If you’re new to SNO there are a few things that you’ll want to do to get going with your site. Even if you’re not using SNO,  several of these steps can be used on any site using the WordPress CMS.

Basics:

• Add users – Anyone who will be tasked with drafting or posting content on the site should have a user account. SNO offers five different levels of permission for those users, depending on what you want them to be able to do.
• Create staff profiles (note users and staff profiles are unique and separate from one another)– One of the benefits of SNO’s FLEX Pro theme is anyone can post a story and give the appropriate staff member their byline, and those bylines are clickable links that will take you to that person’s staff profile. Those staff profiles then display all work on which that staff member has a byline, creating a nice portfolio of their work that can be shared on college, internship or job applications. Creating those staff profiles is similar to drafting a story, and provides a great opportunity to introduce new staff members to the back-end editing interface on WordPress. 
  • Pro tip: Make sure all of your staff profile images are horizontal or vertical to avoid having anyone’s photo appear awkwardly cropped on the staff page or their staff profile.
• Create stories – SNO utilizes the classic WordPress editor, which allows users to easily create a basic story with a featured image, and to create nicely designed story pages with inline images and SNO Story Elements. If your staff has the bandwidth it is beneficial to put some thought into the design of each story with some of those additional elements to make the individual stories visually appealing to the readers.
  • Upload a featured image – Make sure that all of your stories contain a featured image, as it will help your homepage maintain a visually appealing look, but also some of the story widgets, (grid, carousel, and parallax,) require a featured image in order to display content. 
    • Pro tip: While an original photo or graphic is preferred, take time to create some placeholder graphics (e.g. [Publication name] News, [Publication name] Sports, etc.) to use in the event you were unable to get an original image or graphic to go with the story.
  • Utilize SNO Story Elements – Most of these allow you to add content and design the element in the same window where you create the story, but polls and infoboxes must be created independently in the dashboard, then dropped into the story as an element.
• Update your About page – Generally pages are used for static content that won’t need updated very often, if ever. SNO will have an about page created for you with some placeholder content, so you’ll want to navigate to the pages section of the dashboard and replace that content with information about your publication.

Advanced:

• Customize your homepage design – When you begin with SNO you’ll pick one of their website snapshots, which will set you up with a nice looking website. However, the FLEX Pro theme allows you to design your homepage in almost any way you can imagine. If you have any staff members interested in learning those tools they can redesign the site as a design draft, then push it live whenever the staff feels it’s ready to roll out. 
• Customize your story pages – This goes beyond the content of your stories, but instead utilizing the Story Template Editor to customize the actual design of your different story template defaults exactly how you want.
• Create long-form stories – Available with either the immersive or immersive half photo templates this story format allows you to create different segments that will all be packaged in the same story post. This is a great way to package stories on the same content together in one place (e.g. the staff did a deep dive on cell phone usage, cell phone rules, etc. and several individuals wrote stories that it would make sense to display on the same story page.) Here are a few examples of some long-form stories.

Optional:

• Best of SNO and the Distinguished Sites recognitions programs – These programs are free to participate in if you are a SNO customer. Best of SNO generally focuses on the best stories submitted that day, which generally follow our publication tips. The other badges that sites need to earn in order to become a Distinguished Site are all aligned with what SNO’s Distinguished Sites Committee feels good online journalism programs should be doing.
• SNO Donate – If you are new to SNO you may have activated this on your order form. If not you can choose to turn it on (or off) at any time. SNO Donate creates a prompt at the bottom of every story that encourages readers to donate to your program. You can also put a widget on your homepage requesting donations there. For more information about the program check out the linked article.
• SNO Ads – If you are new to SNO you may have activated this on your order form. If not you can choose to turn it on (or off) at any time, (unless there is an ad currently displaying.) SNO Ads allows you to display placeholder ads in the header, footer and/or widget areas (plus story pages) of your site. Advertisers can then click on those placeholders to purchase the ad space. You can set the price for each space, and SNO will take care of collecting the money, displaying the ad, and dealing with the business. For more information about the program check out the linked article.