Exist: 4.WordPress Basics

Intro to WordPress Know your WP!

Started as a blogging platform back in 2003, WordPress has now evolved into an advanced open source Content Management System (CMS).
Its main features albeit attractions are

·         Easy designing and customizing via Themes

Don’t like a set-up? Change it completely with just a few clicks. Create visually stunning websites with just a few clicks all thanks to multitude of themes available

·         Add new features or Improve current ones through Plugins

Thought of a cool feature? Auto-Backup? Auto-Updates? Image Optimizing? User Access Control? Ordering Pizza? Well There’s a plugin for that!  Hundreds of plugins available can be installed with just a click adding various desirable functionalities.

·         Visual Post Editor

Tired of formatting text and trying to fit in that Image through those nasty HTML tags? Worry no more! WordPress’s Visual Post Editor is a WYSWYG editor that allows you to format text and media as simply as typing a word document.

·         Media Library

Where’s that funny cat video I wanted show everyone? Oh yeah its right here in the Media Library. WordPress’s powerful media library allows you to upload multiple images and videos and embed them into multiple posts and pages with just a click! Even allows you to do some basic image editing   

·         Its fully open source

Don’t like anything? Think you can do better? Then dig right in and code it just the way you like it right from the Admin Panel! How cool is that!

·         Huge Community

Got stuck? Something troubling you? Fear no more for there are scores ready to help you out! Excellent documentation and an amazing huge community can get you out of any tight situation when using WordPress.

Pages Posts and Media  all explained

First off Getting Inside (Duh!)

Go to www.<insertyoursitenamehere>.com/wp-admin

Login using your credentials

Done with that? Good let’s move on

What’s a Page?

Page is a static webpage that can be visited via a unique link and does not appear on the blog. They can be used for information that does not change much with time such as About Us. They are hierarchical in nature i.e. a page can have a subpage and they may also have custom templates. Pages mostly do not have social sharing and comments features.   

Adding a new Page

You should be seeing more or less something like this

Pages can be added by 3 ways

Either Hover over the New tab in the top row shown below and select page from menu

Or Select Add About/Additional page option from this menu

Or

Hover on pages on the left pane and click on Add New

You can view/edit/delete your currently published pages by selecting All Pages option in the above shown Picture

What’s a post?

Post is a content entry on your blog in a reverse chronological order (newest first). Posts have post types such as Image, Video or text which influence their appearance. They are not hierarchical like pages but can be classified using categories and tags. Posts do not have custom templates and feature social sharing and comments unlike pages.

Adding a Post

Posts can also be added by 3 ways

Either Hover over the New tab on the top row and select post

Or Select Write your first blog post/ Add a Blog Post option from the Quick Links menu

Or Hover over Posts in the left pane and then select add new.

You can view/edit/delete your currently published posts by selecting All Posts option in the above shown picture.

Media

Wordpress supports all common images and video formats but how to get them up? Let’s see!

Media can be uploaded in two ways

Either Hover over New tab in the top row and select media from the menu

Or Hover over media in the left pane and select Add New

In both cases the next screen will prompt you to upload a single or multiple files using either Wordpress’s uploader. You can also select Browser’s uploader in case of any issue.

Uploaded now what?

You can view your uploaded media by hovering over media in left pane and selecting library.

I want to add them to a Page/Post!

That’s easy! Click on Add Media button in the Visual Post Editor and Insert the media of your choice from the library. That’s all folks!

  

Making a Menu

Menus are the most common way of displaying links to the user so he may navigate your site. Let’s add a menu!

Step 1 Hover over Appearance in the left pane and select Menus from the menu to enter edit menu screen (menu-ception!)

Step 2 Specify a name and click Create Menu voila! Your menu is ready let’s add some links

Step 3 Check the pages you want to add to the menu from the left and click Add to menu. You can drag to readjust the links in the menu or drag an entry towards right or left to make it a submenu or to remove from submenu.

Step 4 For Adding custom links to menu such as www.google.com expand the links section and type your link in the first box and then type the menu heading in the second for example for the link www.google.com I can use Google as Menu heading. When done just click add to menu

Step 5 To Add a category to your menu simply expand the category section, check the categories you want to add and click add to menu

Step 6 Save your menu (Duh!)

“Ive done all but still can’t see my menu on the site”

For that you must assign that menu to a location first. Depending on your theme you can have multiple menu locations. To do so just click on Manage Locations tab and from there select your menu from the drop down list then click Save Changes and you’re done!