Congratulations — you have a WordPress-built website! Now what?
- The WP “codex” is the massive online documentation for all things WordPress, hosted at www.wordpress.org, so if you have any Qs about how to do something, go to codex.wordpress.org and search for what you want.
- The Help link, at the top right of every view in the WP dashboard, will provide links to the codex for help on whatever element you’re looking at…
Here are a few basic things to started familiarizing yourself with WordPress:
- To login, go to www.yourdomain.tld/wp-admin (you can go to home page and just type in wp-admin). That will jump to the login page; enter user name and password, click Log in, and you will be taken to the “dashboard” of the “back end.” (“back end” = where you do the work; “front end” = the website visible to all, on the web.)
- To edit pages, click on Pages on left nav bar of dashboard, and you’ll be shown a list of all pages. (If the list of pages is more than 1 page long, you’ll see the first 20; click 2 at bottom of list to go to page 2 of pages list.) Roll over any page and click on the Edit link that appears. (Quick Link is something else; check it out or ignore ’til later…) The page editor is very much like word or any “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) visual editor.
- To add a new page, click New Page link on left nag bar (it appears when you roll over Pages, or once you’ve click on pages), and there’s a second Add New button at top of All Pages list view.
- Posts, which are the “blog roll” for Latest News, function the same as pages: click on Posts to see all posts; click Add New to create a new news post. (And BTW, one can edit the publish date once a post is created, so we could, if we want, go back a while and post old news… build a bit of history…)
- Users: the powers and limits of the 5 user roles are explained at codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities.
- For having fun searching through themes, roll over (or click on) Appearance on dashboard left nag bar, then click Install Theme at top, and go searching… All the themes there are free, and vetted by the WP team to be safe. You can access the same database of themes at wordpress.org/themes/ and I encourage you each to check out their showcase (wordpress.org/showcase/) to see some of the amazing WP-built sites out there! (There are also thousands of great premium themes, and you might want to splurge and spend $40 or more on some wonderful theme… Read more on themes.)
- Security Alert: One does not want to download themes from just any old website that appears in a Google search for WP themes, because they may contain “back doors” for hackers to exploit…
- In fact, security is an issue that extends far beyond the issue of themes…
- Plugins are small add-on programs that add functionality to a site… More coming soon…
- Widgets … More coming soon …