Citizen Wausau

Clarification (Perhaps)

by Andy Laub on March 25th, 2008

I’m debating what the best way to explain this is, so I figure I’ll just jump right in and hope that you can follow. It’s not overly technical, but it can be a little confusing.

There have been some questions regarding the functionality of Citizen Wausau’s admin panels (the parts you see when you’re writing a blog post or updating your user information). The whole site is driven by a modified version of WordPress which accommodates a vast number of individual blogs that are all basically on a network.

Because this is built on top of existing software, some of the UI functionality isn’t quite as clear as I’d like. This has become evident in the fact that it’s just downright confusing or complicated at times. The most commonly asked question is “how do I get to my admin panel to write posts?”

The easiest way I can suggest is to go to this address: http://citizenwausau.com/yourblogname/wp-admin/. That will take you directly to the admin panel of your blog.

The site is set up in such a way that your profile links take you to http://citizenwausau.com/wp-admin (note that there’s no blog name in that address), which will put you at the admin area of the main Citizen Wausau blog. From there you can get to your blog using the arrow next to the title on the top left.

For most users this is a non-issue because they only write on their own blogs and comment on the main blog. However, we have a few users who both keep a personal blog and contribute to the Citizen Wausau blog, and they’ve expressed concern about accidentally publishing an article on the wrong blog.

So again, the best advice I can offer: check the title on the top left if you’re not sure where you are! We at CW would love to see this system improved, but for the time being we are at the mercy of the WPMU team.

I hope this clears things up a little bit for those who’ve been confused!