to define the URL for a post as something other than the default wordpress link to its content.  This is useful for videos and protocols because they have no defined 'page' on the website but rather reference external URLs where their content lives.
• A Sub-Topic should be selected for the video - this will make sure it appears in the correct table. The parent topic should not be selected.

All starred post types are generated using the ACF Plugin

CIHD Post Types

Posts

This is the default WordPress post type and is used for 'News' items.  Utilize this post type for announcements and messages and any news to be displayed on the site. 

Creating Posts

• There is not a standard format or template for these types of posts.
• It is useful to have a featured image assigned so that it can provide context and interest in the news grids.

Events

This post type utilizes 'The Events Calendar' (TEC) WordPress plugin.  Event posts automatically have some event-specific meta data fields added to them such as: date, time, location, etc.  Events are displayed under the events calendar and on the sidebar where present.  The events calendar plugin provides functionality for users to subscribe to calendars or to save events to their own calendars.

Creating Events

• There is not necessarily a standard format or template for these types of posts with the exception of Seminar Series Events
• A featured image creates interest and visual appeal in the events lists, but it is not necessary
• Make sure a timezone is correctly assigned - for example, the multiomics monday seminars take place at 4pm Eastern time. So New York should be selected in the TEC timezone dropdown.
• For special events, you can mark them as 'featured' or 'sticky' to emphasize them or make sure they are always visible.

Seminar Series Events

• A seminar series talk should be of post type Event and should be assigned the appropriate seminar in the Events Categories taxonomy.
• When the above is implemented, the Seminar Series Fields will be visible and editable when editing the post.
• The Seminar Series Fields meeting date and time should be added in addition to the TEC date and time, and the values should match. 
• Presenter Name should have their credentials following their name. For example: 'Jane Doe, PhD' or 'John Smith, MD, PhD'
• The post Featured Image can be set to be the presenter's image.  This just makes it show up in some of the post grids and looks nice. 

Featured Publications*

-- Coming soon --

Job Postings*

-- Coming soon --

Members*

This post type represents all faculty and staff associated with CIHD.  The member list populates the Utah CIHD Team on the home page, the faculty list, the member list and the contact us page depending on the attributes assigned to each member in the 'Roles' box. 

Creating/Editing Members

• Title of the member 'post' should be 'Last Name, First Name'.  The title determines sorting in several locations and we'd like them to sort alphabetically by last name.
• Member Name and Title should be in the format: '[First] [Last], [Credentials]'. For example: 'Jane Doe, PhD' or 'John Smith, MD, PhD'
• The Featured flag determines if the faculty member should be 'featured' on the main page of the website.

Contact Information

• Email Address and Phone Number are self described.
• Member Contact Info URL can be utilized to point to an address book entry for the user.  For example, it could point to the university's address book for the member.  This can give a bit more privacy for members.

Web Content

• If a member should have their own page - ie, if they have been featured at any point - then the page should be given the 'Member Page Template' by clicking on the WPBakery backend builder, clicking 'Default WordPress Theme Layout', then 'Add Template'.
  • The content that populates the template above comes from the Featured Faculty Introduction field so this field should be populated if the member has their own page.  This field can have images and text.  
  • All faculty who have their own page will have their picture outlined and clickable on the faculty page.
• The Related Posts field allows you to link a member to previous content - either media or posts - which will be listed under their name on the faculty page.
  • • This is mostly for historical reference. 

All starred post types are generated using the ACF Plugin

Changing Post Types

A post type can be changed easily thanks to the 'Post Type Switcher' WordPress plugin. 

Featured Images and Sidebar Display

Most of the custom posts should not show their featured image at the top of its content. By default, a normal 'Post' will be set up to display it. Also, normal posts will display the sidebar by default whereas sometimes we do not want the sidebar to be displayed. Both the options to control the featured image and sidebar displays are only able to be seen/edited when editing a normal post. But, if a featured image is added to a custom post type, sometimes the post is triggered to display it even though the option to hide it is not available to that post.

If you need to edit hiding the featured image or sidebar items for a custom post type, you will need to switch the post type to 'Post' and then edit those fields, and finally set the post type back to whatever is appropriate:

• Change the post type from the publish box. 

  

• Change the post type to 'Post' and either 'Save as Pending' or 'Publish' to save it.  Then you toggle the hide featured image flag:

  

• And you hide the sidebar: 

  

• Finally, change the post type back to whatever.

CCEH Content Submissions

CCEH has been set up to allow users to submit new content via https://cceh.io/submit-content/. 

This page is not linked from the website anywhere and is protected by a simple password (CCEH) to help avoid spam submissions.

All submission forms are set up via the WPForms plugin.  They are set up to email the submitter a confirmation along with emailing administrators to notify them of the submission. 

There are 8 separate forms depending on what is being submitted. The Content Update is meant for requests to existing content or for changes to the site. The seven other forms are for new content and each will automatically create a new post of the appropriate type on the CCEh site. The posts created from content submissions will have a draft status and need to be marked as published before they will be visible on the site.  See the next page for other details involved in getting the posts ready for publication.

Prepping Content CCEH Submission Posts for Publishing

After content has been submitted, posts will be automatically created for the various new content submissions.  Some may need some editing before publishing them.

Videos and Protocols

The Video and Protocol posts generated by WPForms should (mostly) be good to go as is. These post types don't have their own 'pages' but rather, they appear in grids and/or tables in other places on the site.  The important thing is that the details are entered correctly and they are assigned the correct post type.  Once the 'posts' are published, you can verify them across any of the following site pages that apply:

• https://cceh.io/video-directory/
• https://cceh.io/core/shared-resources-and-protocols/ 
• Protocols should also appear on their parent center's page

Videos and Protocols should have their URLS defined under the 'Page Links To' box and should be set to to open in a new tab. For new video links and protocols that are submitted via the content submission form, this should already be set.

P&F Projects

The P&F Project post generated by WPForms should (mostly) be good to go as is. P&F Projects don't have their own 'pages' though there is a template to create a page for them (P&F Project Template).  At this time, they are not accessed as a page on their own from anywhere on the site but rather, they appear in a table on the Funding Page and in grids on the P&F Project Page so it is not necessary to assign the template or add content to the post. 

When verifying a submitted entry, you may need to edit a few fields

• Title should be updated to match this template: '[Recipient Last Name] Abstract Type [A|B] P&F [year]'
• There are 2 separate data entry points for associated CCEH Center on this object at this time, so the Associated CCEH will need to be selected to make the Associated CCEH Centers field
  • This will be addressed in the future and one of the fields will be eliminated but for now, we just want to make them match
• A Core Utilized field is a text entry that the submitter is able to fill out.  If that entry corresponds to one (or more) of the official CCEH Cores, you can assign is under the Associated Core field.  
• For the Project Abstract, sometimes the submitter pasts in text that has weird line breaks that may need to be stripped.

Job Postings and Featured Publications

These posts should mostly be good to go as well.  If the WPBakery templates aren't automatically applied, they can be applied in the WPBakery backend page builder editor.  The templates for these types are called 'Job Posting Page' and 'Featured Publication Page'.

Featured Publications

• For featured publications, the graphical abstract image should also be assigned as the post's Featured image.  The image will have been uploaded to the site's media so you can simply click 'Set featured image' and find the matching image.
• After updating the featured image, you will have to select 'Hide featured image on post page'.  You will also want to need the sidebar for the post.  Unfortunately, you have to switch the post type back to 'Post' in order to get these options.
• Change the post type from the publish box. 

  

• Change the post type to 'Post' and either 'Save as Pending' or 'Publish' to save it.  Then you toggle the hide featured image flag:

  

• And you hide the sidebar: 

  

• Finally, change the post type back to 'Featured Publication'.
• Then you can check the post and see how it looks, if it looks as expected, it can be 'Published'. At that point you should see it in the publications grid.

News Items and Events

These can just be styled in whatever way looks good with the exception being a seminar series talk - those should be given the template 'CCEH Seminar Event Page'.  

For seminar talks that have already been given:

• Update the template to 'CCEH PAST Seminar Event Page' (delete all the page content beforehand and replace it all with the new template), 
• Update the post type to 'Post',
• Make sure the seminar series is selected for the post category,
• Update the Meeting URL to the YouTube recording link

Sharing Content Across CCEH and CIHD Sites

We have utilized a plugin (Simple Multisite Crossposting) that makes it easy to share content across the two sites.  While editing, any post can be marked to be shared from the 'Publish On' box.

There are a couple of caveats...

Events

• Sometimes the event date and times don't come across properly.  But after updating them on the opposite site and re-saving, they should be good.
• Event cost is sometimes saved as 0, you will want to delete that value altogether and re-save.

In the past, there have been issues with some custom fields not coming across, or the WPBakery templates not coming across.  I have resolved these issues (to the best of my knowledge), but if things are really not playing nice, you can always share the post, then go to the other site, open the post for editing, un-share it be un-clicking the original site from the 'Publish On' box and then save.  This will unlink the posts which can then be edited independently.

Custom Styling

Both CCEH and CIHD have custom css that controls a lot of the styling throughout the pages. There is a lot of shared styling across the pages. Several of the post grids rely heavily on the custom styles. Also the seminar event and series flyers rely on custom styling - both for viewing on the web and for the print settings. 

The custom styling can be seen and edited from the WPBakery Page Builder Admin Menus here: CCEH and CIHD. 

Both style sheets are kind of chaotic at the moment and could be cleaned up a bit (or a lot)... That is to come. 

Custom Javascript

Both CCEH and CIHD have custom javascript defined.  The javacript helps provide print buttons for the seminar event and series flyers, updates some breadcrumb links, and also updates some URLs to be links instead of the URL text.  In some instances, a URL from a custom field is displayed as text; but in more recently developed pages, the URLs are displayed as links with custom text (ie 'Details') thanks to the 'ACF-VC Integrator' plugin that works with WPBakery Builder and ACF to offer better ways to display custom fields.

The sites' custom javascript can be seen and edited from the WPBakery Page Builder Admin Menus here: CCEH and CIHD. 

 

Troubleshooting

Things to look for if a post isn't displaying how/where you expect it to

Post Type

Make sure the post type is correct for the post.
For past events like seminar talks, you may need to change them from 'Event' to a normal 'Post'. See Seminar Series Events.

When switching post types, sometimes the sidebar or a featured image will automatically be added but is not desired.  To remove these, you will need to change the post back to the default 'post' type and then mark 'Hide Featured Image' and select 'No Sidebar'. See Changing Post Types

Shared Posts / Events

Sometimes posts or events just act funky across the sites.  If updating an event from one site makes it looks weird on the other, you can always unselect the 'Publish on' option and edit them independently.

Metadata / Taxonomies

Make sure all metadata is assigned.  Example taxonomies that are used to filter posts on various pages are:

• Category
• Tag
• Associated CCEH Center
• P&F Project Year 
  

News / Post Grids

If news or post items look funny in grids - or if there are blank spaces where an item should be - check that the post has a featured image and some sort of text on the page or that an excerpt is filled out.  

The main news feeds for each site (CCEH / CIHD) shows each post's title, date, and excerpt next to the featured image.  If there isn't a featured image, it is fine, but doesn't look as nice, so if possible, add one - even if it's just the CIHD logo or something like that...

For example, the CCEH home page has a grid of news items on it.  The grid depends on the featured image and the excerpt to populate the elements.  If an item has neither, it will just have an empty space where that post should be.  If a post is composed of just an image, you can either add text to describe the images on the post itself (which WordPress will use as the page's excerpt) or you can enter text manually into the excerpt field.  For seminar talks that have past and have been changed to be type 'Post', you can add the presenter's image as the featured image.