How to Create Your Site and Guidelines

How to create your site 

1. Visit sites.philau.edu– this is the landing page for faculty, staff and student group site request and support information.

2. Select your designation from the choices at the bottom of the page and follow the prompt to create or request a site.

3. Login with your PhilaU Username and Password authentication- this will automatically update as you update your passwords (no need to remember a separate password)

4. You will be directed to a page which will offer information and a button to create your site.

If you already have a site, logging in will take you to the URL.

You now have a live site. However, until you uncheck the “discourage search engines from indexing this site” button (this can be found in your WordPress dashboard by hovering your cursor over “Settings” and selecting “Reading”. The checkbox is at the bottom of the “Reading” page.), it can only be accessed by directly typing the URL, so it will remain relatively private until you are ready for it to be searched and linked from the appropriate areas on the website.

 Adding Content and Customizing your Site

1. Once you log in, you are viewing a stripped-down version of a site. In the navigation on the bottom-right, you will see “site-admin” click on that to get into the back-end of your site.

2. Click on the button that says “Customize your Site”

3. If you have not already reviewed the training material and are unfamiliar with using WordPress, this is a good time to stop and watch the videos provided on the site or on the WordPress support site. You can reference these materials at any time.

4. Use the tools to customize your site- below are guidelines for creating faculty sites.
   1. There are 8 theme options approved for use. If you need to request an additional theme, please contact the Technology HelpDesk.

5. As you make changes you should save and preview your changes before publishing the changes. Publishing makes your changes live.

6. Once you have completed adding content and are satisfied with what your site looks like you can uncheck the “discourage search engines from indexing this site” button (this can be found in your Dashboard, under “Settings” in the “Reading” section), within the next 24-48 hours the University search feature will start to pull your site into the overall search. Also, you should link your site from the appropriate places on the website (for example, if you have a faculty profile site on one of the College pages you will likely want to add a website link- if you need support or do not know who within your program or College to contact, please use the form on the sites.philau.edu homepage). If you would like additional search promotion on your site, please submit a request.

Viewing your site and maintaining your site 

1. Your site will automatically be named site.philau.edu/username. You can visit this link to view your site.
2. To login to make changes, you can simply login the edit your site using the “login” link on your site or the University recommends bookmarking the link.
3. You have the option of providing others, including those not within the University community, with access by creating additional users. For those not within the University community they will be provided a separate URL to login since they will not have an automatic username and password. Also note that the University will retain an administrator password to access your site in case of emergency.

Designations

Select your designation to get started. You can only have one personal site per University account. All sites are created with your username as the site or name of club/organization. The url for all sites are in the following format:

https://sites.philau.edu/<UsernameOROrganizationName>

All personal sites you are the owner/admin of the site. All clubs/organization sites the administrator is determined by the faculty/staff sponsor of the group.

If you wish to remove the default permissions you will need to submit a request to the Technology HelpDesk.

 

We do not provide personal sites for alumni. If you had a site, we only retain the data for approximately 60 days post graduation.