I always recommend WordPress to clients who contact me for blog design and installation, and since many who contact me aren’t familiar with it, I decided I’d do a little walk-through of the WordPress Dashboard for anyone new to WordPress. Whether you’re considering a WordPress blog, or you just started out with your very first WordPress blog, I think you’ll find it has features to meet just about any blogging need, all in an easily-navigated, user-friendly dashboard–no html knowledge required! Let’s get started!
The WordPress Dashboard
Figure 1. The WordPress Dashboard
This is what you see when you login to your WordPress Dashboard. This initial page gives you a summary of your recent blog activity: the number of current posts and pages, what themeIn WordPress speak, “theme” refers to the set of template files that defines the look and presentation of your blog. You can change the look of your WordPress blog just by installing and activating a new theme. More on that later. your site is currently using, a list of recent comments left by readers, and a list of incoming links (people who have linked to your blog or blog post from their site). It also has navigation across the top that takes you to the various areas that control the different aspects of your site: Write, Manage, Design, Comments, Settings, Plugins, and Users.
Users is the area where you can change your password and add bio and contact information to your profile. If you are running a group blog, it is also where you, as the administrator would add other users and change their permissions to be able to post to the blog. The Settings area is where you can change things like your blog’s title and tag line, comment notification options, how many posts per page, etc. Plugins is where newly installed plugins can be activated (if you’re not sure what a plugin is, you don’t need to worry about this area).
I’m going to focus mainly on the other four areas for this little walk-through: Write, Manage, Design and Comments.
Write
Figure 2. The Write Area
The Write area deserves its own article (and I will probably post on this separately at a later date), but for now we’re just going to cover the basics. From this area, you can write new blog posts, new static pages, or new links to go in your blogroll or “favorite links” lists–just under the “Write” tab, you’ll see the links that let you change between the “Write Post” page, the “Write Page” page, and the “Write Link” page. Each of these pages displays clearly labeled fields for you to enter your data into, and on the right are the publishing options for your new post (or page, or link). For pages and posts, you can save a draft to work on later (find saved drafts in Manage > Posts (or Pages) > Drafts), preview your new post or page before it’s published, mark it as a private post, and finally, publish your new post or page so that it’s live on your site. The figure above shows the “Write Post” page, which also includes additional fields below the main post area where you can choose the category(s) you want to include your post in, as well as any tags you want. Below what is shown in this figure, there are also “Advanced Options” that I’ll cover in another post.
Manage
Figure 3. The Manage Area
The Manage area is the other area in the WordPress dashboard that deserves its own post, but here are the basics. Again, each of the areas that can be managed are listed below the Manage tab: Posts, Pages, Links, Categories, Tags, Link Categories, Media Library, Import, and Export.
Manage Posts and Pages is pretty self-explanatory; here you’ll find a list of all your posts (or pages), and to edit, you simply click on the title of the post (or page) you’d like to edit, change what needs to be changed, and then hit save. It’s the same with Links–click on the one you’d like to edit, and edit away! You can also add new links from the Manage Links page.
Categories, Tags and Link Categories allow you to create an organizational structure for the content you create in the Write area. In WordPress, Categories and Tags are virtually interchangeable. The two noticeable differences between the two are found in how they are displayed on the front side of your blog (categories appear in an ordered list with one per line, and tags are displayed in a “cloud”), and how you assign them to posts on the Write Post page (categories are listed below the post area with boxes you can check, to assign a tag you have to type the tag into the tag field on the Write Post page). In the Manage area, Categories and Tags are treated the same–you’ll see a list of your categories (or tags), and from there you can delete or edit them, and towards the bottom of the Manage Categories (or Tags) page you can add new ones. Create multiple Link Categories to separate your links into individual lists, and whatever you name the category, that is what the header of that list will be (i.e. Family Blogs, Art Blogs, etc.). The default link category is “Blogroll,” but if you don’t want to use this category, simply delete (or reassign) all the links in that category.
The Media Library is where you can find any “media” you have uploaded and included in your posts. All photos, music, videos, and podcasts that are found in your posts can be managed from here.
The Import and Export pages do just what they say. If you have a blog hosted elsewhere and you’d like to transfer all those posts to your new WordPress blog, the Import area is what you need. Simply select the blog platform you are importing old posts from, and follow the instructions provided. On the other hand, if you decide to move your blog to a new domain, or a new platform sometime down the road, Export will walk you through creating an XML file of your WordPress blog posts that can be imported to your new blog.
Design
Figure 4. The Design Area
This area, as you could guess, pertains to the Design of your blog. Available Themes (including WordPress Classic, and WordPress Default, which come with every WordPress installation) are found on the Designs Themes page. You switch between them simply by clicking the one you want to display. The selected theme will appear at the top under “Current Theme.”
The Design Widgets page allows you to widgetize your sidebar by dragging and dropping content widgets into the order you’d like them to appear in your sidebar. If you decide you’d like to switch back to the default sidebar, simply remove all the widgets from your sidebar and hit save. Widgets are a newer evolution in WordPress, so some older themes may not support widgetized sidebar.
You can edit the actual code and stylesheet of your them on the Design Theme Editor page. Unless you are familiar with CSS, HTML and/or PHP, I suggest leaving this area alone.
Comments
Figure 5. The Comments Area
Recent Comments are listed in the Comments section of the dashboard. This is particularly important for approving valid comments and getting rid of spam comments. It’s a good idea to set your comments settings (in the Settings > Discussion section of the Dashboard) to notify you when new comments are posted, and also to allow you to moderate comments made by first-time posters before they appear on your site. This helps to prevent spam from littering the comments of your posts. Once you approve a comment made by a poster, all future comments made by that person will show up immediately.
This concludes the walk-through of the WordPress Dashboard. I’ve only covered the very basics in this post in order to give new and potential WordPress users a sense of the major features of WordPress, and hopefully I’ve managed to do that without causing information overload. When I set up WordPress blogs, I always tell my clients to just explore for themselves everything the Dashboard has to offer. As long as you stay away from the Design Theme Editor area, there is nothing you can break.
In future posts, I hope to offer more specific ways you can use WordPress to effectively reach your audience and create a positive user experience for visitors to your blog. So, stay tuned for more!
Filed under: WordPress by Genevieve |
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