Discover in this new guide we will show you how to understand the WordPress dashboard
The first time you visit the back-end of your new WordPress website, you might find yourself a bit overwhelmed. You'll see lots of links and options, and you might not know what to do first.
As you will soon discover, WordPress is a beginner-friendly and easy-to-use platform. Once you spend some time familiarizing yourself with the different sections of the back-end, as well as the different features and settings available, you will feel much more comfortable. WordPress gets you oriented quickly, so you can directly design your website and add content.
In this article, we'll streamline the process for you by highlighting the main WordPress back-end features and explaining how to use them.
Let's start with the dashboard!
But before, if you have never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog
Then back to why we are here.
Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the dashboard
The WordPress Dashboard is the first screen you will see when you log in to your website and view the back-end. It's a useful hub area with useful shortcuts and basic information about your website. On your first visit, you will see a box at the top titled Welcome to WordPress:
This area displays links to important sections of the back-end that will allow you to customize theappearance of your website, to create articles and pages, etc… All these functionalities are also accessible from the main menu on the left, on which we will come back shortly.
Read also: How to Add Custom Fonts to a WordPress Website
The dashboard will also allow you to see activity and comments Recent in the Activity widget, and know how many posts, pages and comments are currently on your website in one A look. You can start a new blog post in the area Fast draft if you wish, or read the latest developments in WordPress events and news:
Each of these widgets can be moved around if you don't like the way they are organized – just click on one of them and drag it to a new place. You can also completely remove unwanted widgets by clicking Screen options in the upper right corner of your dashboard.
See also: How to Increase Maximum File Upload Size in WordPress
You will find the tab Help in the same place – this appears on every page of the back-end, and is the first thing you should check if you ever find yourself confused by a setting or feature while working on your website.
Step 2: Customize your website settings
Now let's start exploring the menu on the left side of your WordPress back-end. If you click on Settings, you will see six subsections. This is where you will change important settings for your website. We won't go through them all right now, but we will highlight a few key features to get you started.
See also: How to Find the ID of a WordPress Page or Post
When you clicked on Settings, you have been redirected to the subsection Settings general. Here you can edit your website title and tagline, as well as other basic information such as your admin email address:
In the tab Litterature, you can set the number of blog posts that appear on each page. You can also determine what your website's homepage will be – by default this is a list of your latest posts, but you can change it to display a static page instead.
Finally, head to the subsection Comments. On this page you can enable or disable the WordPress pingbacks and trackbacks, and you can enable or disable comments. You also have access to many other comment-related options here – you can decide whether users will need to log in or provide personal information before commenting, for example, and you can change approval and moderation settings:
Keep exploring the tab Settings at your own pace if you wish, but don't feel like you have to figure it all out just yet. Some of the options here are advanced settings that you may never need to touch.
Read also: How to add infinite scrolling on a WordPress
If you want to change anything about how your website works in the future, however, this is the first place to check. You can also find more information about specific parameters in the WordPress codex.
Step 3: Check the tabs Appearence et Plugins
The majority of WordPress themes allows you to customize theappearance of your website.
We'll talk more about themes and plugins in a later post in this series. To keep it simple for now, themes and plugins are tools that can change how your website looks and works.
Themes affect the look and layout of your website, while plugins add functionality and change what your website can do. For example, you can use a theme that streamlines your website into a single page or gives you access to a layout designed specifically for photography websites, and you can install a plugin that adds e-commerce functionality to your website and more…
See also: How to Become a Successful Blogger and Make Money
If you click on the tab Appearence, you will see that the first subsection is Themes:. This is where you can download and activate themes for your website. A few defaults will already be installed – you can hover over one and choose Activate to try it out, or select Personalize their campaigns to change your WordPress theme current:
Depending on the theme you are using, you may have a lot of additional options in the WordPress Live Customizer.
The Appearance tab is also where you can customize header and menus of your website and this is where you can add widgets. WordPress menus make it easier for your readers to navigate to the most important pages on your website. WordPress Widgets add additional content to your sidebar and/or footer.
Now head to the tab Extensions. Here you can install new plugins by choosing Add, or you can manage your existing plugins:
The anti-spam plugin Akismet comes pre-installed with WordPress – it's a great tool to fight spam on your website. All you have to do to activate a plugin like this is click on Enable (although there are often additional configuration steps).
Step 4: Start creating content!
Finally, it's time to learn how to add content to your website. You can create two main types of content in WordPress: posts and pages. Articles are blog posts that are archived and categorized, while pages are static sections of your website such as a home page or an About page.
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Naturally, the place to go to create blog posts is the Articles. Here you can start a new article by selecting Add. You can also sort, edit and delete your old articles. Additionally, you can create categories and tags to organize your content by accessing the respective subsections:
To create a static page instead, navigate to the tab Pages. In this section, you can create a new page, as well as sort, edit, and delete existing pages:
For now, we recommend that you click on the sample post and page in these sections and look around to get an idea of ​​how these types of content work. We'll discuss creating posts and pages in more detail in a future article.
Other recommended resources
We also invite you to consult the resources below to go further in the grip and control of your website and blog.
- Some plugins to integrate Google services on your blog
- How to create custom templates on WordPress
- 10 WooCommerce plugins to recover abandoned baskets
- Using different backgrounds WordPress
Conclusion
There's a lot to do and see in the WordPress back-end – so much so that you might not know where to start. Fortunately, WordPress makes it easy to adapt to the platform by clearly organizing key features and settings and including useful links in the dashboard.
That's it for this tutorial. We hope it helped you get started with the WordPress Dashboard.
If you have any concerns or suggestions, please let us know within Comments. However, you can also consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on the WordPress blog creation or the one on Divi: the best WordPress theme of all time.
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