WordPress Tutorial

Settings

2010-10-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

Under general settings is where you change your site title, tagline, your WordPress address & site address (usually the same thing) & your email address. You can decide if people should register or not - if they do what role they play (subscriber, admin, editor, author or contributor). Finally, here's where you edit the timezone, date & time formats & decide which day the week (of the calendar - if you post one) should start on.

Under writing I usually worry about the default post category & default link category. There's an option to use press this again. You can also set up to post via email or remotely. You can also change your update services.

Under reading I usually pick a static page (like about) for the front page & have all my "blog posts" show up on another page. I usually leave everything else their default settings.

Under discussion is where you decide if people can comment or pingback/trackback. If they can - then there's some other settings. There's a box for you to add words & if the comment contains them it'll be held for moderation. There's another box for you to add words & if the comment contains them it'll be blacklisted (automatically marked as spam). Finally you can decide if users should display avatars or not & if so what rating & what to show for their default (in case they don't have a gravatar).

What are gravatars? Gravatars are avatars linked to your email address. When you post that email address on especially a WordPress site - it'll show your avatar.

Next we have media settings. You can decide what your thumbnail, medium & large size (photos) should be. If you want to type http://domain.com & have it automatically link without you have to either use the button or add the code yourself, check auto embed. Finally it wants to know what folder on your server it can upload pics & things to. And that folder is usually called "uploads" & stored in the wp-content folder.

Next we have privacy & that's simply - do you want your site visible to everyone or just normal people & not search engines?

Most people change their permanlink settings. It's because I changed mine you see http://dawnswebdesigns.com/contact rather then http://dawnswebdesigns.com/?p=123. I don't normally mess with the optional however.

Normally we would be done. But I added a couple of plugins. I don't know why the settings for 2 are under plugins & the settings for 1 is under settings - but that's how it is. So if I wanted to mess with the settings of that plugin that's where I'd go.

Now we're done. And that's WordPress all in a nut shell. :)

Tools

2010-10-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

There's only 3 things under tools. If you actually click on tools you'll see press this & the categories & tags converter. I never use either one.

I have used export & import. I just switched hosts. I exported from the old WordPress & imported into this one. Please note it don't include media.

Users

2010-10-08T02:33:00.000-07:00

As with most sites you can register for & login to - you get a personal profile. Unless you have other members or post an author bio - you don't have to worry about this.

Let's say you don't want just anybody registering but you've got a couple of secretaries who'll be doing most of the typing or you want to invite some friends & make this a group blog. You can add people by clicking on "add new". But now you have to add their username, email, & password for them. You can ask them beforehand what they want their username & password to be. Otherwise they can consider your password temporary & change it to something they'll remember once they get in. They need the temp password to login & also to change it to something they'll remember. Some people have trouble with this...so I'll be glad when they get an invite feature (as part of the core).

Of course if you click on users you can see them all & either edit them or delete them.

Plugins

2010-10-08T02:14:00.000-07:00

Plugins come next. :)

And it's pretty much the same as themes. Clicking on plugins gets you a list of any uploaded & ready to be activated. There will be at least one called Hello Dolly. You can activate them, edit them or delete them.

Just like you can search WordPress for themes from the comforts of your own software - you can do so for plugins too. If you find any you want you can add them without having to download & upload first.

Again if you don't know anything about coding I'd leave the editor link alone. ;)

2 of the plugins I decided to use are listed - & by clicking on either link I could edit their settings.

Themes

2010-10-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

Themes are the looks & plugins are the features. ;)

Themes comes first. If I clicked on themes, I'd see a list of ones I've uploaded & can activate. But I'd also see a link to "install themes". You can search themes at WordPress from the comforts of your own software. And if you find anything - you can install it.

Yayyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No more downloading from their site to turn around & upload to yours. It's all automatic with clicks of a button.

Clicking on the widgets link gets you the following:

To add things like a calendar, custom menu, search box, links, etc., to your sidebar(s) you have to use widgets. My theme has one sidebar so I'm only using 3 widgets.

Next is the new menu editor I keep talking about.

My theme allows for 2 menus. On the main I have home/about, news, links & support forum (custom link) & on the second one I have home/about, services, rates, contact.

Notice while the page is about, on the first menu I renamed it "home". On the second menu, I left it "about".

The forum is an entirely separate software I didn't create with WordPress so it's not a WordPress page. I created a custom link for it.

As you can see here - you can add pages or categories to the menu(s):

After you've added your pages or categories &/or custom links - you can recorder them by simply dragging & dropping them. My theme allows for 2 menus but neither one is a drop down menu. But if I could have a drop down menu...well for example...you would drag Services to the right just a tad to make it a child page of About.

Then don't forget to save the menu. Then when you're looking at the site, if you hold your mouse over the link about, services should drop down from it.

Some themes still haven't been updated to handle the menu editor yet. If that's the case you have to decide page order & parent pages versus child pages while you're adding the page...or go back & edit later. But now there's a custom menu widget that works on all themes. So if it don't work & you can shut it off (not have a top navigation menu) - you can add it to your sidebar & go that route.

If your theme has any options that can be changed you'll see it next. Mine has options & evidently I can change the background.

Finally there's an editor. If you know anything about html/css you can check this out but if you don't I'd leave it alone.

Comments

2010-10-08T01:12:00.000-07:00

Yep...there's just one lil thing for comments. Clicking on it gets you this:

If you allow people to register for your site & post comments you can set it so that you're notified. When you login you should see a dot with a # in it on the first image "Comments". When you click on it - you should see at least one listed. You can approve it, mark it as spam or trash it. As you can see above I don't allow registration or comments as more often then not they're spam.

Pages

2010-10-08T00:54:00.000-07:00

There's only 2 things under pages - pages & add new. If you click on pages you'll see a list of any you may have (start off with about). You can edit or delete. You can mass delete by click on several pages (boxes next to them), flipping drop down list to "move to trash" & clicking on apply.

If you click on "add new" it looks almost exactly like it does when you click on "add new" (post).

The only difference is there's no categories to put it into. But also - now there are page attributes.

Before the new menu editor, you actually had to worry about the page attributes (parent page & page order). But now with the new menu editor, as long as the theme works with it, you don't have to worry about it.

Links

2010-10-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

When WordPress was more a blog they called links "blogroll". But now that I think it's more-so used as a CMS they're calling them links. But the default category is "blogroll". You can switch that via settings...but you have to add at least another category to switch it too. You do that by clicking on Link Categories. You can also edit or delete categories.

When you click on Add New it's fill in the blanks. Add a name, the url, a description, pick a category, etc. Then "add link".

What is this target nonsense? _blank will pop open a whole new tab or window. Considering you usually link to others here - not to pages in your own site - I usually use _blank. But if I link one of my pages (created with WordPress) to another page (created with WordPress), I use _none.

Nobody can see your links unless you use a sidebar widget or a plugin. Since I have a few links & intend to have more I decided to use a plugin called WP Blogroll Links. By posting a code on a page - all my links appear on a page instead of the sidebar. Except links to my tutorials...those appear on the sidebar.

How did I split them up? You can use code to exclude that category from the page. And when you're using the widget to add them to the sidebar you can pick to show only one category.

If you click on links - you'll see a list of links (if you added any). From here you can edit or delete.

Media

2010-10-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

You can add media to your pages one of two ways. Actually, with the featured image, I guess one of three ways now. For more about the featured image, check out the post about posts. :)

Otherwise you have media buttons when you're posting something (page or post).

Clicking on any one of those 4 buttons gets you this:

You can use this uploader to upload pics, videos & audio files. You can upload them from your computer or a URL. And whatever you upload is saved in your media library. When it comes to pics, you can post individual ones like I'm doing here. Or you could upload several at one time & display them in a gallery. You can also turn that gallery into a slideshow.

But also, on your dashboard, there's a menu to the left called Media. You can add new media or view the library this way too. But I don't recommend you add things this way because then they're not linked to anything. You'd have to edit a page or post anyway to link something to it. So you might as well add it that way so it's automatically linked.

But here again sometimes I delete posts & the pics I used in them are stuck behind. So I do tend to click on the link Library & clean house. ;)

The Editor

2010-10-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

The text editor is actually 2 editors in one. If it's clicked on visual you'll see more buttons & you'll see anything you add - be it text or images.

If you can use Word or any other type of word processing software then you can use WordPress. It's pretty much the same buttons. If you don't know what a button does - hold your mouse over it & it should tell you. If you don't see the 2nd row of buttons, click on the last one in the first row - which says show/hide the kitchen sink - & it'll drop the 2nd row of buttons down. ;)

On the 2nd row is a button for "pasting from word". You can use Word to type your post then copy/paste it into WordPress by clicking on that button. It'll bring up a box that you paste your text into. And it'll insert it into the post.

If it's flipped over to HTML you'll see less buttons & you won't see any links or images. Instead you'll see the url of the link or image with code around it. If you don't know much about html I wouldn't use the HTML editor. I only use it to clean up the mess the visual editor can make upon occasion.

Posts

2010-10-07T23:29:00.000-07:00

I'm using WordPress for my site. You can tell by looking at it that the layout is exactly the same on every page (except the forum which is another software). The banner, navigation links, sidebar & footer don't change. The only thing that changes is the text from page to page.

Like I said earlier, WordPress is like a CMS because you can create pages. Yet it's like a blog because it also has a posts page. You can have one or more pages but there's only one posts page & all your posts go there (mine's called "news").

You add posts to your CMS/blog by clicking on the category posts. Clicking on the arrow towards the right should lower this drop down menu where you'll see posts, add new, categories & post tags. I have one category called news. But you can have as many as you like.

After you've added some categories you click on add new. Below you see you have a text editor to type with & you can also see a list of categories to add this post to:

You can add tags, which are somewhat like keywords, here.

You can decide if people can comment or trackback or not.

And another thing people should pay attention to is this:

Some of these themes (like the one I'm using) have a featured image slideshow or just a featured image. To add the featured image click on the link "set featured image". You can upload an image or link to one already uploaded. I must use images that are 610x320 for my slideshow.

When you're done you can preview it, save it as a draft, change it's status from draft to pending review, change it's visability (public, password protected or private), publish immediately or publish at a later date.

If you click on the link "posts" (first image above), you'll see a list of the posts you've added. You can edit or delete them from here. Or, while you're editing a post if you decide to delete it you can see "move to trash" in the image directly above.

Although there is a "post tags" link (first image above), I only use it to delete tags. I just deleted a post to see the tags remained behind. You can tell if tags are connected to a post or not. If not I delete them. Otherwise I don't know why you'd have tags not connected to anything. So I go to the post to add tags to it - either as I'm starting it or I go back & edit it.

Updates

2010-10-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

Updating - be it the software, plugins or themes - has never been easier. If updates are needed the software will tell you (you'll see a dot with the number of updates needed within next to updates, themes & plugins).

I don't need any updates so there's nothing. But if there was anything I could handle it by clicking on updates. You can tell by looking at the first pic one spot's about your WordPress install, one spot's about plugins & one spot's about themes. There could be a few plugins &/or themes that need updated. I don't know if you can do plugins & themes at the same time but you could do all plugins at one time then all themes at one time. They'll have check-boxes next to them...click on one or all of them. Then there will be a button to do the update(s). WordPress will deactivate the plugins/themes, put your site in maintenance mode, update them in maybe a minute or less & reactivate them again all by itself.

No downloading, uploading, pointing your browser no where or worrying about updating the database too. It handles it all with some clicks of some buttons. You couldn't get any easier. ;)

The Dashboard

2010-10-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

After WordPress is uploaded & installed - the first time you login you'll be taken to the "dashboard".

Dashboard

The dashboard keeps you up to date but the main things are all the links on the left. You use those links to do all your dirty work. :)

The New WordPress

2010-10-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

Back in the day before software programs, to have a site you had to have one or more web pages. Your pages were in your main directory then you also had an image folder where you kept all the images used on your pages. A website designer would have to keep those pages & images on their computer in case you wanted to change anything. If changes were necessary, you had to edit the file then reupload it again...which meant you not only had to keep an ftp program handy...you also had to keep the ftp login/password info handy.

With software programs, once they're uploaded, installed & set up that's it. You no longer edit files on your computer & reupload them. You login to the site & do it all online.

WordPress is one such software program. In the beginning it was more of a personal blog. But if it didn't have pages it quickly got them & then became more of a CMS (content management system). Some people didn't like to use it as a CMS because it would only add pages created with WordPress to your navigation menu. If you had an external forum or gallery or something like that you either had to use a plug-in to add it to your nav menu or you had to add it elsewhere - usually links (blogroll).

The latest version of WordPress comes with a menu editor. Finally, you can add links to your forums & galleries to your nav menu. Now there's nothing stopping people from using this as a CMS. So I do. :)