Site Owner Guide

Congratulations on your new site!
Now it’s time to get to work.


Getting Started

1. Using WordPress

Use the online guide to get to know the dashboard, learn about posts and pages, and get an overview of images and video.

2. Adding users

Add people who can edit or review your site before it is widely available, give you feedback, and catch any mistakes.

3. Editing Menus

Sites at USC sites come with a standard sitemap – pages that have been added to help users get started. These are only a suggestion, you can rearrange or delete these at will, add in exact pages that you need, and organize your menuNote – the For Site Editors section on the website is a section of private pages to help you design your content. You should remove this section from the menu (you don’t need to delete the pages, they can be kept for future reference) prior to publishing the site.

4. Formatting your site

Use the customizer to change things like the subtitle, change front page options, and work with widgets.

5. Enabling plugins.

Plugins in this tool are made available on a network-wide basis, so while you cannot add new plugins to your site, there is extensive functionality available in the standard plugin set. Site Administrators can enable/disable plugins.

6. Publishing Your Site


Access and Settings

Access your site

(you may want to bookmark this for easy access in the future) at sites.usc.edu/yournewsite/wp-admin, choose the ‘School Login’ option, and login using your shibboleth credentials.

Review your site’s settings

Pay particular attention to:

  • Site Visibility  (Settings > Reading > Site Visibility)
    the default setting restricts access to added users only
  • Social Media menu links (Appearance > Menus > Social )
    the default links to central USC social accounts
  • USC Branding (Appearance > USC Branding) you may want to change your color choice
  • Comments (Settings > Discussion)
    the default setting does not allow comments