Wordpress is a very versatile tool that gives you creative freedom to build anything from a blog to an eCommerce shopping site. This platform gives you access to a large database of plugins, themes, and widgets available for you to create your dream website. We will be going over some key feature of Wordpress to help guide you through navigating the dashboard.
If your new to using Wordpress the best thing to do is familiarize yourself with the dashboard. As you'll notice once you start to navigate around there are usually multiple ways to access different key features, and depending on what them or plugins you install the dashboard will change and add different features.
The menu options shown above will be the main dashboard options you'll be using as you build your site. The home dashboard will give you an overall look at the administration panel giving you access to view the site health, recent activity, how many pages and posts you have, as well as general Wordpress events and news. If there's anything that's installed that needs to be updated you will see the notification number next to the Updates tab. Depending on your site you may not actually need to utilize some of the options shown under your dashboard, here is s description of the other tools in the dashboard:
- The Posts tool is typically a blog function that allows you to manage or create a post. Posts can also be considered as articles or updates to any of your pages.
- The Media tool allows you to upload and store various types of media and documents such as images, audio, videos, etc. all of which are available for immediate use while your working.
- Pages, as it sounds is were you can add and edit the pages of your site. You have as less or as many pages your hosting will allow.
- The Comments tab will allow you to view, moderate, edit and delete any comments left by customers on your site. This of course is only applicable if you have or want a comment section on your website.
- Appearance is where you can change the theme of your site from the large selection of free themes available to choose from. Under the Appearance tab you also will have the Customize tab where you will personalize the theme for your site, as well as the option to add Widgets and Menus.
- Plugins are a great way personalize and add functionality to your website. They can be used to add anything from slide shows to shopping carts too your site. Plugins are still considered third-party software and it is recommended to research anything before adding it to your site.
- The Users tool is helpful when providing access to your Wordpress dashboard to anyone such as a developer or coworker. As the administrator, you have access to set what permissions all other users have, and can remove them whenever you need to. Any other users shown here would be if you have a signup option on the site for your visitors.
This again is just a general guide to help you begin and navigate through your Wordpress dashboard. For more information or more in-depth guides to help you build your site, we recommend using Wordpress.org or even Youtube.com, which has tons of tutorials available.
