On this site audio files can be added directly to your page by simply entering a line with the web address of the audio file. Here is an example…
synergy service almost ready
Content from the Pilot site is already in the process of moving to Synergy which is the name of our new WordPress service host. The service should be launching very soon. Watch this space!
Complete group People page in one line!
Extending my work on pulling data into WordPress using short codes, I’ve made an entire ‘People’ page which can be displayed by typing just one short code into the page content area, an example is
[SDS_SYMBIOSIS piid='dp1' data="researchGroupAccordion" uid="*" ]where piid = the ID of the Principle Investigator (PI). In this instance the PI is Dave Paterson (dp1), whose the group is called SERG.
If the PI has entered his research group into the School database, the above single line will make a complete research group ‘People’ page in WordPress entirely using data (and images) from School and PURE data.
It looks like SERG (whose site is in prep) will be the first to use this ‘live’.
Biologists: If you are authoring here at present, and want to see if your PI has entered their research group yet, visit the PI index, and click the ‘School’ link beside their name. If there is a list like the one near the bottom right of this page, they’ve entered the group. If not, ask your PI if they can do this, or send details of the list to me.
Research Group Lists – more content for less work
Combining research group lists from the School database, with the facilities I made earlier to allow data from School and Pure databases to be used, it is possible to populate a research group website with ‘people’ pages by making only two very short pages.
An example of this is shown below, for Dave Paterson, who had already made a list of his research group in the School database.
From a WordPress author’s point of view, the entire resource – the index, and all of the content for the people, required just two pages, and four short codes. All content existed already in School of Pure databases. Not bad…
Try example research group list, and researcher profile pages.
Change image thumbnail crop
Suppose you have uploaded an image, and placed it on your page or post as a thumbnail, but you’ve found you don’t like the part of the image which WordPress has used to make the default 150×150 pixel thumbnail. Here is how to change the thumbnail:
STEP 1: Sign in to your site dashboard and click Media to show the Media Library
STEP 2: Find the image you want to change, mouse over it, and click ‘Edit’
STEP 3: Click the ‘Edit Image’ button
STEP 4: IMPORTANT – select the Thumbnail radio button (near the middle of page)
STEP 5: click and drag in the image area to define a new region – best to make it a square area, as the thumbnails are by square default. You can make sure it is square by typing numbers in the Selection boxes near the middle of the screen.
STEP 6: When you are satisfied, click the crop button top left:
STEP 7: Click the SAVE button under the image
STEP 8: Click the UPDATE MEDIA button
STEP 9: repeat steps 2-8 if you wish to do other images at the same time.
STEP 10: go back to the page with the image thumbnail, delete the thumbnail you placed there previously, and add a new image – remember to use the image from the Media Library Tab, don’t re-upload it from your computer (if you do, you’ll be back to where you started!)
Using data from databases on your WordPress site…
I’ve been working to implement shortcodes which allow you to use data already stored on people in either our School database (called Symbiosis) or in the PURE database (aka research@st-andrews) to your WordPress research group site.
Shortcodes are simple codes enclosed in square brackets that you can type in your posts or pages which WordPress will convert into content when the post or page is viewed. I’ve made some new codes that you can use. For example, this code: [SDS_SYMBIOSIS uid="sds" data="image" format="right"]makes my image from the School database appear on the right of the page… (OK – I have even less hair now – time I put a new picture there, I know…)
You can find out more and see the full list of shortcodes on this post
Add menu items or rearrange a menu
STEP 1: sign in then choose Appearance > Menus
STEP 2: Then (on the right of the screen) select the correct menu tab for the menu you wish to change
STEP 3: To remove a menu item, click to expand its panel in the menu area, and then click the ‘Remove’ link
STEP 4 a: To add a menu item for a page on your site, in the Pages panel (on the left), click to tick the page, then press the ‘Add to menu’ button – it will be added at the end of the menu to begin with
STEP 4 b: To add a menu item for a web page somewhere else, in the Custom Links panel on the left, paste the url of the web page, type a short label for it, then press the ‘Add to menu’ button – it will be added at the end of the menu to begin with. If you want to make a menu item just to be a menu sub-category heading type # in the URL field, and the category heading in the label field.
STEP 5: To reorder menu items, click and then drag-and-drop item panels up and down the menu area. Dragging to the right allows you to inset menu items as ‘children’ of other menu items.
STEP 6: Click the Save Menu button to finish, and view a page which uses it to test new links
Use data from databases on your WordPress site…
I’ve been working to implement shortcodes which allow you to use data already stored on people in either our School database (called Symbiosis) or in the PURE database (aka research@st-andrews) to your WordPress research group site.
Shortcodes are simple codes enclosed in square brackets that you can type in your posts or pages which WordPress will convert into content when the post or page is viewed. I’ve made some new codes that you can use. For example, this code:makes my image from the School database appear on the right of the page… (OK – I have even less hair now – time I put a new picture there, I know…)
I’ve made shortcodes which allow you to place information stored in Symbiosis (School) and Pure (research@st-andrews) on your research group pages or posts, or even to quickly make a complete staff profile page. For example, here is a sample page which includes information from both databases, as well as text typed in WordPress. The entire page was made with only the following typed in WordPress:
Prof Anne Magurran:
Professor
Prof Anne Magurran
Dyers Brae
University of St Andrews
St Andrews
KY16 9TH
Fife
UK
tel: 01334 463506
fax: 01334 463600
room: 1
email: aem1@st-andrews.ac.uk
Related Content:
Centre for Research into Ecological & Environmental Modelling
Fish Behaviour and Biodiversity
Biology Research Committee
School of Biology
Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences
IBANS Behavioural Ecology
Centre for Biological Diversity
Scottish Oceans Institute
BDG
Institute for Data-Intensive Research
edit aem1 details
from WordPress – like this paragraph – and from the Symbiosis
(School) database, and from Pure (research@st-andrews)…
I am an ecologist investigating biological diversity. My goal is to quantify the patterns, and understand the processes, linked to change in ecological communities over space and time, and to use this research to protect and manage natural capital.
source:
research@st-andrews
Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
ERC Advanced Grant
Deputy Convenor Biology Panel Hong Kong RAE 2014
Board of Reviewing Editors, Science
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Beverton Medal (FSBI) 2006
Research Group:
Dr Amy Deacon
Dr Hideyasu Shimadzu
Ms Faye Moyes
Ms Morelia Camacho-Cervantes
Mr Al Reeve
Ms Alessanda Rocha Kortz
Funded collaborations:
University of the West Indies, Trinidad
Mamiraua Sustainable Development Institute, Brazil
source: symbiosis
Recent Publications:
Data could not be retrieved from PURE at this time. (research-outputs/persons)If there is a "source:research@st-andrews" link shown above, that should take you directly to a page with more information about this person. Otherwise, provided they are likely to be involved in research, you might wish to try searching for them from the researchers page on the main portal.
The general form for these shortcodes is: [SHORTCODE data=”value” uid=”value“]
Below is a summary of available codes, all of these use the parameter uid=”abc” where abc is a St Andrews user-id to indicate the person for whom information should be shown. An additional parameter – format – which is optional, and controls placement of the content is described below the table.
| SHORTCODE | data="value" | output |
|---|---|---|
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | fullname | title preferred-firstname surname |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | jobTitle | job title |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | title | name and job title e.g. Dr John Smith: Lecturer |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | contactDetails | name; full postal address with postcode; phone; fax; email (clickable); room number |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | image | staff portrait image |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | bioLink | link to a staff profile on the School of Biology website |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | edit | link to editing page (requires password) – non-administartive users may only edit their own content |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | generalText | the main text block used on School pages |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | relatedSites | related sites list derived from personal site link (if any) and group memberships (each link opens to new window) |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | relatedSitesWithPure | as related sites list with link to research@st-andrews profile included |
| SDS_PURE | publications | publications list – Formatting not perfect at present but links do work. Default is five publications – for more add an additional parameter such as number="10" with the required value. A parameter uid="dp1" indicates an individual user ID – or a parameter orgid="SOI" may be used in order to access publications relating to an organisational unit defined in PURE. Our plug-in 'knows' and will translate correctly a limited number of codes – eg medicine / biology / SOI / SMRU… or the correct values may be input in the shortcode (eg orgid="40SCBIOL" for biology). Contact rpo@st-andrews.ac.uk for more details about organisational IDs. |
| SDS_PURE | overview | overview text from Pure/research@st-andrews |
| SDS_PURE | link | a link to the user's profile page in research@st-andrews |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | full | a complete profile page combining most of the above elements. Default is five publications – for more add an additional parameter such as number="10" with the required value. |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | sidebar | a right-justified sidebar with image; name; address; contact details; room number; related sites; link to school page; link to content edit page |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | sidebarWithPure | as sidebar with link to research@st-andrews profile included |
SDS_SYMBIOSIS |
body | Pure overview; School general text; Pure publications. Default is five publications – for more add an additional parameter such as number="10" with the required value. |
SDS_SYMBIOSIS |
researchGroupMembers | requires uid="*" and piid="someone". Optional format="right" title="List Title". The uid parameter is not used. The piid is the St Andrews user-id of the research group PI. Data entered in the PI's record in SYMBIOSIS defines members of his/her research group. Produces a linking list of people in the PI's group. Demo |
SDS_SYMBIOSIS |
researchGroupAccordion | used to produce a profile of all researchers in a research group. Requires parameters: uid="*" and piid="someone". The uid parameter is not used. The piid is the St Andrews user-id of the research group PI. Data entered in the PI's record in SYMBIOSIS defines members of his/her research group. Data from both SYMBIOSIS and PURE is used to create a complete accordion of the group with images. Individual members expand to reveal detailed profiles. More & Demo |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | groupList | used to make a list of any people defined as a group in symbiosis. Requires a parameter groupcode="IBANS". An optional parameter is jobcat which may be used to refine a list based on job category. A comma separated list of jobcat values may also be entered. Individual members expand to reveal details as defined in a site page called profile (the profile page may use a customised combination of other codes above). Valid jobcat codes are: academic; administrative; research; technical; postgraduate student. The following parameters may also be set to "yes" with various effects: suppress_school; suppress_shorttext; suppress_roleshorttext; suppress_room; suppress_tel; listLinkToPure. The attribute style may be used with CSS codes to style the output list. |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | grouplistImages | As groupList but includes a portrait image of each person if one is on file (symbiosis). Example output |
| SDS_SYMBIOSIS | grouplistImages_recursive | As grouplistImages but looks for research groups of people who are in the group list and adds found research group members to the group list. Jobcat filters applied to the grouplist are also applied to the research group lists. Example output |
As I mentioned you can optionally add a format parameter, which has the following results in most instances (‘headspace’ only is available for the shortcodes full, sidebar, body)
| format="value" | effect |
|---|---|
| newline | add a line break after the content |
| right | make the content be in a right aligned block |
| left | make the content be in a left aligned block |
| headspace | add a line break above the content |
Prevent comments
STEP 1: When editing a post or page, ensure that the ‘Discussion’ panel (near bottom) is visible. If you can’t see it, then click ‘Screen Options’ (top right) and check ‘Discussion’
STEP 2: On the ‘Discussion’ panel, uncheck ‘allow comments’, and save/publish/update. This will prevent comments for that page or post.
Upload a new header image
STEP 1: To upload a new header image for your site, first choose an image, and size the part you wish to use to 187 x 1000 pixels. If you’re not sure how to do this, perhaps ask a photoshop guru. Large single images that are not too busy work well.
STEP 2: Then sign in to your site, and from the dashboard select Appearance > Header
STEP 3: Beside ‘upload image’, click Choose File and upload your image. You can select from the images uploaded previously, or have a randome one from this set displayed on every page.