Getting Started With WordPress: Administration Quick Tour

WordPress is remarkably easy to use and extremely flexible—once you know what you’re doing. Like any software application, if you’re completely new to it, it can be a bit daunting out-of-the-box. WordPress offers excellent documentation at the WordPress Codex, but finding your way around can be overwhelming.

In this article, I’ll give you a quick tour of the WordPress Administration, along with quick links to the relevant documentation.

Note: If you haven’t already installed WordPress, you’ll find the instructions in Installing WordPress. I recommend installing WordPress in its own directory; see Giving WordPress Its Own Directory.

For my recommended settings for a new WordPress installation, see Getting Started With WordPress: Basic Settings.

Dashboard

When you first login to your WordPress Administration, you’ll land on the Dashboard panel. There’s plenty of useful information here, but nothing to edit. Check here periodically, though, to keep up with new WordPress releases, news, and the latest activity on your blog.

Write

You can override global settings in this panel (such as turning off comments for a specific post), but most of the time the only settings you’ll change here are for the post categories or post status. Note that you can add new categories here; you don’t have to go to the Manage Categories subpanel.

For more about posting, see Writing a Post.

Hey! While you’re on the Write panel, scroll down to the bottom of the page and drag Press It – [Your Blog Name] to your browser’s toolbar to create a posting shortcut.

Manage

You’ll manage your posts, pages, categories, comments, and files from this area.

You’ll want to set up a few pages right away. Every blog should have an About page, providing basic information about your site. You’ll probably want a page for one or more of the following, too: Archives, Links, Privacy Policy, Sitemap. For complete instructions on setting up pages, see Creating Individual Pages.

You can add category descriptions in the Categories subpanel. By default, the descriptions will appear when the mouse hovers over the category name. You can also nest categories by giving subcategories a parent in the Category parent popup menu. See Manage Categories subpanel.

You shouldn’t need to worry about the other subpanels here until you have comments to moderate. When the time comes, see Manage Comments subpanel and Awaiting Moderation subpanel.

You can edit files here, but I’d recommend using a separate editor for this. See Manage Files SubPanel.

Links

On the Add a link subpanel, you’ll see three sections: Basics, Link Relationship, and Advanced. I only work with the Basics section, which is pretty self-explanatory. The Advanced section lets you set a target (for example, to open the link in a new page). I recommend opening all links in new pages, even though it’s considered poor practice. Instead of setting this here, though, install the External Links plugin by Denis de Bernardy, which automatically adds the necessary tags to all of your links, not just the links you create here.

While you’re on the Add a link subpanel, scroll down to the bottom of the page and drag Link This to your browser’s toolbar to create a shortcut for adding a link to the site currently displayed in your browser .

You’ll set up link categories on the Link Categories subpanel. There are several options here and which ones you use are a matter of personal preference.

If you’re setting up a new WordPress blog, but already have a list of links in a newsreader or another blog system, you may be able to import them in the Import Links subpanel. Export your links as an OPML file, then import them here. You can then edit or delete links in the Manage Links subpanel.

For more information about working with links, see Links Manager.

Presentation

You’ll manage your themes here. In addition to choosing a theme, you can edit the files in the Theme Editor subpanel, though I’d recommend using a separate application for editing. If your theme offers custom user options, you may find an additional subpanel when that theme is selected. If it supports widgets, you’ll also see a Sidebar Widgets subpanel.

If you want to see an excellent example of a customizable theme with widget support, install the October Special theme by Derek Punsalan. It’s the theme I’m currently using on Upstart Blogger.

For more information on managing themes, see Using Themes.

Plugins

You’ll find a list of installed plugins on the Plugin Management subpanel. To install a plugin, just upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory. Then find it in your list of plugins and click the Activate plugin.

I’ve recommended some plugins almost every blogger will want to have in 25 Steps to Launching Your Blog and Making $100+ A Month in 30 Days. You’ll find more resources in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Users

Go to the Your Profile subpanel and enter your name, nickname, and contact information. Be sure to select a name in the Display name publicly as popup menu. This is the name that will be displayed as the author of your posts.

You may also want to change the password automatically created for you when you installed WordPress. If you want to, you can add some biographical information in the About yourself field. There’s also an option to override the global visual rich editor settings (see Getting Started With WordPress: Basic Settings).

If there will be other users besides yourself, you’ll manage them from the Authors and Users subpanel. Most blogs are written by a single user, so I won’t go into detail here. For more information, see Authors and Users subpanel.

Options

You’ll manage general settings for your blog here, as well as settings for Writing (posting), Reading (publishing and syndicating), Discussion (comments), Permalinks (URI structure), and other Miscellaneous settings. Some plugins also add subpanels to the Options panel.

For more information, see my Getting Started With WordPress: Basic Settings, or the WordPress Codex pages covering the Options panel: General Options subpanel, Writing Options subpanel, Reading Options subpanel, Discussion Options subpanel, Permalinks Options subpanel, and Miscellaneous Options subpanel.

Import

If you’re moving from another blogging system, you can import your posts and comments from this panel. See Importing from Other Blogging Systems Into WordPress.

RobertRobert Ellis was the founder of Upstart Blogger. He now blogs (and continues to design themes) at Futurosity.