That about covers the basics, but there is a lots more to WordPress. A quick trip to their fantastic
support site at http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page shows you everything you could possibly
want to know (and probably a few things you don’t) about this super-powerful, but easy to use,
Web publishing platform.
Here, you’ll learn about many of the super cool things you can do with WordPress such as:
• Changing themes
• Adding super-cool plugins
• Ways to customize your site to make it like no other
• And much, much more!
Have fun with your site, and remember:
Write often, because the pixel is mightier than the sword!
“Why is my site so slow?”
There are a lot of things that might slow down your site. The usual culprits are improperly
configured or misbehaving plugins, or using images that are hosted on other, slower servers. Try
these solutions to speed up your site:
• Install and configure WP-Cache, WP-Super-Cache, WP-DBManager, and BadBehavior
plugins.
• Replace links to external images with images uploaded to your WordPress site.
• Disable all plugins.
• Re-enable plugins one-by-one to see which one causes the slowing.
No matter what you do on the Internet, there’s going to be spam. That’s a given. Unfortunately,
that includes your WordPress site. Spammers spend countless hours creating robots, or “bots,”
that crawl the Web looking for places to spread their wares, and your new WordPress site won’t
stay off their radar for long.
WordPress comes pre-installed with Akismet, a top-notch spam filter installed by default.
Akismet references a community-created database to “learn” which comments are comment
spam and which are legitimate. It’s a real time saver. Because there are three things that are for
sure in this life: death, taxes, and spam on your blog. To enable Akismet on your WordPress
blog, go to the Plugins panel and activate Akismet. A menu is added to the Comments Panel and
holds a list of “caught” comment spam.
If comment spam gets through Akismet’s net, mark it as comment spam in your Comments
Panel, but don’t delete it. Marking it “comment spam” sends the info to Akismet and it gets
added to the community-created database, thus reducing more spam for others. So you’re
helping yourself, and everyone else, at the same time!
Be sure to check the Akismet list to make sure it hasn’t marked legitimate comments as spam.
It’s good, but it’s not perfect.
What would a blog be without a place for your readers to give their two cents on your posts? Comments let your users comment on individual posts in an open forum where other users can see and comment on their comments. It’s almost like every post is its own little forum. Cool! “But, what if I don’t like what people say?” Don’t worry, WordPress has you covered. You can manage all of the comments made on your blog right from the Dashboard (bet you saw that coming, right?).
Click Comments in the left navigation panel. The Edit Comments pane opens with a list of all of the comments made to your blog. From here you can see the author info, including the date and time of the comment, as well as the comment itself and which post it was made from. You can delete comments one at a time, or en masse from here using the actions menu at the top of the page.
Depending on your settings in the Discussions section of the Settings menu, comments listed here may or may not already be public. If you set Administrator Must Approve All Comments to Yes, go to this menu to approve or deny comments made to your posts.
In WordPress, posts are on pages, but pages aren’t necessarily posts only. Huh?
Pages are like posts, but they aren’t included in the chronology of the rest of your blog posts. What that means, is that pages can be static (never change) and aren’t dated or time-stamped like your blog posts. Pages are great for “About Me” pages or contact forms. You can add or delete pages by clicking on Pages in the left navigation. This opens the Edit Pages pane.
WordPress’ site has more info about Pages: http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages .
“Hey, there’s still a post that says ‘Hello World’ on the front page of my site! How do I get rid of that?”
Easy, just click Edit in the left navigation under Posts. The Edit Posts pane opens with a list of all of your posts. From here you can edit, view and delete posts at will. This page also tells you which categories posts belong to as well as the tags assigned to them, the date they were published and how many comments they’ve received (hopefully lots!). To edit a specific post, just click on its title.
You’re anxious, right? “This is supposed to be my blog and I haven’t written anything!” You cry. Fear not, the blogging is just about to start. It’s time to post.
Posts are the entries that display in reverse chronological order on your home page. In contrast to pages, posts usually have comment fields beneath them and are included in your site’s RSS feed. In the left navigation, click Add New under the Posts section. The Add New Post pane displays.
Start filling in the blanks; enter a title for your post, and what you want to say in the body section of the page. If you want, select or create a category in the Categories section, and add a tag or two. When your masterpiece passes muster, click Publish to release your words to the world!
Your post is added to the front page of your website and can be viewed by clicking View Site at the top of the Dashboard.
If you’re going to post, you want to get credit for it, right? WordPress attributes every post to a user, and you certainly don’t want to look like a WordPress rookie and have every post labeled “admin.” Let’s create a user for you, shall we?
Open the Your Profile sub-panel by clicking Users in the left navigation. The Users pane displays. At first you only see the users you created at install, or perhaps just the “admin” user. Clicking on your name opens the Profile pane where you can set your color scheme, set your name preferences and contact info, as well as tell WordPress how to display your name next to your posts.
You can also change your password in the Profile pane, something you should do regularly.
If you’re going to have more than one person posting to your blog, this is where you’d set that up. To create a new user just click Add New under Users in the left navigation. This opens the Add New User pane, where you can enter their details and assign them a password. When you’re done, click Add User.
Your blog’s configuration is handled through the Settings menu. You can access it at any time in the WordPress Dashboard by clicking the Settings tab in the left navigation.
Clicking the Settings tab takes you to the General Settings pane where you can change your blog title (see, told you that would be easy to change later), your email address, time zone settings and lots more. The other sub-panels let you configure authoring settings, display settings and discussion options. Check them out!
Find more information about the settings panel at WordPress’ website:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels .
On the right-side of your blog, in the sidebar, is a section called Meta. In that section you’ll see a link labeled, Site Admin. Click that link and you’ll be whisked away to your site’s Administration login page. Log in to your site using the user name and password you selected during the install process.
You can also go straight to the login page by adding /wp-admin to the end of your
site address. For example: http://coolexample.com/wp-admin.
Once you’re logged in, the first thing you will see is the Dashboard of the Administration Panel.
The Administration Panel is the brain behind your website. This is where the organization of your
site begins.
The Administration Panel provides access to the control features of your WordPress installation.
Each Administration Panel is presented in sections: the header, the main navigation, the work
area, and the footer.
On the left side of the screen is the main navigation menu detailing each of the administrative
functions you can perform.
Two expand/collapse arrows just below Dashboard and Comments let you collapse the navigation menu to a set of icons, or expand (fly-out) to show an icon and description for each major administrative function. Within each major function, such as Posts, a pull-down arrow is presented when you hover your mouse over the title area. A click of that arrow expands the menu to display each of the sub-menu choices, referred to as SubPanels. Clicking that arrow again collapses the sub-menu.
The large area in the middle of the screen is the work area. It is here the specific information relating to a particular navigation choice, such as adding a new post, is presented and collected.