Help Documentation

Below are Duke specific help documents to get you up and running with Sites @ Duke. We also have several online videos and a Getting Started handout (PDF) to help you get up and running quickly.

Getting Started

Creating a Sites@Duke (WordPress) site
At Duke, you can create two types of sites:  course sites (sites for an official academic course) or non-course sites (sites for other purposes, e.g. events, labs, student groups, projects, etc.)  

Creating Subsites for groups of students
Subsites allow members of your site to easily create a new site of their own (customizing their site appearance, creating new pages and posts and controlling access to the site) while automatically connecting them to the main (parent) site. This is often used in academic courses where the faculty member create a class website and then each student (or team) has his/her own site to focus on a specific project or topic.

Logging In
How to login to Sites@Duke and find your site.

Dashboard
The Dashboard provides access to all the administrative options and features. This is also where you’ll add content (pages, posts, etc), modify the overall appearance of your site and control settings such as privacy options. https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/user-lessons/overview-of-the-dashboard/

Creating Content
You can easily add text, images and documents to your pages or posts.    Step by step information is available via the lynda.com online training library (available to Duke faculty, students and staff with your Duke NetID) and WordPress.org.

Adding Videos into your site
Videos from YouTube, DukeCapture (Panopto), or Warpwire can be embedded into your site.
https://duke.service-now.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0025182

Adding Surveys into your site

Customizing Your Site

Site Administrators will be able to change the sites title, subtitle and appearance of your site with over 70 pre-installed themes!
Step by step information is also available via the lynda.com online training library (available to Duke faculty, students and staff) and WordPress.org. 

Managing your Site

Privacy Settings
You can easily control who can view your site – just you, a specific group/course, the Duke Community (with their Duke NetID and password)  or the open up to anyone with URL or make searchable via Google.

Managing Users
You can add other Duke users and non-users to your site.