Getting Started with IssueM

Download IssueM here

IssueM helps you publish your magazine or publication online with WordPress. This getting started guide will walk you through the minimum amount of steps required to publish your first issue. IssueM includes many more settings that can be configured, but this guide focuses on publishing your first issue with the least amount of effort.

Watch the screencast, or follow the step by step instructions. The screencast simply walks through the steps documented below.

1. Install IssueM

  1. Go to Plugins->Add New and search for IssueM
  2. Click “Install Now” and then “Activate Plugin”

2. Create pages for Current Issue and Past Issues

  1. Go to Pages->Add New
  2. Create a page for your current issue. We recommend using “Current Issue” as the page title.
  3. Create a page for your issue archives. We recommend using “Past Issues” as the page title.

3. Configure IssueM Settings

  1. Go to Articles->IssueM Settings
  2. Choose your page for articles (your current issue page)
  3. Choose your page for issue archives (your past issues page)
  4. You can configure the rest of the options to your liking, or leave them in their default state.
  5. Click “Save Settings”

4. Create & Order Issues

  1. Go to Articles->Issues
  2. Enter the name of the issue (i.e. Summer 2019) and click “Add New Issues”
  3. Click on the newly created issue title
  4. When adding an issue set the Order to this date format: 201909 (September 2019 issue example). This will order the issues properly going forward and backwards.
  5. Upload a cover image. You can adjust the dimensions of the cover image on the IssueM Settings page. If you are publishing to your UniPress apps or the Issue-to-PDF plugin use the following size: 1536 x 2048 pixels to properly display a high resolution cover image. Note: make sure you compress the image properly using https://tinypng.com/ or installing a plugin to automate compression such as: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/. If you don’t compress the image it could crash the app or make the PDF’s difficult to load
  6. Enter any other information for the issue, if applicable
  7. If you are creating more than one issue, use the Issue Order field to order them. The higher number is considered the most recent/live version.
  8. If you like drag and drop article ordering use this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-custom-post-order/
  9. Click “Update”

5. Add Articles to the Issue

  1. Go to Articles->Add New
  2. Enter the title and content for your article, just like a normal WordPress post
  3. Add a featured image, if applicable
  4. Choose the issue the article is related to in the Issues sidebar area
  5. Adjust the IssueM Article Options at the bottom of the article, if applicable
  6. When the article is ready click Publish. The Live/Draft toggle in the Issue setting overrides the article Publish state and determines when the content is visible

6. Add IssueM Active Issue Widget to Sidebar

  1. Go to Appearance->Widgets
  2. Drag the IssueM Active Issue widget into your sidebar
  3. Click “Save”

7. Set Issue to Published

  1. Go to Articles->Issues
  2. Click on the title of the issue you want to make live
  3. Change the Issue Status dropdown to “Live”
  4. Click “Update”

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