Managing your site involves a number of related activities, however the most important one is user administration. Unless you want to be responsible for everything on your site, you should delegate responsibility for managing content to the most appropriate person or persons on a category-by-category basis.
Some categories may be self-evident (e.g. PTA and Governors pages), others may need thought and planning (e.g. Community and Gallery pages).
Planning
You may download an Administrator's Planning Sheet here. This is a PDF file and requires Adobe Reader.
Users
Users are named people who are able to manage some aspect of content on the site. The setting up and definition of the abilities of users (who they are and where and what they are allowed to do) is controlled by the site administrator.
Step 1. On the planning sheet, produce a list of user names, together with email addresses.
Administrators
Your site will need at least one administrator (preferably two and rarely more than three). Administrators have ultimate control over the site. They are able to add, amend and delete any content, anywhere and they can create and delete users. For day to day content management this is where the buck stops. Your site administrator will be familiar with all aspects of content and user management as it relates to your site. Administration privileges may be conferred on any user by any administrator. There needs to be one administrator defined before any other activities can be undertaken. For this reason, all Schools on the Net sites are pre-built with an administrator account (which can be deleted or amended).
Step 2. Identify which users in Step 1. will be administrators and update the planning sheet accordingly.
Privileges
With the exception of administrators, all other named users have their abilities constrained to some extent. Privileges are granted to users allowing them to submit, edit and delete content in one or more categories (pages linked off a main menu item).
Step 3. Identify on the planning sheet which users are responsible for the content management of which categories.
Implement Users
Once all users have been defined, you should then set each user's privileges based on the information in the planning sheet. Work through each user one-by-one.
If the user is to be an administrator, tick the "Allow this user to change any content on the site" checkbox and press the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the screen. It does not matter what other checkboxes are or are not ticked.
The above user is allowed to set up, edit and delete users, and to administer content anywhere on the site.
If the user is not an administrator, ensure the "Allow this user to change any content on the site" checkbox is clear and then for each category assign or revoke privileges as necessary by ticking or unticking the appropriate checkboxes.
The above user is only allowed to change content on the "Our School", "News" and "Calendar" pages.
Step 4. Using the planning sheet, assign rights to each user.
Finally press the "Create" button at the bottom of the screen.
Step 5. Using the planning sheet, create each of the users you identified in Step 1.
As each user is created, an email is sent to that user's email address informing them that they have been set up on the site and assigning them a randomly generated password. Their username, password and assigned privileges are stated in this email. Users may change their password, including this initial one, at any time when logged into the site.
Similarly, actions changing user attributes (e.g. changing their privileges or deleting the user), will also email that user to inform them of the changes.
N.B. You should ensure your users are aware that you are engaged in this activity, so they know what to expect. In particular, some email systems have filters to remove unexpected emails (so called spam filters). These users may need to disable these filters at least temporarily, or they may not receive emails from the site.
Content Management
The final aspect of setting up the site is the provision and management of content. In other words, the day-to-day running of the website. It is the reponsibility of your users to do this. For small schools, that may also be you!
Please refer to your site's online help pages for content management.
