WordPress Admin Screens
- Go to yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin.
- Type in the username and password you previously entered during the WordPress installation process.Your WordPress admin menu is available on the left side of the screen. Allowing your cursor to linger over them will open sub menus.
- Dashboard
- Posts
- Media
- Links
- Pages
- Comments
- Appearance
- Plugins
- Users
- Tools
- Settings
Customizing your site’s Appearance and activating a WordPress Theme
Themes (Appearances > Themes)
- Open Appearances > Themes. From here on have a look at the heading of each subsection if you have doubts with regards to accessing a particular part of the WordPress menu from the admin screen.
- And click on the “Add New” button on the top. And choose from one of the themes displayed or search for a specific theme. For a list of awesome free themes, you can check out here.
- Install a new theme that you fancy and activate it.
- The next part involves customization of a theme. You can access this under from Appearance > Customize. You can do a number of things to your site’s appearance from here. But that’s not the crux of this post, a theme is sufficient to start a website.
Widgets (Appearances > Widgets)
Widgets are preset modules or pieces of code that add to a certain function which will prove useful for your website in some capacity or the other. Your sidebars, footers and headers can be loaded with widgets.
As you can see in the above screenshot, there 6 widgets in the sidebar. These widgets include a search bar, a recent posts widget, recent comments, archives, categories and meta. Then you can see 4 footer areas where you can add widgets just the same. The number of footer, header and sidebar areas available to you depends on the theme you are using.
Widgets are not plugins, but they are small chunks of code that add a bit of function. Sometimes it may help with navigation, sometimes with social media, you can even use to add HTML to a text widget which will function as coded to do so. So widgets are a very useful tool but you need to learn a bit about them before you can use them to the fullest. style fixing
Menus (Appearances > Menu)
Menus are an extremely important for any website. They offer a means to navigate your site and its content. After all, what’s the point in creating captivating content and if your visitor can not find it easily on your site. Bad menus and navigation can lead to a high bounce rate (the number of visitors as a percentage who leave your site after just viewing just one page).
You may have seen websites with menus on the top or the side and even at the bottom. We can do all of this.
You’d like to include pages like “About”, “Blog”, “Contact” and “Our Services” as part of your primary menu. Any page you’d like displayed on your menu can be added. The number of menus and their placement on your site depends on your WordPress theme.
You can add all the stuff that you see on the left to the menu ranging from pages to products as part of your menu. Again what you can include as part of the menu depends on your WordPress theme.
A good menu,
- Is concise and minimal.
- It is a representation of all your site’s offerings.
- Very intuitive to use and maneuver around your site.
Keep that in mind and you should be fine.
Background (Appearances > Background)
Many website choose to have plain single color background and I am big fan of that.
The Colorlib blog has a plain white background and it keeps things simple. But the homepage of the site is pretty awesome with a purple background and our tagline
Websites that are media heavy, examples would include photography sites or
portfolio websites have great backgrounds. If
you want your website to send across a powerful visual cue to your audience use a powerful background image. Else you can simply opt for a plain color which is appropriate for any blog that emphasizes readability.
A background should not be confused with a slider image which is basically a constantly changing image that moves across or your screen or changes with fancy animation.
Adding New Plugins (Plugins > Add New)
Plugins are a scripts or pieces of code written to perform a very specific function or set of functions on your website.
A simple example would be social sharing plugin, it helps share your content across different social platforms and helps get the word out that your content is awesome. Similarly, people have developed plugins for search engine optimization, security purposes, creating and maintaining a portfolio of images, to create contact forms, for caching the list is endless.
If you want to read a detailed list of plugins that we think is absolutely essential, read this
comprehensive list of essential plugins.
Adding Pages (Pages > Add New)
Pages on a website help divide your website into a requisite number of pieces to present the different sections of your site’s content. Pages are to themes like widgets are to plugins. With pages you can create specific template styles that can be called on command for different purposes that require the same or similar design. Pages are more than posts and are used for specific purposes on your site. You can create pages specifically to cater to the requirements of a Contact Us Page or perhaps create landing page.
And you are greeted by a New Page, which you can now fill up. From this new screen, you can create a new page and assign page attributes.
If you either need to create a template that you’re likely to use often or need to recreate a section of your site for a specific purpose, creating a page is the way to go.
Comments (Access from WordPress menu)
Websites need readers to make them successful. Comments are a very powerful means to establish a great debate on your site and this only further adds value to your site. Hardly, one percent of the traffic that visits your site will ever comment. And that is assuming that the content is great to begin with. Driving interaction with passive readers on your site is difficult and takes time and effort.
A great post with a pre-existing comment history helps your site receive more comments. Aigars wrote an awesome post on
Rimu C a while back, yet till this day it still keeps receiving comments and continues to be a great source of traffic.
And remember, WordPress allows you to link your site when you comment on another person’s blog. And this may send visitors your way, if you play your cards right and make genuine attempts to offer something constructive. For this same reason, many people will leave their comments on your blog as well.
If I feel your content is great and a particular post that you’ve written is awesome, then I’ll almost jump at the chance to leave my comment first and best anyone else to first comment. Because I know eventually it will lead a few visitors back to my site.
Comments are a great way to
build an awesome readership and a loyal following for your site.
Adding Content
Content is king may be a cliched line. But it is true now more so than ever before. There are many more websites now than there ever were before. You name a niche, any niche and it is bound to be saturated to the hilt with websites producing content about said niche. WordPress is a very profitable niche. Why? 50% of websites use it and many of them are new to WP. WordPress newbies and even intermediate level users require a few resources to help them get started up and make changes to their WordPress sites, not too dissimilar to the content on
Rimu C But a website like
Rimu C works well and generates revenue only when we offer value to our readers.
We publish a great number of articles on premium WordPress themes and should you choose to buy one of them after clicking on our links we receive a small commission on your purchase. But truth be told, our most popular and widely read articles aren’t the ones that describe premium WordPress themes or plugins, rather they are WordPress tutorials and posts dedicated to free themes, plugins and other WordPress related articles. Because it is only when we offer value to readers that our site grows.
So based on your site’s niche and your expertise, you need to produce content that genuinely offers value to would be readers. If you intend to create your site purely for monetary purposes, it will not be successful in the long run. No wait a minute, it may still be profitable but certainly not as successful as it could have been had you tried to genuinely help your audiences.So focus on good content.
Pick your niche and offer great value to your readers. And watch your traffic grow steadily and if you are lucky, perhaps even go through the roof!
So how do you publish your content on WordPress? What are the formats available to you apart from just plain ol’ text?
Posts (Posts > Add New)
The beating heart of your site or most sites anyway. At the end of this tutorial when all’s said and done, you’ll be here to populate your site with posts.
WordPress has a very easy to use posting mechanism and this one of the reasons, it is so popular.
You have two ways in which you can write your posts: one is the visual editor and the other is HTML editor. You can opt to use the visual editor to begin with, but you should know the HTML editor (referred to as text editor) is a very powerful tool to help you create the right formatting for your posts. The sooner you are comfortable with the text editor, the better of you will be. You may notice I am using the visual editor and truth be told, once I’ve added all the necessary formatting I prefer the visual editor.
The visual editor is very much similar to most text editors and permits you to add bold / italic effects to your text, change its font, add bulleted lists and numbered lists, align content differently and add hyperlinks. There is also a distraction free writing mode which gives you a fullscreen version of the editor.
Categories (Posts > Categories)
Categories are a means to divide your content. Categories are a big more important when your site publishes content on a number of issues. You can add categories from your Post editor or you can access it under Posts > Categories.
Now you can name the category to create one and then you can add a slug which is basically a URL add on of sorts for all your site’s posts on that specific category. For example, if I know that Wordpress produces a lot of theme collection content, I can Google search Wordpress+ collections and the first search result link is – https://wordpress.com/wp/category/collections/ . With this I can view only the posts that have been published under the category, “Collections”.
So it is a very effective way to divide
your site’s content and make finding stuff on your site much easier for a visitor.
Tags (Posts > Tags)
Tags are very similar to categories, except each post generally has its own set of tags. Tags are a tad more specific than categories but that apart they are the same and they aid in helping visitors find your content more easily.
Media (Media >Add New)
Media as in photos and videos are important to
normal websites. They are even more so for media heavy websites. Adding media is easy with WordPress. You can either add media from Posts or you can add media directly to the media library.
You can add the image title, a caption, description to the image. But it is also important you also add the alt text which helps search engines identify your image. It is a small step in ensuring good search engine optimization.
There a lot of effects and stuff you can do to your imagery like make it pop up or use a lightbox with WordPress plugins. But that’s for another day.
Your Profile
Setting up your
WordPress profile. This is rather easy to deal with. You can edit your profile from the “Edit Your Profile” on your WordPress admin screen on the top right hand corner. You can describe yourself and add the necessary social media links as well.
And to add a profile picture for your WordPress ID, you’ll need to get a Gravatar account. You’ll need
an account from WordPress.com with which you can login to your site’s admin panel.
Just Start!
We have far too many inhibitions, starting stuff is one of them. It opens the door to failure.
Creating the website and generating revenue is no joke. It is hard work, sometimes seemingly unrewarding work.
Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll be launching our “Getting Started With WordPress” post series to help you out.
And apart from that if you need anything else, do let us know in the comments below!
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