Staff add thank-yous from the front end, and most entries never need touching. This article is for the times one does: a message that needs rewording, the wrong award category, the wrong person named, or something that should not be on the wall at all. It covers the Wall entries screens in the dashboard only. For set-up, settings, award categories and the wall itself, see Wonderwall template; for an introduction see What is the Wonderwall?.
Who can edit or remove an entry
Only administrators can edit an entry, move one to the bin, or add one from the dashboard. Everyone else, including editors and any custom role, adds a thank-you through the form page and cannot change it afterwards. They do not see Wall entries in the admin menu at all, and the theme refuses the capabilities even if a role has been given them. See Roles and capabilities. Only administrators can add, rename or delete award categories.
Find an entry in the Wall entries list
Go to Wall entries. The list has the standard columns: Title, Author, a comments count and Date. There is no award category column. An entry’s title is the name of the person, people or team thanked, so use the search box with the honouree’s name rather than words from the message. Author is the person who wrote the thank-you.
To see every entry in one award category, go to Wall entries, then Award categories, and select the number in the Count column. Hover over a title for the Edit, Quick Edit, Bin and View links.
The Edit wall entry screen
From the top:
- Title: the names of the people or the team thanked. On the front end the theme fills this in from the names chosen; in the dashboard you type it. It is the heading read out by screen readers on the entry page, the last item of the breadcrumb trail and the name in the Wall entries list, but it is not printed visibly on the page or the cards. Separate names with a comma and a space, as the form does.
- The editor holds the message. Formatting and links are kept on the entry page; the wall cards show plain text.
- Award categories on the right. Administrators type a name or pick from the most used; everyone else ticks a box in a list of the existing categories. Tick one only. An entry with several categories shows only one of them, and an entry with none gets a near-black header with a star icon and no category name.
- Wall Entry Details under the editor. Person is a searchable, alphabetical list of staff where you can pick as many people as you like. People marked Hide from directory on their profile are left out, and names follow the Person dropdown display setting. Team takes one team. You can fill in both; the entry then shows a card for each person and a card for the team.
The Excerpt, Discussion and Author boxes are hidden until you tick them under Screen Options at the top right. The excerpt is the message snippet on the wall cards and in the widget; leave it blank and the first 30 words of the message are used. Author is the person shown as “Submitted by” on the entry page and “By” on the card. Comments follow the default under Settings, Discussion; see Allow comments on a news story or blog post. The date in the Publish box is the date shown on the card and decides where the entry sits on the wall, newest first.
There are no Document attachments, Related content, Sidebar content or Keywords boxes on a wall entry, so Boxes on every edit screen does not apply here.
What the dashboard does not do for you
When staff use the front-end form, the theme publishes the entry at once, builds the title from the names chosen, copies the message into the content and its first 30 words into the excerpt, and, when Email notifications is on, emails each person thanked and the leaders of a thanked team. None of that runs for an entry created or edited in the dashboard, including when you publish one for the first time. The title is whatever you typed, the excerpt is whatever you entered, and nobody is emailed. Use Add wall entry for a thank-you on behalf of someone else, or to re-create one removed by mistake, and tell the people involved yourself. Editing an entry sends no email either, so you can correct a typo quietly.
Moderate or remove an entry
To remove something inappropriate, or delete a duplicate wall entry, find the entry and select Bin, or open it and select Move to Bin. The card leaves the wall straight away, the entry page is no longer available to staff, and the entry stops counting towards the Wonderwall buttons on the honouree’s profile and the team page. Administrators can still preview a binned entry, and the Bin tab at the top of the list lets you Restore it, comments and likes included, or Delete Permanently. WordPress empties the bin after 30 days unless your site is set differently, so bin rather than delete wherever you can.
To change the wording, edit the message and select Update. If the entry has an excerpt, change that too, or clear it so the new first 30 words are used. To change the award category, remove the old one and choose the new one; the card header, the entry page icon and the wall’s filter buttons all follow it. To name a different person, swap them in Person and update the title to match. The thank-you moves to the right person’s profile straight away.
When a person or team leaves
Hiding someone from the staff directory (see Hide a person from the staff directory) only stops them being offered in the Person list for new entries. Their existing thank-yous stay on the wall unchanged.
Deleting a user account is different. The entries that thank them stay published, with their name still in the title and the message intact, but the card and the entry page no longer show their photo and staff card. The thank-yous they wrote are covered by the question WordPress asks when you delete an account: choose Attribute all content to another user to keep them on the wall, or Delete all content to remove them. The personal data export under Tools includes the thank-yous written about a person and by them.
Deleting a team removes its card from entries in the same way. See Add or edit a team. Entries migrated from an older version of the theme may store the people in an older format; the theme reads both formats, so they behave like any other entry.
Where an entry appears
A published entry is a card on the wall page, newest first and under its award category’s filter button. Its own page shows the award icon in the category colour, the date, “Submitted by”, the message, a like button when Enable likes is on and Wonderwall entries is ticked under Likes post types (both under Options, General), and comments if allowed. The sidebar holds a staff card for each person, a card for the team, a Back to the wall button and any widgets in the Wonderwall Sidebar widget area, new in this release; see Add an advert or campaign to the sidebar. The breadcrumb runs Home, the wall page, then the entry. The entry is also counted behind the Wonderwall button on each named person’s profile and on the team page, and can appear in the Wonderwall widget. Drafts and binned entries appear in none of these places.