Setting Up Your OM4 Website For the First Time

This article runs through how to sign up for an OM4 community website, and some of the options you may want to change.

Startup and One Off Settings

Startup	Get a website started at OM4Tourism or OM4Business.
Login	To modify your web site, you need your site URL and username/password. These will have been sent to the email address you used to setup your account. Go to your new web site and login to your dashboard. Your Login link is in the footer of your website.
User Profile	Under Users, Authors and Users find your user profile and click the Edit button. Update your First Name, Last Name and click Update User. Then update your Display name (that appears at the top of posts), and also your web page and email address, and press Update User again.
Site Name and Tagline	Use Dashboard, Settings, General to update the Name and Tagline for your site. The Name and Tagline are displayed over the top of your header by default. Use Dashboard, Design, Site Design to set the postion, font, size and colour of the Header Title (the Name) and Header Tagline, or choose to not display them over your header at all.
Setting Your Front Page	Depending on your startup package, we will have created a number of web pages for you. Yo can set any page to display as your front page, or you can chose to display your latest blog posts on your front page instead. Use Dashboard, Settings, Reading to choose whether to show a static page (and you can choose any page in your website) or your latest posts as your front page.
Contact Email Address	Your primary email address for your website is setup from Dashboard, Settings, General. Use Dashboard, Settings, Contact Form ][ to check or update the email address used for Contact Forms on your website. If you cannot see this option, go to Dashboard, Plugins and scroll down to Contact Form ][. Click Activate. Some sites use the more advanced CformsII - you will see the Cforms menu alongside Write Manage Design Comments if it is active. To check the email address used when Cforms are being used, go to CformsII menu. On the very first page for Cforms, you will see one or more contact forms, each with a number. Scroll down the page to the Core Form Admin / Email Options and open the section by pressing the red plus symbol. You can check the email address here. This email address is copied from your General Settings page, so if that is correct, these should already be Ok as well.

Changing the Layout of your Site

You can change your Header Image by following these instructions:
Changing the Header Image for your OM4 Web Site

There are many more changes you can make to your design using the Dashboard, Design, Site Design page.

Optional (More Advanced) Settings

Here are some more advanced settings you can use for your website.

Search Engine Friendly	Make your site more search engine friendly Go to Dashboard, Settings, All in One SEO. Update the following fields. Home Title - Create a title for your site Home Page that includes your most important keyword. This is the title that will be indexed for your Home Page. Home Description - Create a description for your Home Page. This is the longer description that will be displayed for your site on search engine result pages. A good description encourages visitors to click through to your site from the search results. Home Keywords - these are not relevant for search engines these days, we recommend you leave them blank. Post Title Format - set to %post_title% Page Title Format - set to %page_title% These settings will ensure you site is very effective with search engines. We have articles in our How To section that will help you optimise individual pages.
Robots.txt	Exclude some pages from being indexed by search engines Use Dashboard, Settings, KB Robots.txt to update the instructions your site provides to search engine robots. Delete the default text and replace with: `User-agent: *` `Disallow: /admin` `Disallow: /wp-login.php` This instruction asks search engine robots not to index you login screen and any pages you place under an Admin page.
Favicon	Set your site favicon A favicon is a small graphic displayed next to your site URL in a browser’s URL bar. Create a favicon first, perhaps using this free online Favicon generator, and take note of the location of the favicon file you save to your hard disk. Use Dashboard, Plugins to activate the Favicon Manager plugin. Use Dashboard, Settings, Favicons to upload your Favicon from your hard disk.
Bad Behavior Message	Turn off the Bad Behavior Message Bad Behavior is a plugin used to help block bots attempting to lodge comment spam on your blog. By default a message is displayed below the footer of your website showing the number of blocked attempts. You can turn off this message using Dashboard, Settings, Bad Behavior.
Google XML Sitemap	Help your site get indexed by search engines Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin used to help search engines discover all pages and posts on your website. Once activated, Google, Yahoo and Live Search all get sent a list of all of your pages and posts, which should help your site get indexed quicker. Activate the plugin Ensure the plugin is activated by going to Dashboard -> Plugins and activating the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. Generate your first sitemap Go to Dashboard -> Settings -> XML Sitemaps, and generate your first XML sitemap. Once your first XML sitemap has been generated, it will automatically be updated when you publish new pages or posts.