Instructions for Local Brain Bee Organizers
Each regional Brain Bee has a web page associated with the main CCNBB web site. This mini-page allows you to introduce your local brain bee on the CCNBB site. Regional organizers can use this web page in any way you like. You can provide a link to your own web page, or use it to provide necessary information if you don’t have your own web page. You can announce dates and winners and media reports, for example.
We ask that you please keep your page up to date so that visitors to the site can easily find the relevant information.
Let me know (shedden at mcmaster.ca) if you have any questions about these notes.
You will need a username and password (which has been sent to you by email).
Login with your username which is city@brainbee.ca (or province@brainbee.ca).
You will see a few options in the leftside menu. You can change your password in the “Profile” page.
Select “Posts” to edit your page.
I have already created a post for you; for those who already had a page on our previous site, I attempted to copy your old page as closely as possible.
I have also set things up so the pages look as clean as possible, and so that there are minimal links from the posts. This site is not a “blog” with regular posts so I reduced clutter as much as possible.
You can make changes to the post that I already created, and/or you can create new posts. To keep things a simple as possible, you might want to stick to just editing the same post I have started for you – this simulates a single web page.
If you do start a new post, it is critical that you select your category! Your category is the name of your brain bee (e.g. the first part of your @brainbee.ca email address). If you leave the post “uncategorized” it will not show up on the site. More information about selecting your category can be found below.
If you publish more than one “post”, the most recent will be displayed at the top of the page. If you want to control the order in which the posts are displayed, change the date/time of the “Published on” setting.
Editing toolbar.
Classic Editor: At the top of the visual editor you will see the editing toolbar (e.g. font bolding, italics, bullets, justification, etc). The last icon on that row is the “Toolbar Toggle”. Click on that to get another row of editing controls.
Block Editor: This is default now, so any new Brain Bees are going to be stuck with it able to use it. It’s not bad, just annoying if you are used to the Classic Editor. There’s an addon that makes the Classic Editor available again, I will try to get this working soon. UPDATE: Now that I’m more used to the Block Editor, I like it!
Below the editing window you will see Weaver Xtreme options for your post.
Weaver Xtreme is the theme plugin that I’m using. Some of the selections won’t do anything because I’ve overridden them at a higher level to maintain consistency across the pages. For example, “hide top post info line” and “hide bottom post info line” are selected for everyone. It looks like they are not selected on your post but they are selected at a higher level. These features are not as useful when the site is a NOT a blog, and this site is not a blog.
One option you might find useful is “hide post title”.
You might find this useful, for example, if you have a graphic with your “City Brain Bee” and don’t want this repeated in the title. Hiding the title gives you a little more room at the top of the page as well.
Note that you can “Preview Changes” (top of right-side menu) before you publish.
Things NOT to do.
Please DO NOT “allow comments” or “allow trackbacks and pingbacks”. I don’t have time to regularly monitor comments and I would recommend that we do not think of this site as a blog.
Add photos and other documents.
You can upload photos and documents by selecting “Add Media” while you are editing your post, or by selecting “Media” from the left menu.
I have set it up so that you only see your own media uploads (I think this is still working); that way you don’t have to search through everyone else’s media to find your own files. If you think there might be something missing from the old web page, let me know and I’ll search for it.
IMPORTANT! Before publishing your post, you must select your category.
You category is your city (or province) name, under Categories in the right side menus. Before the software update at end of 2018, it used to be that if you tried to publish without selecting your category, the page would display an error and the category area would be highlighted. That doesn’t happen anymore – if you forget to select your category, your post simply doesn’t show up, with no helpful feedback about what went wrong.
So, it is important to remember to select the category before you publish.
If you don’t see the Categories list: Click on the Settings icon (the cog) at the top right to display the right menu panel. Click on the “Post” tab at the top. Look for the Categories section partway down in the right panel. Click on the little down arrow to the right of the “Categories” label to reveal the list of categories. If “Uncategorized” is check, uncheck it. Then look for your own category (your city or province name) and check it. Now you can publish.
Referring to your page from documents or other sites:
When you provide the webpage in documents, you can use a very simple URL:
http://brainbee.ca (for the full site)
http://brainbee.ca/cityname (to go directly to your own page)
As I think of more useful tips I’ll add them here. If you have a suggestion for a useful tip, let me know. Go ahead and try some things!