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Tutorial 1: Orientation

Who this page is for: client website admins — the volunteers who will load content and run the day-to-day site, generally with no prior web-admin experience.

What you'll have at the end

You'll be signed in to your website. You'll know how to reach the two admin areas your provider set up for you. You'll understand what each part of your site is for, so the later tutorials make sense.

Before you start

You need the sign-in details your provider gave you: your email address and a password. If you don't have these yet, ask your provider before continuing.

Steps

  1. Go to your website's sign-in page. Your provider will give you the exact web address, or you can click Sign In at the top of any page on your site.

    The AMS sign-in page

  2. Enter your email and password, then click Sign In. You'll land on your own account page.

    Your account page immediately after signing in

  3. Scroll down past Memberships and Organisations to Staff links, then click Wagtail CMS. This opens the CMS — the tool you'll use most often to edit pages, upload images, and manage menus.

    The Wagtail CMS dashboard

  4. Click your profile icon (top right of any page) and choose My Dashboard to go back to your account page.

    Your account page again

  5. Scroll down to Staff links again, and this time click Website Admin. This opens the Django admin: a more technical screen, also used day-to-day for things the CMS doesn't cover, like approving memberships, managing events and resources, and inviting new team members — later tutorials in this series come back to it for those. Most everyday content work still happens in the CMS, which the rest of this tutorial covers first.

    The Django admin

The four parts of your site

Your AMS website is actually four separate things, working together. This tutorial series is mostly about the second one.

Part Where you'll find it What it's for Who uses it
Public site Your website's normal address What visitors and members see and use Everyone
CMS (Wagtail) /cms/, via the Wagtail CMS button Editing pages, images, documents, and menus — your main work area Content loaders, editors, the site admin
Django admin /admin/, via the Website Admin button Day-to-day operational work such as approving memberships, managing events and resources, and inviting new team members, as well as technical records like billing The site admin, your provider
Forum A separate address your provider gives you Member discussions, powered by a connected product called Discourse Members, forum moderators

Signing in to the public site also signs you in to the forum automatically, through single sign-on — you never need a separate forum password.

What's next

Now that you know your way around, the next tutorial covers making it yours: branding & theme — uploading your logo and setting your colours.