I feel like I haven’t posted anything new in forever! Mainly it’s because I’ve been really busy with new clients and now the result it that I have been to quite a few client meetings to tutor people on how to use their new WordPress site effectively. So, rather than keep writing the same emails over and over, here’s a rough guide to using the new WordPress dashboard. Enjoy!
1: Logging into your WP site
All WP sites have the same login procedure. Go to your browser and in the address bar type in a URL in the following format:
(of course, you’d want to substitute your own site’s name for “jennmearswebdesign.com”)
After that, you will see a screen that looks like this:
You’ll need to enter your User Name and Password here. Tip: Click the box that says “Remember Me” so that your browser can automatically re-insert your password when you visit again. If it doesn’t seem to remember the password and your user name is automatically entered next time you visit, try deleting the last few characters of the user name and re-typing them. That usually triggers the automatic entry of the password.
2: Welcome to the Dashboard
After you have successfully logged in, you should be looking at the WP dashboard. This is your starting point to any task you need to get accomplished for updating your site. Here’s a quick tour:
From the top:
You’ll see your site’s name at the top left corner with a little link that says “Visit Site”. This is handy when you are making changes to the layout and want to see how those changes look. This link will always take you to your site’s home page.
In the top right corner, you will see a “New Post” and a dropdown menu. This is great when you are in a hurry and WP has inserted quick links to the most common tasks for WP users. Next to that you will see “Howdy! and your user name, then a link to “Turbo” which can be installed for faster blogging. Next to Turbo is the Log Out button for when you are done with your session.
Left Dashboard:
The top link, labeled “Dashboard” will return you to the Dashboard home from wherever you are in the admin section. Next down is the area where you can control the basic components of a WP site: Posts, Media, Links, Pages and Comments:
From there, you have your toolbar for editing your site’s look and layout (note, this is only accessible to users with Administrator access):
Themes are the basic templates that your WP site has stored online. This is where you would go if you wanted to choose a new theme for your site.
Widgets are the components that make up the features of your sidebar. When a theme says “Widget-enabled” it means that the theme’s author has coded the ability for the theme to display widgets properly. Widgets are a great way to handle a lot of your site’s functionality.
Tip: If you choose a widget for your sidebar(s), just be aware that it will create a sidebar that only displays widgets. If you have sidebar elements that have been handcoded in the file “sidebar.php”, then you will need to make sure that those can be installed as a widget as well.
Editor is where you can work with the files that make up your site’s theme. For example, if I wanted to change the font on my site’s Posts to a different one than the font on the Pages, I would go to Editor>Style.css and then change the style declaration for posts to display a different font.
The next panel is for Plugin administration. Plugins are applications created to meet various needs site owners may have. Much of the time, a developer realizes that there is a demand for a particular tool, such as a dynamic calendar, or a way to insert custom meta-tags in a site’s headers so they create a package of code to accomplish this and make it available for download often for free or minimal cost. You can explore more about Plugins here.
Users is where you can control who has access to your Dashboard and how much access they can have. If you have a site with a lot of contributors, this is where you will go to control who can go where.
Under Tools, you have 4 selections: Tools, where you can enable Turbo and Press This (also found in the Turbo link in the top right), Import, where you can import content from other blogs, Export, where you can bundle your current blog’s contents, and Upgrade where you can install the latest version of WordPress. (You’ll need to back everything up before doing so).
Settings is a pretty big topic but suffice to say it’s where you can work with features such as your site’s url structure, blog title and description, which Page on your site is the “Home” page and so on. It’s very useful to explore the Settings panel and get used to the wide variety of options available. And, speaking of Options, some versions of WP use the term “options” instead of “settings” which is good to know when you are searching for help online for a WP issue.
So that’s the basic left side toolbar of the dashboard. Underneath Settings is usually where any Plugins that you’ve enabled outside of the standard ones included in WP will show up and you can utilize them from there.
3. Create Some Content
Now that you’re familiar with the dashboard, you can begin creating content for your new site. Since the method for creating Posts and Pages is roughly similar, I’m going to discuss creating a Post and it should help with creating Pages too. What’s the difference you ask? There are a few analogies I like to use but here I’ll just say that Posts are like press releases or newsletters about your company and Pages are like brochures. So, here’s how to create a Post:
Step 1: Log In to the Dashboard
Once you’ve signed in, you’ll notice a window in the top right of the dashboard called “QuickPress”. This is very handy when you want to simply write a post and get it up on the site without a lot of formatting.
Step 2: Creating the Content
If you need more control over the layout and look of the Post, then simply go to the Posts section in the left toolbar and click “Add New”. (You may need to click the arrow to the right of Posts to open the menu.)
Now the full size edit window will open up and you can add the Post’s title and begin creating the content.
Oftentimes people find that they can simply copy and paste text from another format into WP and it works just fine. However you get it in there, once it’s there, you probably want to play with the formatting a little and WP makes this fairly easy in several ways.
Step 3: Formatting the Content
There are two different modes of editing, Visual and HTML. Visual is good when you are working with text and images. HTML mode is handy when you want to paste in things such as an embedded map or video. It’s also possible to create divs and markup for precision styling via your style.css file. Let’s start with a tour of the Visual mode:
These are the buttons for formatting your content. To use them, simply highlight the text you want to change and click one of the buttons. From left to right they are:
Bold
Italics
Strike-Through (when you want to show that some text has been changed)
Unordered List (will format a list with bullet points according to whichever style your theme’s author has designated)
Ordered List (a numbered list)
Block Quote
Align Left
Align Center
Align Right
Insert/Edit a Link
Unlink the text
More (for when you only want to display the beginning of a post on the blog’s home page)
Spellcheck (with various European languages included)
Toggle for Full Screen Mode
Show/Hide “Kitchen Sink” mode (see below)
+ any plugins you have enabled such as CFormsII or NextGen Gallery
Kitchen Sink Mode Buttons:
Paragraph Styles
Underline
Align Full
Text Color
Paste as Plain Text
Paste from Word
Remove Formatting
Insert/Edit Embedded Media
Insert Custom Character
Outdent
Indent
Un-Do
Re-Do
Help (opens a pop-up window)
Editing in HTML Mode
HTML mode is handy when you want to include some markup into your content, but don’t want to deal with hand-coding. You can highlight your text and then apply the various tags like so:
(from left to right)
b=Bold text
i=Italicized
link=A hypertext link
b-quote=block quotet
del=delete
ins=labels text considered inserted into a post. Most browsers display as underlined text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
img=this creates a tag for inserting an image into your post. If you have an image stored in your uploads folder, or, on an online album such as Photobucket, you can paste a link into the dropdown window and the image will be displayed on your site.
ul=un-ordered list
ol=ordered list
li=list item on a list
code=Creates preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier
more=a way for you to contain the beginning of a post on a page and then include a “read the rest of this article” teaser linking to the full post.
lookup=Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
close tags=closes any open HTML tags in your post.
Step 4: Inserting Media
Once you are satisfied with the text, you can add some media to your post. Click on where you would like an image to appear and then select one of the choices in the Add Media: menu in the top right corner of the edit window. The choices from left to right are: image, video, audio and add media.
Depending on the version of WordPress you are using, the upload window may behave in various ways. Sometimes you can upload images or media just fine, but WP doesn’t want to actually insert them into the post. A little frustrating, but luckily there’s a way around this. In HTML mode, click on the “ins” button and in the dropdown window that appears, enter the image’s url like so:
http://www.yoursitesname.com/wp-content/uploads/year/mo/day/nameofimage.jpg
Tip: if you want an easy way to copy and paste your image’s url, click on add media, then select either “Gallery” for images you’ve just uploaded, or “Media” for everything in your uploads folder. Click on the media you wish to add, and then look for the Link URL listed in the window. Then you can copy and paste that if needed.
Also, I’ve noticed that adding Flash movies is a little tricky. You can circumvent this by installing the Kimili Flash embed plugin. (you’ll need a way to FTP files for installing plugins)
Step 5. Tags, Categories, Author and Advanced Options
Now that the content of the Post (or Page) is all set. You can either save it as a draft, or Publish it. It’s a good idea at this point to assign the Post to a Category and add Tags. These are how your posts are cataloged in your WordPress database so that your readers can find them. I like to think of this as like a library’s way of organizing non-fiction. Categories are like broad topics such as Music, Art and Science, and then Tags are helpful for breaking down categories further such as Rock and Roll, Opera, Painting, Renaissance, Zoology and Particle Physics.
If your blog has multiple authors, always scroll down to check the Authors selection to make sure the right Author is chosen for the post.
WordPress sites can be modified to show only an excerpt of the content to draw readers in for more. If you have this feature, then you can place an excerpt into the Excerpt window.
Trackbacks are for when you have linked to another blog in your post. If they have enabled Pingbacks, they will be notified that you have done this.
Custom Fields, according to WP’s Codex;
offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.
You can read more about custom fields here.
Comments and Pings are enabled by default and I’ve never seen a reason to dis-able them. If you didn’t want people to comment on your Post or be notified if someone links back to it, then you could do that here.
Password Protect is used when you want only certain people to see the Posts content. You can set a password here for people to use when they are allowed to read this Post.
Step 6. Publish!
Once you are satisfied with your Post’s content and settings, it’s time to publish. This will place your post at the top of your archives and allow others to read it. Tip: If you want to change the order in which a Post will show up in the Archives(arranged chronologically), click Edit next to Publis and choose a date that will place it where you want in your Archives.
What about Pages???
Pages, (brochure-like info remember?) use the same editing tools as Posts. Pages, however, don’t have Categories or Tags, but they do have hierarchy and templates. If you would like for one page to be a sub-page, or “child” of another, you can choose that from the Parent Page dropdown menu on the right. Page Template is where you can choose a Template that may have been created to give certain Pages on your site a particular layout or “look” via CSS styling. Pages are otherwise set to display the “Default” template.
And that is pretty much it as far as getting your content into your WordPress site. If you have further questions, feel free to send ’em my way!