club web user guide · 2018-06-22 · page 4 - soroptimist club web “how to” guide about the...

Club Web User Guide 2.0 (Drupal 7)

Updated January 4, 2016 11:16 AM

Notes

Please use this area to record any information that may need to be saved and/or shared with other members of your team. Keep it in a safe place.

Hosting Account Information:

Hosting Company / Name: ________________________________________________________

Username: _____________________________________________________________________

Password: ______________________________________________________________________

Domain name: __________________________________________________________________

FTP Information:

FTP URL: _____________________________________________________________________

FTP Username: _________________________________________________________________

FTP Password: __________________________________________________________________

MySQL Information:

MySQL Host: __________________________________________________________________

MySQL Username: ______________________________________________________________

MySQL Password: _______________________________________________________________

Other notes:

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

Table of ContentsAbout the website templates and SIA support ...............................................4The Basics .....................................................................................................5

IMPORTANT: Upgrading from Drupal 6 .....................................................................................5Domain names and hosting ...........................................................................................................5Securing a domain name .............................................................................................................. 5Getting a hosting package ............................................................................................................. 5Downloading the package files from the Soroptimist website ............................................................ 6Uploading the files to your hosting server ....................................................................................... 7Creating a MySQL database on the server ..................................................................................... 8Installing the website .................................................................................................................. 10Loading the default settings and content ...................................................................................... 12

Soroptimist Settings ....................................................................................13Further Customizing the Website .............................................................. 14

Adding and editing menu items ...................................................................................................17Working with Content Types ....................................................................................................... 18Working with Blocks .................................................................................................................. 18

Permissions and Members’ Content ........................................................... 20Importing Users from a CSV (Comma Separated Values) File ....................................................... 20

Social Media Links..................................................................................... 21Advanced settings ..................................................................................... 22

Adding Google Analytics ............................................................................................................. 23About Taxonomy ........................................................................................................................ 23Working with Web Forms ........................................................................................................... 24Clean URLs .............................................................................................................................. 25Security Updates ........................................................................................................................ 25

Additional Resources ................................................................................. 27Technical Requirements ............................................................................. 29Dreamhost’s Free Non Profit Hosting Plan (for US-based 501(c)(3)’s) .......................................................................... 30

- Soroptimist Club Web “How To” Guide

About the website templates and SIA support

The website templates have been developed for Soroptimist International of the Americas using Drupal (drupal.org), an open-source content management system which runs millions of websites. Drupal consists of thousands of modules and designs to power websites. SIA has therefore chosen only a fraction of the available modules and actions from Drupal’s library to incorporate into our web templates.

The Soroptimist templates were developed with the goals to help ensure Soroptimist branding through standardized design elements and content, while keeping the functionality simple enough for those with minimal technological backgrounds, yet flexible enough to allow clubs to implement basic customizations to suit their needs. The functionality that is listed in this user guide is the basic functionality needed for most club or region websites.

SIA’s support for the templates will include updating the templates for major upgrades to the soft-ware or when security updates are made to the existing version. SIA will also be involved in creating and updating additional tools for use with the templates, such as a photo/image library or tutorials on using the templates. SIA headquarters will serve the collecting point of club and region sugges-tions for new features to include in the templates, and to report any breakdowns of functionality in the sites.

SIA will not be able to support the individual installations of the template files to club/region web-site hosting servers, or to update individual pages. We can provide limited advice if you run into technical problems (i.e. Have you cleaned out your cache?) or if you have some questions about your web site’s content that are not answered in this manual or other SIA resources found on the template download page (i.e. website guidelines, style manual, etc.)

Clubs and regions are welcome to extend the functionality of their websites beyond the basic tem-plates by obtaining help from members of the Drupal community to make custom changes to their websites if they wish. However, clubs and regions should be aware that any custom changes that include advanced add-ons in functionality to the basic package provided by SIA may interfere with the ability to obtain updated versions of the software from the Soroptimist download website. Any advanced functionality or add-ons outside of the basic template package provided by Soroptimist, and as noted in this user guide, will not be supported by Soroptimist International of the Americas in future software versions or security updates available from the SIA website.

This edition of the Club Web layouts are built on version 7 of Drupal and have been improved to be mobile-friendly and include additional functionality such as photo galleries and members only content.

drupal.org


The Basics

IMPORTANT: Upgrading from Drupal 6

If your club has an existing website running on the first edition (Drupal 6) of the Club Web tem-plates, you will need to upgrade. This process is more in depth than simply copying the new files over top of the old ones, as there are many changes in functionality and database structure. The Stuart Center’s CEDC office helped us develop these templates and will provide your club with up to two hours of free assistance until May 4, 2016! Contact them at the link below:

• https://cedc.org/contact/soroptimist

Domain names and hosting

Among the first things you will need are a domain name (for example, soroptimist.org) and a host (the server where your site will be stored and which will “serve” the pages of your site to visitors). If you have both of these or are comfortable setting them up, you can skip to the next section. If you’d like a little more help, just keep reading.

Securing a domain name

To secure a domain name, you simply have to find one that is available and pay an annual fee to retain the rights to it. In general you should be able to get a domain name for somewhere around $10 per year. Some places charge much more than that, but you don’t need to pay it – find a cheaper option. The domain name should include the club name in some manner (soroptimistofyourtown.org, yourtownsoroptimist.org, etc.)

It would also be worthwhile to research which host you plan to use before buying the domain name – many hosts will include a domain name registration in the hosting package deal.

Examples of registrars where you can search and buy domain names (some of whom are also hosts):

• Dreamhost * (see notes below)• 1&1• Dotster• GoDaddy

Getting a hosting package

As mentioned, many of the registrars listed also offer hosting, so in that case, you could choose to sign up for hosting at the same place. Most clubs will be able to build a site on a shared server rather than a private, dedicated server. This will keep your costs down since you won’t need to pay for the entire server, but rather for one small slice of a server. Costs for a typical shared hosting package would be in the range of $10 per month, sometimes less. There are a number of hosting companies

https://cedc.org/contact/soroptimist

soroptimist.org

soroptimistofyourtown.org

soroptimistofyourtown.org

yourtownsoroptimist.org


which offer further deals for non-profit organizations (such as Dreamhost which is mentioned in more detail below).

Below are the minimum technical specifications that you should ensure your hosting plan supports for best results:

• Linux server• Apache• MySQL 5• PHP 5.4 or 5.5

For the rest of this manual, we will use ‘http://www.yourdomain.org’ as a placeholder for the domain you registered for your organization.

* Dreamhost: Note for US-based 501(c)(3) organizations

Dreamhost offers a shared hosting package to 501(c)(3) organizations in the US. We will be using screenshots from this host to illustrate various items throughout this manual, however please note you are not required to use Dreamhost. It is simply one option that is available to you. Unfor-tunately it is not feasible to include screenshots from every possible hosting service, so we had to choose one. The concepts should be similar in your hosting setup, but the screens may look different.

More information on the Dreamhost non-profit hosting package is available at the end of this docu-ment.

Downloading the package file from the Soroptimist websiteWe have prepared a file archive to help you get your site up and running quickly. It is packaged on our server and you can download it freely as a help to get you started. Click on the link below to download the file and continue to follow the instructions to get your website set up.

Depending on your skill level and hosting package, you may want to check first to see if your host will install this file for you. In that case you could simply provide the links to the download, they will do all of the initial file transfers and installation work, and you can jump to the administration section of the manual. If not, we will try to provide you some guidance on how to connect this file to your hosting account and end up with a functioning website.

To download the files (the scripts, images and stylesheets that will control the way the site functions and will allow you to administer the site):

• New installs: http://www.soroptimist.org/clubweb/files/soroptimist-club-filesystem_v2.zip• Updates: Upgrades will now be handled through the default Drupal channels. In the case that

there is an upgrade for the Soroptimist themes, you will be able to download the file above and use it to update your system. (More information on updating will be given later in the manual).

http://www.yourdomain.org

http://www.soroptimist.org/clubweb/files/soroptimist-club-filesystem_v2.zip


Uploading the files to your hosting server

Once you have this Zip archive file downloaded, you have to unzip it on your computer. The files are saved within a folder so that when you unzip it, the files are contained. Be sure not to upload this folder, just the files from within it! You will need to use an FTP program to copy the files to your hosting account. Make sure you have a record of the FTP information provided from your hosting account (you’ll need a username, password, server, and a directory to upload in – there is a spot in the front of this manual to record this information if you wish). Load your FTP software and open a connection with this information.

If you don’t have FTP software, consider one of the following free, open source FTP clients:

• Windows or Mac: FileZilla http://filezilla-project.org/ (get FileZilla help here: http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Documentation )

• Mac only: CyberDuck http://cyberduck.ch/ (get CyberDuck help here: http://trac.cyberduck.ch/wiki/help )

Figure 1 contains a screenshot of a Filezilla screen. After entering your login information in area A,

A

B C

Figure 1: Filezilla FTP screen

http://filezilla-project.org/

http://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Documentation

http://cyberduck.ch/

http://trac.cyberduck.ch/wiki/help


browse to the folder that contains the filesystem you just downloaded and unzipped in area B. Then navigate to the folder on the server where your website files are located in area C. (In Dreamhost, this directory name will often match your domain name exactly. In other hosts, a common folder name is httpdocs and sometimes you don’t have a choice about it – it loads the live web directory im-mediately in area C of the FTP client).

If there are any files in the web server folder (for example, default files added by your host) the FTP program will ask if you want to overwrite them. If they are default files, you can overwrite them. If you have an existing website, you should make a backup copy of your site first and then upload these files. Ask your host for help if you need it.

Creating a MySQL database on the server

After the filesystem is uploading, you can move to the next step, leaving the files uploading in the FTP program in the background.

MySQL is a database system and the database on the server will hold the page content that you add and edit through the administrative interface. As pages are requested from the server, the content will be pulled from the database and served to your site visitors.

If your hosting provider has given you a username and a password for a MySQL database, find them now or request that the host set one up for you. Otherwise you will need to create a database. This

B

Figure 2: Dreamhost MySQL screen

A Click on “MySQL Databases” under “Goodies”


step will look different on different hosts, but the concept is the same.

Figure 2 shows where to find the MySQL administration area in your Dreamhost account. Click on “Goodies” and select “MySQL Databases (A). At the bottom of the MySQL page, you will find the form that allows you to create a new user and database (B). The cut-away at the bottom of Figure 2 illustrates this form. If your host does not create the user and database in one step, you may need to assign the user to this database to be sure that it can read and write to the database. Record the data-base name, username, password, and hostname.

With Dreamhost, often the hostname will be ‘mysql.yourdomain.org’. (Note that not all hosts will require you to create a hostname – some will use ‘localhost’ by default instead of a customized host-name).

Installing the website

Now that your database is created and your files are finished uploading, the next step is to install the website. (Please note: if you created a new hostname in the previous step, you may need to wait until the new hostname is recognized across the internet. This is known as “DNS propagation” and can take up to 24 hours, but often occurs in less than 4 hours. If you didn’t have to create a new host-name you should be able to continue immediately.)

Visit your domain name. (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.org) in a web browser. You should see a screen similar to the one in Figure 3a.

• A: Enter the database name you created earlier• B: Enter the database username you set up

Figure 3a: Database configuration screen

A

BC D

mysql.yourdomain.org

http://www.yourdomain.org


Figure 3b: Progress bar

Figure 3c: Site install configuration screen


• C: Enter the password for this user• D: The Database host defaults to “localhost” which works on many web hosts. If you had to

create a custom hostname in an earlier step (e.g. mysql.yourdomain.org) then enter that here. Otherwise leave it as the default. Do not fill in any of the other fields in the Advanced section.

Click “Save and Continue”.

Assuming the MySQL database/user credentials were correct, you should see a progress bar as the installation continues. (See Figure 3b). If the credentials did not work you may need to double check your information and try again.

After the progress bar is complete, you will be able to enter some default site information as shown in Figure 3c. This includes the site name, the admin email address and password, and so on. Fill in the information that is requested, and again click “Save and Continue” to proceed.

Figure 3d: Restore default state (default settings and content)

mysql.yourdomain.org


Loading the default settings and content

At this point you will be forwarded to a screen entitled “Backup and Migrate.” This screen allows you to load the default settings and content for a Soroptimist Club Website. The green notification explains:

To load the default Soroptimist Club Web configuration and themes, click “Restore from a saved backup” below. Select the “DefaultState.mysql.gz” database and click “Restore Now”. NOTE: Only do this if you would like to start from the default installation. If you restore to this database after working on the site, you will lose your work.

Take special note of the final sentence. If you are experimenting with a website installation and want to start fresh, you can always come back to this screen. However, if you restore to the default state without backing up your site, you will lose any content and settings you may have changed.

Figure 3e: Configure Soroptimist Settings


Soroptimist Settings

You should now have a default installation of the website on your domain. If you want to adjust any of the settings you made during the initial installation such as the site name or admin email address or password, you can always return to the “Configure Soroptimist Settings” option un-derneath “Configuration” in the administrative menu (Figure 3e).

• URL: yourdomain.org/admin/config/so-ropt_intl

Options available for change include:

• Admin password• Admin email address• Site name• Site email address (may be the same as the

admin email)• Theme layout (Figure 3f )• Header image

Update the contact page and other default content

Be sure to also update the contact page. At the moment it has phony information in place, so you will want to load the page and edit the contact information you’d like to present on your site. While still logged in as the administrator, click on “Contact us” in the footer menu and then on the “Edit” tab in the page that loads.

• URL: yourdomain.org/node/4/edit

Scroll down on the page to the section labeled “Body” and edit the information directly in the page. We will go over other options on the edit page in a future section. For now simply update the infor-mation and click “Save” at the bottom of the page.

There is one other reference to “Soroptimist of Anytown” in the default text provided. Please feel free to edit the following page to update your club name and any other information specific to your club that you would like to add.

• Welcome text, URL: yourdomain.org/node/5/edit

Figure 3f: Soroptimist Theme Layouts

yourdomain.org

yourdomain.org


Further Customizing the Website

Using SIA’s existing guidelines

NOTE: As you create content for your site, please refer to SIA’s existing Club Website Guidelines, Graphic Identity and Style Manual, Guide to Taking Good Pictures. All of these documents are linked on the site where you downloaded this manual.

Adding and editing content pages

We’ll take a quick look at all the essentials of the create/edit content screen. When you are logged in as the administrator, you will notice that most pages now show an “Edit” tab. Clicking this will allow you to modify the content of the page. You can also search existing content under “Content Manage-ment > Content”, filtering by content type. Create new content by clicking on “Create content” in the navigation menu in the sidebar (or under “Content Management > Create Content” in the black administrator menu at the top of the page).

Choosing a content type

If you click “Create content” you will be given four “content type” options to choose from. The basic content types that you will be using are as follows:

• Page: Add a basic stand-alone page, such as “About Us”.• Event: Add an event with an associated date to the calendar. Entries of this type will automati-

cally stream into the “Calendar” menu item as well as the “Upcoming Events” feed on the front page if that is enabled in the theme you are using, sorted in reverse chronological order (so the most recent entries are at the top).

• Members: If you will be allowing club members to log in to the site, you can use this type add content that is protected from general viewing. Only people who are logged in to the website and have the ‘member’ role will be able to access these pages through a ‘Members’ menu item that will appear when they log in.

• News or Blog: Add an entry in your News/Blog section, if you choose to use it. Entries of this type will automatically stream into the “News” menu item as well as the “Latest News and Blog” feed on the front page if that is enabled in the theme you are using, sorted in reverse chronologi-cal order (so the most recent entries are at the top).

• Photo Gallery: Add a collection of images, for example from an event your club held. Sample galleries are loaded on the “Galleries” page, and new galleries will appear on this page automati-cally: URL: yourdomain.org/galleries

• Webform: Add a form which allows site visitors to submit information to you from your site. (See the advanced section for more information).

yourdomain.org


Understanding the options

The create/edit screen gives you a lot of fields. These are the most important ones that you will need to use:

• Title: This is the title of the page that you are creating.

• Image: This field allows you to browse to find an image on your computer and upload it to the page. The website can crop and scale it as needed for various thumbnail uses so you should not need to do resizing before uploading. (See Enabling image resizing (and “Clean URLs”) under “The Basics”). Tip: The “Photo Gallery” content type allows multiple images to be uploaded at the same time. When browsing to find the images, you can multi-select by Ctrl-clicking (Windows) or ⌘-clicking (Mac).

• Video: You can easily link a Youtube video by pasting the URL into the Video field. The site will embed it for you.

• Body: This is the main body of the page you are creating. On some pages, the site will dis-play a short version of the page followed by a “Read more” link, and it will try to generate that automatically. You can control it manually if you want to make sure it breaks the content in a particular spot but using the “Edit summary” option above the editor. (See “Working with page ‘summary’” below for more information). Tip: You can paste from another document or webpage, but be aware that it is possible you will insert style code that may not display correctly on your site. If this happens, you can select all the text and try to use the small eraser icon (which says “Remove formatting” if you hover over it) to clean it up. Worst case, you may need to paste into a plain text editor to remove the formatting, copy again from there, and then paste into the site.

• File attachments: You can attach files to the pages that you create or edit. Simply browse to find the file on your local computer, and then click “Upload”. For example, if you add a press release, you may want to add a downloadable PDF in addition to adding the content directly in the page. You could also use this function as part of a method of building a basic library of documents (see the example in the “Content Types” section). By default these files will download when a user clicks on the link, although it’s possible they have installed a plugin to display them in the browser. NOTE: File size restrictions for uploading attachments and/or images are set on your server. If you find the limit too small, you will need to contact your host to have them increase it.

• Tags: You can enter comma separated tags (keywords or phrases) here to help organize your content. This will cross-reference all content with the same keywords. For example, you could use a keyphrase such as “Women’s Opportunity Awards” on any content that relates to the awards. This would create a link to a summary page that lists all of this related content in one place. Important: Spelling is critical here – words that are spelled differently will create different key-

Figure 4a: Title, Image, Video fields


Figure 4b: No summary entered Figure 4c: Summary entered

words. As you are typing the keywords, if you pause for a moment, the system will search exist-ing keywords and show you if there are any matches to help prevent misspelled keywords.

• Menu settings: You can (optionally) add a page directly to a menu by checking this box and specifying the parent item that it should appear under. If it is a new top level menu item, leave “<Main menu>” selected, otherwise select the menu item that it should appear under in the navigation.

• Scheduling options: You have the choice of publishing or unpublishing this page at a certain date and time. Leave these options blank to disable the scheduling options for the page.

• Revision information: By default the site will create a new revision when you edit existing con-tent. This means that it saves a copy of the current page in an unpublished form before updating with the edits you have made. This will allow you to revert to an earlier version in case you want to undo the changes. The “Log message” area in the edit window is a place where you can type in a note about the type of change you are making as a way to communicate with other administra-tors who may wonder what you changed – it is not visible to site users. NOTE: To revert to an earlier version of a page, click on the “Revisions” tab and then click “revert” next to the version you wish to use.

• Comment settings: By default we have turned the comments off on all types except the mem-bers content. If there are pages that you wish to allow comments on (or turn off on members content), this area will allow you to change that setting.

• URL path settings: You can change the URL of the page here. This will allow you to use key-words or make the URL more understandable, changing from ‘node/1’ (for example) to ‘about’.


This also relates to the “Clean URLs” information in the advanced section.• Authoring information: You can change the author here for sites with multiple administrators,

and also change the date. If you are entering press releases from the past, you may wish to back-date them here so they fit into the site in the correct chronological order.

• Publishing options: The main options to take note of here are “Published” and “Promoted to Front Page”. If you are working on a page but it’s not ready to go live yet, uncheck “Published” to save it in a form that is not viewable by visitors to the site. If you check “Promoted to Front Page”, when the page is saved and published, it will be listed on the front page as well as in the area that it belongs (e.g. a blog or news item would show on the front page as well as in the News/Blog menu item).

Working with page “summary” as you add and edit content

There are pages on your site that list a “summary view” or “teaser” of certain pages along with links to the full versions of those pages. An example is the news page, which lists the latest news/blog entries.

Figures 4b and 4c illustrates this concept in the editor window. If you don’t change anything the website will try to create a summary automatically. If you want more control over where it breaks the text, you can click “Edit summary” and enter the exact text you would like to show in the summary view. One example where this can be useful is for press releases, where you generally don’t want the header info (bolded date, press contact, etc.) showing up in the teaser view, and you don’t want the full view to show the teaser summary above the actual press release.

Adding and Editing Menu Items

It is very easy to add and edit items in the menu structure. To start, choose “Menus” un-der the “Structure” option in the admin menu.

• URL: yourdomain.org/ad-min/structure/menu

You will see a list of menus to choose from. The two that are of particular interest are the “Main Menu” (the menu containing the primary op-tions) and the “Footer Menu” (a smaller menu at the bottom of the page). If you click “list links” beside either of these menus you will see the pages that are currently in the menu.

There are some default menu Figure 5: Editing the Main Menu

A

C

D

B

yourdomain.org


items added to the site which you are free to modify, reorder or remove. Figure 5 shows the default Main Menu items. You can see how they correlate to the list of items in the actual menu. As usual, the handles on the left (A) can be moved using a “click and drag” to reorder the menu items. You can also make submenu items by moving them underneath another menu item (see the pages under “About Soroptimist” (B) as an example).

Notice the column labeled “Enabled” (C). If you uncheck the box for “Enabled” the menu item will still exist in the administrative interface, but your users will not see it in the menu.

To the right of the checkbox columns you will find options to edit or delete the menu item (D). Ed-iting allows you to change the text of the menu item (as well as the text that displays when you hover over the menu item, called the “description”). Delete will remove it completely.

Working with Content Types

We have already noted the basic content types that come pre-installed (basic page, event, members, news/blog, photo gallery, webform). You also have the ability to define new content types based on your particular needs. Under “Structure” in the top menu, click on “Content Types”.

• URL: yourdomain.org/admin/structure/types

On the resulting page you see the existing content types along with a link to “Add a new content type”. Click that link and fill in the fields on the resulting page, following the instructions for each field. “Name” is the name that you will refer to this content type as, and “Type” is how the website application will refer to it internally (in the example below, the name is “Library Item” and the type is “library”). The “Submission form settings”, “Workflow settings”, and “Comment settings” areas allow you to change the default options for this content type. Look at each option to see if you want to change it, then click “Save content type” at the bottom of the page.

Working with Blocks

“Blocks” are smaller content elements that appear in the sidebar regions of the page, and may appear on many different pages. Some examples of blocks that are enabled by default:

• Login form • Administrative menu• Search function

You can also add custom information to a new block that you create and designate which pages it should appear on, or whether it should show up for everyone or just members. Under the “Structure” menu, select “Blocks”.

• URL: yourdomain.org/admin/structure/block

This administrative page shows the areas that you can add blocks, known as “Regions”. (You can click “Demonstrate block regions (Soroptimist Club Web)” on this page to see all the regions that are available). You can use the simple drag and drop interface to re-order blocks, but you must click “Save” at the bottom of the page in order to make those modifications permanent. You can also drag

yourdomain.org

yourdomain.org


from one region to another, or use the region dropdown menu to move the block. After saving any changes to the ordering of the blocks, you can also further customize individual blocks by clicking “configure” to the right of the block you wish to modify.

Here are some of the most useful modifications you can make:

• Block title: enter a title you wish to appear above the block, leave blank to use the default title, or enter “<none>” (without the quotation marks) to show no title.

• Show block for specific roles: if you wish, you can make a block show up only for a specific role (or roles). By default a block is available to all roles, but if you wish it to only be shown if some-one is not logged in (for example, a notification inviting people to sign up for membership on the site), you can designate that by checking the “anonymous user” box.

• Show block on specific pages: you can choose whether the block should only show up on cer-tain pages, or whether it should show up on every page except for certain pages. Simply choose the appropriate option and enter the URLs (not including the http://yourdomain.org/ part) in the text area below.

Your changes on this page will not be saved unless you click “Save block” at the bottom of the page.

If you’ve edited a custom block or created a new block, you will also have an area to add content and/or images using the same HTML editor as when you add or edit page content. As an example, you could edit the custom “Social media links” block by updating the links to your own Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube links, then publish it in the left or right columns. (Of course, you can remove any icons on this block as well if you don’t have certain accounts).

http://yourdomain.org


Permissions and Members’ Content

By default pages are available to anyone once you publish them, but you have the ability to create content which is not available to the general public, but only to logged in users. Pages of the “Mem-bers” content type will only be available to site users who are logged in and also have been given the “member” role.

There are a number of choices you can make about how people can sign up to become members of the site. By default your site will allow people to sign up for an account, but will require you to ap-prove them. If you also want them to be granted the “members” role, you will need to do that at the same time as when you approve them. (This is one of the reasons that it’s important to update the site’s default email address as described earlier in this manual).

You can adjust the user settings under “Configuration > People > Account Settings”

• URL: yourdomain.orgadmin/config/people/accounts

Importing Users from a CSV (Comma Separated Values) File

If you have a list of members with associated email addresses, you can import them directly and cre-ate site memberships for them. When you are logged in as the administrator you will see a “People” option in the top administrative menu. Under this menu you will find “Import” and a submenu or subtab entitled “New Import”.

• URL: yourdomain.orgadmin/people/user_import/add

On this page you can upload the CSV file and on the following page, match the fields in the CSV file to the fields on the site. The only required field is the email address, but you can also use fields to specify username and password.

You have the option to join up to four fields to create the username, including abbreviations. So you could have fields for first and last name and then specify to use the abbreviated first name and then the last name for the username.

If you don't specify a password, the site will create a random password.

You can also explore the other options, including whether to email the members to notify them of their new accounts or grant them additional roles (be careful, though, since you don't want to make regular users into administrators who can add and edit all content and possibly change the site!).

yourdomain.org

yourdomain.org


Social Media Links

As mentioned in the “Blocks” area, there is a default block that you can publish which lists linked icons for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Figure 6, A). You will have to modify the links on this block if you wish them to link to your own club pages in-stead of the headquarters’ pages.

Figure 6: Sample Social Media block

A


Advanced settings

Adding Google Analytics

If you want to track where your site visitors are coming from and find out more about how they are getting to your site, you may wish to consider installing Google Analytics. To do so, follow these steps:

Go to Google Analytics.

• URL: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Click on “Sign up now” and either open a new Google account and log in to set up your domain, or log in with an existing Google Account.

Click on “+ Add new account” and follow the steps to enter the information about the domain you are building. NOTE: on the final step asking you to agree to the Terms of Service, you have the option to modify the sharing settings. Some user may wish to select “Do not share my Google Analytics data” for privacy reasons.

On the resulting page with instructions and code to paste into the site, you should see a “UA” code within the script they provide, which is the letters UA followed by a series of dashes and numbers. Copy this code only, not the rest of the script. This is your Google Analytics Account Number for this domain.

On your site, go to the modules page (“Modules” in the menu at the top)

• URL: yourdomain.org/admin/modules

Find the “Google Analytics” module on this page and check the select box next to it. Click “Save configuration” at the bottom of this page to activate it.

Go to the Google Analytics configuration page (“Google Analytics” under the “Configuration > System” menu at the top)

• URL: yourdomain.org/admin/config/system/googleanalytics

Paste in the Google Analytics Account number you found in step 4 and modify any other settings you wish on this page. Click “Save configuration” at the bottom of the page.

About Taxonomy

The taxonomy module allows you to categorize your content using both tags and terms that you define beforehand. It is a flexible tool for classifying content with many advanced features. You have already used the taxonomy module, perhaps without realizing it. For example, the tags that you entered on a news/blog post were a particular type of taxonomy that lets you create terms on the fly instead of from a predefined dropdown list.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

yourdomain.org

yourdomain.org


You have the option to define new lists of terms and/or edit existing ones. To explore this, visit the Taxonomy module (“Taxonomy” under the “Structure” menu item at the top):

• URL: yourdomain.org/admin/structure/taxonomy

Here you can see the “vocabulary” that is already set up – the tags/keywords, as mentioned. Each vocabulary can be applied to one or more specific content types, and they only show up when adding or editing that type of content. For example, tags has been added to both the News/blog type and the Event type. Similarly, you could create a new vocabulary called “Location” and apply it only to the “Event” content type if you have specific locations that your events often occur in.

Each taxonomy vocabulary can contain “terms” which will show up in the edit window as a drop-down (for predefined vocabularies) or as a text field in which you can enter comma-separated terms manually (for tag vocabularies).

The basic usage of taxonomy terms is to cross-reference related content. The taxonomy module will create a list of content that shares a certain tag, which can be helpful for your users and also for search engine optimization. To continue with the example we used earlier, if you've created a “Loca-tion” vocabulary and given it a number of terms of common locations for Events, your users (and search engines!) will be able to click on the link for the particular location term to see a list of all content tagged with that location.

To add a new vocabulary to a content type, you will need to select “Manage fields” for the particular content type under “Structure > Content types” in the admin menu. Then you can add a new “Term reference” field to this type of content, specifying the new vocabulary you have created and adjusting the available options to your liking.

Working with Web Forms

If you wish to create a form that site visitors can fill in and submit to your email, you can use the “Webforms” module to create pages and then add “Form components” (such as text fields, dropdown selections, and so on) to them.

To create a new form, choose “Webform” from the “Add content” menu (under “Content” in the admin menu).

• URL: yourdomain.org/node/add/webform

NOTE: If you do not see “Webform” as an option, this module may not be activated. You can acti-vate it by selecting the checkbox beside it in the module list (choose “Modules” in the top menu) and clicking “Save configuration” at the bottom of the page.

The first page you are presented with as you create the form is largely the same as what you would see if you were creating a page of any other content type. The “Body” area will show up above the form fields, so feel free to add instructions or introductory text here.

After you save the first page, you will be taken to the second page. Here you will be able to add new form components such as those listed below. Each component will have some configuration options after you create it to allow customization.

yourdomain.org

yourdomain.org


• Date: A date field• Email: An email address• Fieldset: A “group” that you can use to arrange related components in. (e.g. an “Address Infor-

mation” fieldset could be used to contain the components for the street address, city, state, and zip)

• Grid: A series of rows and columns with a radio button selection on each row. (For example, think about a “Rate your experience on the following from one to five” with a list of questions in the rows and the numbers one through five across the top).

• Hidden: A hidden value that will be submitted with the form but in general cannot be edited by the user.

• Markup: Enter custom HTML or PHP code into your form.• Page break: Make a multi-page form.• Select options: Create checkboxes, radio buttons, and dropdown select lists.• Text area: A place for longer textual responses and comments, providing multiple lines for a

response.• Text field: A single line response. This is the default option and can be used for things like name,

street address, and the like.• Time: A time of day.

Once you have created all the components for your form, you can reorder them by using the familiar “drag and drop” interface and clicking on “Save”. Ensure that your form is published if you’re ready for people to begin using it.

Clean URLs

If your server supports it, you can enable “Clean URLs” which change the default URLs into some-thing that looks more friendly. For example, a default URL for the “What we do” page would look like this:

• http://yourdomain.org/node/2

Turning on “Clean URLs” would change it to look like this:

• http://yourdomain.org/node/2

You can see it removes some of the code in the URL and makes it look a little cleaner. This setting may also help with Search Engine Optimization since it serves each page from a separate path instead of from the root directory with a query pasted on the end.

You can also specify what the URL should be. If you recall from the earlier section on creating and editing pages, there is an area called “URL path settings” on the edit page. You can type in exactly what you'd like the URL to be (for example, “what-we-do”) so that the resulting URL would look like this:

• http://yourdomain.org/what-we-do

In order to enable this module, you will need to have completed the “Enabling image resizing (and ‘Clean URLs’)” section at the end of the “Quick start” portion of this guide. Next, visit “Clean URLs” from the “Configuration > Search and metadata” option in the top menu. If your server sup-

http://yourdomain.org/?q=node

http://yourdomain.org/node

http://yourdomain.org/what


ports it and you’ve already completed the step that was just mentioned, you will be able to select the “Enable” radio button and then click “Save configuration” to activate Clean URLs.

Security Updates

As with any software, updates will be available periodically. If you are logged into your website as the administrative user, it will alert you with an announcement box at the top of the page if there are up-dates available. (More critical update notifications such as security updates will be noted in a red box to be sure you don’t miss it.) If you see such a notification for any of the installed modules, you will be able to perform the update directly through the website by following the instructions on screen.

If there is an update for the core Drupal files, you cannot apply it through the admin interface. In this case, you will need to download the latest Drupal package and upload the files in the same way you did to install the website. This will replace the old files with the updated files and make the site secure again.

The first step of any filesystem update should always be to create a backup of your current site. This is just in case anything goes wrong during installation, so you can always revert back without losing information. The two parts of the site that you should backup are the filesystem and the database.

We’ve installed the “Backup and migrate” module to make backing up the site very simple. Visit “Backup and migrate” under the “Configuration > System” option in the top menu.

• URL: http://yourdomain.org/admin/config/system/backup_migrate

Select “Backup my <Entire site (code, files & DB) > to <Manual Backups Directory> using <Soropti-mist Export/Import>” and click “Backup now”. This will create a copy of your site files and database on your web server, which you can then download or restore from later, if needed.

Afterwards, you should visit the “Status report” page (under “Reports” in the top menu) to see if there are database updates that need to be applied to your database. This page will also give you the status of other elements of your website, but for now, look specifically at the “Database updates” line.

• URL: http://yourdomain.org/admin/reports/status

If there are any database up-dates that are required, you can click on the link and follow the default options until all up-dates are complete. If you see any errors along the way, make a note of them. Typically you will not have any errors.

Figure 7: Backup settings for files and database

http://yourdomain.org/?q=admin




Figure 8a: Module updates (check the box and click “Download these updates”)

Figure 8b: Click “Continue”

Figure 8c: Click “Run database updates”

Figure 8d: Click “Continue”


Additional Resources

For many club webmasters, learning the basics of updating their new website is the most they will want to do and the items in this manual will be the most they want to learn. However, others may not want to do even that much, while a few may be intrigued and will want to take the opportunity to learn a new skill. No matter the situation, there are numerous places to find assistance.

Drupal community

The Drupal community is large, has a global presence, and is open to all users. The Drupal website (http://drupal.org) connects users of all levels to many different resources.

In the Drupal Community & Support section, you will find links to:

• Forums (http://drupal.org/forum) on topics such as support, finding paid services, events, and general (non-support) discussions.

• Marketplace/Commercial Support (http://drupal.org/drupal-services) to find companies to as-sist with development and support of your site, adding content, or other hosting and training services.

• Groups (http://groups.drupal.org/) that come together (usually face-to-face) to plan and partici-pate in projects.

• Events (http://groups.drupal.org/event) including face-to-face meet-ups with other users and training opportunities.

Club’s website hosting service

Your club’s hosting service may have low-cost packages available to provide some assistance with items such as the initial installation of the file packages (which are downloaded from the Soroptimist site) on their servers, as well as update installations. If downloading and uploading the files is an aspect of your website implementation that is outside your skill-set or comfort level, ask the hosting service if they provide this particular service.

Other local community resources

Local community colleges and continuing education groups are providing more and more IT-related classes and training opportunities. These groups may also be able to provide you with direct connec-tions to individuals in the community who help set up and maintain websites for local groups in the area.

The Center for Educational Design and Communication

CEDC is a non-profit that serves other non-profits with communications, including websites. They helped develop the themes included in this package and are available to help with basic installations

http://drupal.org

http://drupal.org/forum

http://drupal.org/drupal

http://groups.drupal.org

http://groups.drupal.org/event


of the package or customizations and additions to the basic package.

If you have your hosting plan set up and verified that it meets the technical requirements on the fol-lowing page, you can ask CEDC to help with the installation for a $75 fee. You must contact them directly through their website:

• URL: http://www.cedc.org/contact/soroptimist

CEDC is also available for more in-depth customization of your website if you want to go beyond what the basic package allows. Contact them through the form above for further information.

Other Soroptimist resources

Check back to the Soroptimist template website page for new tools and information.

http://www.cedc.org/contact/soroptimist


Technical Requirements

In order to use the themes and website software that is covered in this manual, it is recommended that your server should meet these minimum requirements.

• Your webserver should be Apache• Your database system should be MySQL 5.0.15 or higher with PDO• Your server should run PHP 5.4 or PHP 5.5• A minimum of 100MB drive space is recommended -- more if you add a lot of images/videos.

A common server configuration that encompasses all of the requirements above is referred to as a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). If your club gets an enormous amount of traffic you may need to upgrade your hosting account, but most likely you will be fine with a decent shared hosting package. It is possible to run the software on Microsoft IIS, but it is not recommended.

See the following page for further detail: http://drupal.org/requirements

The provided files include an installation of Drupal version 7.

For reference, the following are some of the key contributed modules that are installed by default, in addition to various core modules and some helper modules:

• Administration menu (to provide the administrative menu across the top)• Advanced help (to provide additional help at times)• Backup and Migrate (to provide the ability to take a ‘snapshot’ of your database and save a backup)• Calendar (to provide a calendar)• Colorbox (to provide popup functionality in the photo galleries)• Content Access (to provide permissions for members’ content)• Context (to provide default configuration for the different layout options)• Date (in conjunction with the calendar)• Devel (to provide additional developer resources -- may be disabled or removed)• IMCE, IMCE Wysiwyg bridge (to provide image functionality within the editor)• Flexslider (to provide an image rotator option)• Media (to provide media options such as Youtube video)• Nice Menus (to provide dropdown menus)• Scheduler (to provide the ability to schedule posts to be published in the future)• User Import (to provide the ability to import users from CSV)• Views (to provide the ability to manipulate various displays of data and information)• Webform (to provide the ability to create forms on the site)• Wysiwyg (to provide a simple WYSIWYG editor for adding/editing content)

http://drupal.org/requirements


Dreamhost’s Free Non Profit Hosting Plan (for US-based 501c3’s)

Dreamhost carbon offsets their electricity usage in their datacenters, so they are green[ish], and they also offer free hosting for 501(c)(3)’s.

Dreamhost sync’s the FTP user with the web user, which makes it extremely convenient to upload files and manipulate them through the website application. The setup on many other hosts would give permissions errors in that case.

If you require your own dedicated server, this plan may not be for you. Essentially what this plan does is carve out some space on a larger server that is shared with other users. For most small or me-dium sized organizations, this is plenty. (You can also pay a fee for an add-on service to restrict your allotted RAM and/or CPU usage on the shared server to your account alone if you are worried about other accounts on the server hogging more than their share -- sort of a “dedicated server light” plan).

Here are some modified instructions from Dreamhost’s website (www.dreamhost.com) on how to sign up for this plan:

• You will first need to fill out and submit the form at https://signup.dreamhost.com/ to sign up for service with us. You must select the option to set up a hosting plan, and not just domain registrations.

• When you get to the payment page, stop.• Please fax proof of your non-profit status to Dreamhost at 714-671-9098. Be sure to include the

email address you used when going through the sign-up process! If part of the group exemption, send a copy of the letter that SIA headquarters sent when the club joined the group exemption, along with the IRS letter that accompanied SIA’s letter. If your club has its own status with the IRS, you just need to send the IRS letter.

www.dreamhost.com

https://signup.dreamhost.com/

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