Setting up a New WordPress Site

First you will need to consider who will be doing the editing – will it just be you or will there be multiple users?

If it is just you, you’ll need to sign up to the service on your login (move on to the next step in this list).

If it’s going to be a team of users please fill out the WordPress Site Request form and we'll set the site up for you. You don't need to continue down this list.

To create your personal WordPress site, you will need to enable it for your login. Visit the following address and log in: https://myaccount-int.aber.ac.uk/protected/restricted/permsets/ 

Scroll down the section headed 'Service Features on my own account'.

Click the Add button in the last row of the table, titled 'Have a blog on wordpress.aber.ac.uk'.

The page will refresh and now the Add button becomes a Remove button should you wish to disable this at a later date.

After waiting at least 30 minutes, vist the following address to access your new WordPress site (replacing username with your own username): http://wordpress.aber.ac.uk/username/wp-admin

You will need to log in here to see the WordPress dashboard.

When you first log in, there may be a number of messages at the top of the dashboard:

• Polylang request for rating - ignore and click the x to close
• Activate Lingotek - ignore and click the x to close
• Welcome to Polylang - if you will be creating a bilingual site, click the 'Run the Setup Wizard' button. Otherwise, ignore and click the x to close
• Jetpack - this adds useful features but needs to be set up centrally, you can close the box to get it out of the way and ask us to enable it for you

Before you start writing blog posts, you may need to change the editor settings. Due to a slight glitch in Wordpress, you may find you can't use the block editor properly. To fix this, take the following quick (rather counterintuitive) steps:

1. Click on your name in the top right corner of the screen – this will take you to your profile editing page
2. Tick the box at the top marked “Disable the visual editor when writing”
3. Add a Nickname, usually your first name, but this is up to you
4. Scroll down and click “Update Profile”
5. When this has saved, untick the box you just ticked and click “Update Profile” again.

This should now fix the editor glitch and when you go to create a new post you should be able to use the block editor.

If you want your site to be at a different web address, please contact us giving the current address of the site and the address you would like it to have. The web address must always start with wordpress.aber.ac.uk.

It is possible to change the language used for your site to Welsh - this will affect both the editing interface and the blog itself. To do this:

1. Click on Settings in the left menu
2. On the Site Language option, choose Cymraeg from the drop-down list
3. Scroll down and click “Save Changes” to finish.

If you wish to have a bilingual site, there is a plugin available (Polylang) which can you to do this. Please contact us if need help with setting this up. An information sheet on using Polylang will be available shortly.

You may wish to change the theme of your site. This is available under 'Appearance' > 'Themes' in the left menu of the Dashboard. The theme controls the appearance of the site, and you have the choice of several installed themes.

Choose the appropriate theme for the nature of your site. You can customise the themes by changing the background colour and header image if you wish to.

To create a blog post, you can either put your mouse over “+ New” in the black bar at the top of the page and choose ‘Post’, or in the dashboard put your mouse over “Posts” in the left menu and choose ‘Add New’.

You can also create static pages. To create a page, you can either put your mouse over “+New” in the black bar at the top of the page and choose ‘Page’, or in the dashboard put your mouse over “Pages” in the left menu and choose ‘Add New’.