My Garage

Garage Registry — User Guide

This guide walks you through everything, click by click. You don’t need to know anything about websites. If you can fill in a form, you can do all of this.

Two things that make everything easier:

  1. Cars, parts and timeslips name themselves. Leave the title box at the top of those forms empty — the name is built from what you fill in below. Everything else (tracks, clubs, dyno runs) takes a name you type.
  2. Nothing is lost if you get it wrong. You can always go back and edit.

Finding your way around

Log in at your site address followed by /wp-admin.

Down the left-hand side is a dark menu. Everything you need is in one place: The Garage. Click it and a list slides out underneath:

Click thisTo do this
All VehiclesSee your cars, or click one to edit it
Add New VehicleAdd a car
All ModificationsParts you’ve fitted
All TimeslipsYour runs at the track
All TracksThe tracks you visit
ManufacturersThe list of brands you buy parts from
CategoriesThe groups your parts get sorted into
All Dyno RunsDyno results
All Season StandingsChampionship placings
Vehicle ImagesHave a picture drawn for a car you have no photo of
AppearanceColours and layout

Blue buttons save. The main one is Publish the first time, and Update every time after that. It’s on the right-hand side, near the top.

Do these three things first

Do them in this order. It saves work later.

1. Add the tracks you race at

Timeslips need a track to point at, so add these before you add any runs.

2. Add your parts categories

Categories are the boxes your parts get grouped into on the car’s page — Engine, Suspension, Brakes, and so on. Some are already there. Add any you need.

  1. Click The Garage, then Categories.
  2. Type a name in the Name box on the left.
  3. Click Add New Category.

Ignore every other box on that screen.

3. Add your first car

Add a car

  1. Click The Garage, then Add New Vehicle.
  2. Leave the big box at the top empty. It says Add title. Skip it — the title writes itself.
  3. Fill in the boxes in the Vehicle Identity section:
    • Year, Make, Model — these three become the car’s name, like 2002 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.
    • Nickname — optional. Type Dark Phoenix and that’s what shows on the site instead. Leave it empty and you just get the year, make and model.
    • Ownership Status — pick from the dropdown. This decides which section of your garage page the car appears in: Currently Owned puts it under Current Vehicles, Previously Owned or Sold under Previous Vehicles, and anything else under Other Vehicles.
    • Color, VIN, Tagline — optional.
    • Curb Weight — type just the number, like 3450. No “lbs”. The site adds that for you.
    • Overview — anything you want to say about the car.
  4. Scroll down to the Powertrain section: Engine Type, Engine Detail, Drivetrain Type, Transmission Type, Transmission Detail, Fuel Type and Final Drive Ratio.
    • For Horsepower and Torque, again type just the number.
    • Horsepower Type is the dropdown beside it: pick Advertised (bhp) for the factory figure, or Measured (whp) if it came off a dyno.
  5. Scroll down to Partsbin, Wishlist & Photos:
    • Partsbin and Wishlist — parts you have on a shelf, and parts you want. Put one item per line. They show as bullet lists.
  6. On the right-hand side, find the Featured Image box and click Set featured image. This is the main photo of the car. Pick one you’ve already uploaded, or drag one in from your computer.
  7. Click the blue Publish button.

Your car is now on the site.

If you change the model later, the title and the web address change to match, and the old address still works. Nothing breaks.

Adding links and videos to a car

Links and Videos are in that same Partsbin, Wishlist & Photos section. Both boxes work the same way. One per line, with the name first, then a straight bar |, then the address:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/darkphoenix_dfw/
Build thread | https://ls1tech.com/forums/example

On the site, only the name shows and it’s clickable. The address stays hidden.

For Videos, paste a YouTube link, or a video you’ve uploaded yourself. You get a thumbnail that plays in a pop-up when clicked.

Adding a photo gallery

Photos is the last box in that section. Click to add as many as you like. They appear as a grid on the car’s page, and clicking one enlarges it.

Add a part you’ve fitted

  1. Click The Garage, then All Modifications, then the Add New button at the top.
  2. Leave the title box empty again.
  3. Vehicle — start typing the car’s name and pick it from the list that appears.
    • A part can go on more than one car. Just pick a second one, and a third. It’ll show on all their pages.
    • The list shows the nickname or colour after the name, so two cars that are the same year and model are still easy to tell apart.
  4. Part — what it is, like Line Lock or Cat-Back Exhaust.
  5. Manufacturer — click the dropdown and pick the brand.
    • Not in the list? Click Add New next to it, type the name, press OK. It’s added and selected straight away.
  6. Part Number, Cost, Notes — optional.
  7. Part Link — optional. Paste the product page address and the part name becomes a clickable link on the site.
  8. On the right, tick a Category so the part gets grouped properly. Untick nothing else.
  9. Click Publish.

The part’s name writes itself as the manufacturer plus the part — SLP + Line Lock becomes SLP Line Lock.

Recording a manufacturer’s website

Do this once per brand and every part from them links to it.

  1. Click The Garage, then Manufacturers.
  2. Click the brand’s name.
  3. Paste the address into the Website box.
  4. Click Update.

Add a track

Do this before adding runs at that track.

  1. Click The Garage, then All Tracks, then Add New.
  2. Type the track’s name in the title box at the top.
  3. Location — the street address.
  4. Coordinates — this one matters. It’s how the site looks up the weather.
    • Open Google Maps, find the track, right-click on it.
    • The first thing in the menu that pops up is a pair of numbers like 32.328635, -96.717883. Click them to copy.
    • Paste into the Coordinates box, exactly as copied.
  5. Elevation (ft) — how high above sea level. Type just the number, like 515. Google the track’s name plus “elevation” if you don’t know.
  6. Track Length — pick 1/8 Mile, 1/4 Mile, or Other. This decides which columns show on the track’s page. If you pick Other, a Track Length (Other) box appears to describe the layout.
  7. Status, Radio Station, Website, Facebook, Notes and Photos are all optional.
  8. Click Publish.

If you skip the coordinates and elevation, runs at this track won’t get their weather filled in.

Log a run at the track

  1. Click The Garage, then All Timeslips, then Add New.
  2. Vehicle — pick the car.
  3. Track — pick the track.
  4. Date — set the date and the time of day. The time matters: it’s used to look up the weather for that exact run.
  5. Type in whatever your slip shows. The boxes are named to match it: Reaction Time (RT), Sixty Foot, 330 Foot, 1/8 ET, 1/8 MPH, 1000 Foot, 1/4 ET, 1/4 MPH, Lane, Dial In. Leave blank anything you don’t have — empty boxes are hidden on the site.
  6. Optional: Win/Lose, Event Type, Race Series, Club, Event, Class, Notes, and an Image of the slip itself.
  7. Click Publish.

You won’t find boxes for Temperature or Density Altitude. That’s on purpose. About fifteen seconds after you publish, the site looks up what the weather was at that track at that time and fills them in for you.

This happens once, when you first create the run. If you edit the run later those numbers are left alone, so any correction you make by hand sticks.

Where your runs appear

  • On the car’s page — just your three best: best 60 ft, best 1/8 mile, best 1/4 mile, each labelled. Click View all to see every run for that car.
  • On the track’s page — every run at that track.
  • On the Timeslips page — everything, with a dropdown to filter to one car.

Add a dyno run or a season result

Both work the same way as the others.

Dyno runs — The Garage → All Dyno Runs → Add New. Date, shop, horsepower, torque, notes, and you can attach a photo of the sheet.

Season standings — The Garage → All Season Standings → Add New. Series, class, season, points and where you finished.

Change the colours

  1. Click The Garage, then Appearance.
  2. At the top is Colours — six of them.
  3. The quickest way: click the Start from a preset dropdown and pick one. The boxes fill in for you.
    • Or click any coloured square to pick your own, or type a code like #e01b24 in the box next to it.
  4. Watch the Preview underneath. It updates as you go, before you save.
  5. Nothing is saved until you click the blue Save colours button.

To go back to how it started, click Reset to defaults.

Making the whole site match

By default the colours only change the car information panels, not the header and background.

Tick Use these colours for the whole site, then Save, and the header, footer, background and links follow along too. Untick it to hand control back.

Get a picture drawn for a car with no photos

  1. Click The Garage, then Vehicle Images.
  2. Under Provider, pick Pollinations. It’s free and needs no sign-up.
  3. Tick Generate on publish when no featured image is set, then click Save Settings.

Now any car you add without a photo gets a picture drawn for it automatically.

To try one first, without committing:

  1. Pick a car from the dropdown.
  2. Click Test only (nothing saved).
  3. The picture appears on the page. Nothing has been saved yet.
  4. Click Keep this one if you like it, or Try again for a different one.

A photo you uploaded yourself is never replaced unless you explicitly tick the box to replace it.

After the plugin gets updated

When you update Garage Registry, a yellow notice appears telling you to do this. It takes two clicks.

  1. Click The Garage, then Appearance.
  2. Find Content structure and click Update content structure.
  3. Reload the page once when it’s finished.

That’s it. It’s safe to click even when nothing has changed, and it never deletes anything you’ve entered.

If you skip this, new features won’t appear — forms will look the same as they did before the update.

Things the site does for you

You don’t need to do any of these.

  • Titles write themselves from the boxes you fill in. If a title looks wrong, fix the box it came from, not the title.
  • Weather is looked up for every new run.
  • Empty things disappear. Any box you leave blank is simply hidden on the site, so a half-filled car still looks tidy.
  • Old web addresses keep working when you rename something.
  • Photo names get tidied up when you upload them.

If something doesn’t look right

A car isn’t showing up — check its Ownership Status is filled in.

A part isn’t in the right box — check you ticked a Category. Parts with no category go into a box called Other.

No weather on a new run — the track is missing its coordinates or elevation. Open the track and fill them in.

The form looks the same after an update — you need to click Update content structure. See above.

A change isn’t showing on the site — it’s probably a saved copy of the page. Wait a minute and reload, or click LiteSpeed Cache in the left menu, then Toolbox, then Purge All.

Something’s gone properly wrong — nothing you do on these forms can break the site. Undo it by editing the record again, or move it to the bin from the list screen.