WordPress FOR BEGINNERS User Manual
WORDPRESS USER MANUAL
FOR BEGINNERS
Page | 1 WordPress User Manual for Beginners
Table of Contents
1. Introduction to WordPress ............................................................... 3
1.2 What’s Great about WordPress ................................................................................ 3
1.3 Getting Started .......................................................................................................... 3
2. the Dashboard ................................................................................. 4
2.2 First thing to do – IMPORTANT ........................................................................... 4
3. Structuring your Website .........................................................................5
3.1 Understanding the difference between Pages and Posts .............................................5
3.2 Writing Pages and Getting Some Structure ..............................................................6
3.2.1 Creating subordinate Pages ....................................................................................7
3.3 Creating and managing your categories. .................................................................. 7
3.4 Writing a post ....................................................................................................... 8
3.5 Managing Links ....................................................................................................... 9
3.5.1 Creating link categories......................................................................................... 9
3.5.2 Creating links....................................................................................................... 9
3.5.3 Target....................................................................................................................9
3.5.4. Link relationship (XFN) .....................................................................................10
3.5.3 Advanced .............................................................................................................10
3.6 How it looks. .........................................................................................................10
4. Adding and Editing ..…...................................................................11
4.1 Formatting text using the HTML editor .................................................................11
4.2 Formatting text using the rich editor ......................................................................11
4.3 Adding images to your posts ...................................................................................12
4.3.1 Adding a gallery of images ...................................................................................13
4.5 Adding video clips to your posts – Other approaches...............................................14
4.6 Setting posting and page options ............................................................................14
4.7 Saving & publishing your post or page ...................................................................15
4.8 Moderating ..........................................................................................................16
4.9 Publishing Content Created by other authors .......................................................16
5. Administration of WordPress ………………………………………..17
5.1 Manage Section ......................................................................................................17
5.2 Managing Users .....................................................................................................17
5.2.1 Remove Users .....................................................................................................18
5.2.2 Editing a user’s details ..........................................................................................18
5.2.3 Manage content created by a user ........................................................................18
5.3 Managing Options and Settings ...........................................................................19
5.4 Managing Presentation ..........................................................................................20
Recommended Links ……..…………………………………………20
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1. Introduction to WordPress
WordPress has come a long way from the beginning, when users had to know how
to write code, upload files etc if they wanted to run their own websites. If they
wanted to use a different theme, they’d have to use expensive and difficult to learn
packages like Dreamweaver which could require understanding of often difficult to
grasp languages and code such as HTML and CSS.
With WordPress you have the system to manage the content, and easy to download
and install attractive themes (site designs, often adding functionality to WordPress)
from sites such as http://wordpress.org. Many themes are free though there are also
commercial themes and theme clubs which you can Google for.
What WordPress does is to make possible the building of a semantically structured
(ie, with meaning) website or blog which makes the job of search engines easier. It
provides an excellent platform for building everything from simple blogs, to significant
news platforms.. The biggest limit, usually, is the imagination of the developers and
designers creating themes and plugins, and of the content writers.
1.2 Great Things about WordPress
1. Just about anybody can learn how to use it
2. It's stable and relatively bug free.
3. It's used by millions of people around the globe
4. It has a huge range of free and premium themes which can add functionality and
style to your site
5. It has a huge selection of plugins that can add new features and tricks to your site
6. As you learn more about WordPress you’ll learn a lot about what it can (and can’t)
do. But work within its relatively few limitations and you have a powerful and flexible
friend managing your website
7. It’s no longer only for blogs.
8. and it’s FREE!.
1.3 Getting Started
When your WordPress is first installed you won't have any content in your site
beyond what comes as default –which is a single category, a set of blog links you
probably don’t want, and a page and a post. All of this will need to be tidied up. So
the first thing to do is: LOG IN!
If you haven’t got a login link on your site, simply add /wp-admin to the root address
and you’ll arrive at the login page as above. First connect to your website – during
installation you will have set up a username and been emailed a password which will
have been auto-generated. Alternatively, if someone installed the site for you he or
she will have given you the login and password details. If you lose your details, you
can click on “Lost your password?” and a new password will be generated and emailed to you. You’ll need to change this to something more memorable. Enter your
details, select “Remember me” if your computer is secure and only used by you and
you’d like not to have to log in each time, and click on the Login button.
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2. The Dashboard
Now you're logged in, you'll arrive at the Dashboard which is the Admin section, or
“back end” of a WordPress website. You’ll see that it’s a screen that gives a range of
information about your website: On here you can quickly go to writing a post,
managing your site, your user profile, see which websites are linking to yours,
WordPress news, and see comments that are waiting for moderation (that is,
approval from admin before publishing).
There are ways to customise this page if, for example, you use WordPress in your
Intranet and want it to hold information from your company sites. Research on
Google will teach you how.
Depending on your user level you will have different rights once you're signed in –
the exact rights you will have are covered further on in this document under
'Managing Users'. We’ll assume for now though that you have full administration
rights. In fact, in most cases people first sign on as ‘admin’.
2.1 First thing to do – IMPORTANT!
Once you are in the Dashboard, (the ADMIN section) you will see, on the left hand
side of the screen, a list of various sections of the administration section. One of
them is Users, where you are able to add, modify and remove users. If you go there
now you will see your user profile. If you have installed WordPress yourself, and
received a password via email with the password, you will need to change the
password to something you can remember.
Do it now; change the password (at the bottom of the screen) update the
profile, then log out and back in again, to test it. If you make an error and cannot
login, click on “Lost your password?” and you’ll be sent another one. Repeat till you
can log in with the password of your choice, that you will remember.
Other functions in the Dashboard will be covered throughout this User Guide but it
could be a good idea to have a look at all the available options while you are here.
Click on headings to expand them, and take a quick look at each one. It will save you
a bit of time when you need to go there later, and perhaps help you to understand
this Guide a little more easily.
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3. Structuring Your Website
One of the most important things to get right with your website is the structure of its
content. This can make an incredible difference to the usability of the site – do it well
and users will be able to navigate your content easily and quickly. Fortunately, with
WordPress the navigation of your site will usually follow a fairly standard route.
There are a few rules which it will help you to follow:
1. Categorise and tag your content so that it's clear and easy to find without
resorting to the search tool. For example, if the main source of traffic to your site is
interested in your stories about mountaineering, then a category called
mountaineering, along with perhaps some relevant tags against posts such as ‘Gear’
and ‘Recommended climbs” could be the way to go.
2. Resist the temptation to clutter your website with logos, affiliate links and
advertising. There’s nothing at all wrong with links and logos, but a sea of them is
confusing and distracts people away from the main purpose of your site.
3. Edit your content carefully for spelling, grammar and suitable content. When you
publish – whether it's within a magazine or on the internet you take a certain level of
responsibility for the information you disseminate.
4. Plugins can greatly assist you in adding functionality to your site, but don’t add
too many of them. . Ensure that plugins will work with your version of WordPress and
this also applies to plugin upgrades. If upgrading causes errors, WordPress will stop
the plugin usually, but if this doesn’t happen,. you may need to delete the plugin.
5. The front page of your site should contain at least some information about what
you are and what you do – this can help not only site visitors to know what it is you're
there for, but will also help search engines to find the content on your website.
To help you in this task, this document will take you through the steps in the creation
of a website. You can use the Contents Table if you wish to skip a section. The
website initially will be based around the default theme. Later on we’ll go into
changing the look and feel of your site using Themes which can dramatically change
your site without you having to do anything more than a quick install.
3.1 Understanding the difference between pages and posts
Before we start laying out your site, it’s important to have a clear understanding of
the difference between pages and posts:
Pages are usually those which have a static purpose in life. For example, an about
page, or contact forms. They do not usually contain information about news items,
for example, which are frequently added to the site. Pages are generally defined so
that they are always accessible from the front page.Some people build entire sites
with just Pages – this is especially the case for sites with little need for dynamic
content and is very popular with small businesses. Posts usually contain
semantically and chronographically arranged information – for example, news
reports, event results, and of course blog entries! The semantic structure is defined
by categories and tags, and whilst making it easy for people to navigate your site will
also help search engines to understand the content of your site and so improve the
relevance of search results.
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3.2 Writing Pages and Getting Some Structure
If you’re just playing, it’s easy to simply dive in and play around, but if you’re doing
this work for a business purpose you’ll need to consider, using pen and paper, how
to structure your static pages.
You will want the static content, the pages, to contain the following items names like
these – About |Products and Services|Contact Us|. The Products and Services page
may have some ‘child’ or subpages so they should be subordinate to the Products
and Services Pages – we’ll cover that shortly.
So – it’s already time to write your first page! Click on Write and then on the Page
tab. If you need help with the editor and advance options read the section
Adding and Editing Content for more information. You then just need to give the
page a title of About and write some content beneath it in the editor window.
You’ll see that the editor window is actually rather like a simple version of Word, or
the editor in online e-mail systems like Hotmail. Type in the title of your page, in this
case ‘About’ and a little content about your website and why it’s there.
For now don’t worry too much about getting clever with your text formatting, adding
images and files and so on – we’ll cover the editor in much more depth later on.
Once you’ve completed your About page, press the Publish button to the right but
while you’re writing and before you press Publish you can always click on Preview
this Page to see how it’s looking. You can Save at any point without publishing, and
that will create a draft of the page if it hasn’t yet been published. Once it's confirmed
that the page has been saved, click on the name of the site (at the top of the screen)
to see the result of your work:
You can see that the new About page has appeared in the right, but there are now
two of them! But don't worry – that's because the default installation of WordPress
includes an About page that you now need to delete. And it’s not difficult to do. First
you need to go back to Site Admin (in the right hand column, under Meta), then
click on Manage, then the Pages tab: In this case, you’ll need to delete the earlier
page – you don’t need it. So select the check box next to the About Page you want
to delete (the older one) and press the Delete button. Be careful though – there’s
no confirmation and it’ll disappear for good. If you want it back, you’ll have to
re-create the page.
If you go back to your website you’ll now see just the one About page. Click on it and
you’ll see the page you just created.
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