FAQ

Accessing the Dashboard

The easiest way to access the WordPress Dashboard is to tag on /wp-admin to the website you are attempting to access. When done on a Provost WordPress site, this will take you to the U of T weblogin page and prompt you to log in with your UTORid and Password. If you have been granted permission to view the Dashboard, you will be redirected there. If you have already logged in at some point, you may be brought there without needing to log in.

Adding Site Admins

To add a new site administrator (or other role), the staff member will need to attempt to log in to the dashboard of the site as per above. Once logged in, this creates the user account on the WordPress site. This account can be granted additional roles by doing the following:

  1. On the left-hand side of the dashboard, go to Users.
  2. Find the account of the new user and click their name.
  3. Change their Role from the default to Administrator, or if another role is required/desired, a different role. For instance, some sites may require lower levels of access for certain staff.
  4. Scroll down to the bottom and click the Update User button to save changes.

What Are Site Roles?

Administrator – Full access to edit and publish pages. Manually given access by VPP Systems or existing site Administrators.

Staff, Alumni, Faculty, Postdoctoral – Certain parts of a site may be restricted to the Staff, Alumni, Postdoctoral, or Faculty roles. The WP site checks staff status with a central U of T database and applies the appropriate roles. A user can have more than one role.

Other Roles – A site may have custom roles in additional to the above defaults. The purpose of these roles vary depending on the site and how it is administered.

Known Issues

Uploaded File Names – WordPress is unable to handle file names that contain forward slashes “/” as it interprets the name as a path/URL slug. In other words, if you upload a file that contains forward slashes, any links or embeds of it will not work. This is a common problem for files that have dates in the name in the format of dd/mm/yyyy or any other format that uses forward slashes.

Cache Issues – If you are having difficulty getting to the /wp-admin section of your site, but have accessed it previously and know you should have permission, this may be a browser cache issue. For instructions on clearing your cookies and cache, see the Info Commons Help Desk instructions, here.

Common WordPress/Website Terms

Breadcrumbs – Displays the path taken to get to a given location. For example:

This is useful feature in WordPress is usually turned on for pages by default. For more info, please see Breadcrumb Navigation.

Slug – The tail end of a URL. This should be descriptive of the page for SEO and clarity purposes. You can change this is in the page settings of a given page. For example, the slug for this page is /wordpress-admin-faq .This can be changed, but if so, it will likely break any links previously made to the location.

Site Customization and Features

Site Wide Options – For information on customizing options that affect your entire site, please see Site Wide Options, here.

Per Page Options – For information on customizing options that affect particular pages, please see Per Page Options, here.

Theme Activated Plugins – For a list of our default plugins, see Plugins, here.

More Help

If you require additional assistance, please contact vpp.systems@utoronto.ca to open a ticket with us.