Welcome to the WordPress Dashboard, This is the front page of your online book. It is time to explore the WordPress.
Let’s walk through the WordPress options and links one by one. Before that We need to take a look at the default WordPress Dashboard which will be example.com/wp-admin
Replace example.com with your domain name and login, and You are most welcome to your WordPress Dashboard.
The Dashboard looks clean and organized and has all the options that needed by most of the users.
- Customize Your site or change the theme.
- Do Write your first post, create a page or view your site.
- What you have till now with Your WordPress Version and Theme name.
- Create a Draft for writing on any topic in future.
- Go through the Recent Activities
- WordPress Community News and Updates.
You can easily customize it looks by clicking screen option at the top of right side of the dashboard.
Screen options are most helpful if you want only the necessary options and fields on a post, page or even on WP-admin Dashboard.
You can fix the position of the box to the place of your choice. Just click on top of the box and drag to the other location.
A walk through WordPress Options
WordPress offers a variety of options to give you everything for your needs to build your pixel perfect site. Let’s check them one by one…
At the Dashboard, We have 2 sidebars. First at the top and second at the left side. These two sidebars contain all the options, you can easily manage it.
The top sidebar contains mostly quick action you will most of the time. The left sidebar gives you the ability to explore more various options and settings seamlessly.
Let’s first go with the top sidebar.
- WordPress Logo– Hovering on the logo will give you the options to know about your WordPress version, Official site link, Documentations, Support forums and Feedback link.
- Home Icon with Site Title– It gives you a quick ‘visit site’ link to go the frontend of your site.
- Chat or Message icon– How many comments are there pending approval.
- Add icon with ‘New’ – Provide you a quick link to add various contents like Post, Pages, media, users.
These are default top sidebar Quick links and option of backend dashboard. You will see additional settings when you will install Plugins or themes. :}
Time to Explore Left Sidebar of WordPress.
The top panel generally for quick reference links and doesn’t contain the ability to save any changes.
Left sidebar of WP-admin gives you the ability to change your setting as per your preference. Let’s see what those options and settings are.
- Dashboard:- This option contains links to your default wp-admin page and ‘Updates’ page. Updates page contains all the plugins and themes information which is out of date and update is required.
- Posts:- The options include options to see all your post, add a new post, show categories, and tags. The means You can create a post, can create categories and tags by following the appropriate link under POSTS option.
- Media:- Media options contain your images, videos, audios, and other files. You can go to the Library to see your existing files or “Add new” to add a file.
- Pages:- See all your pages or create a new page by clicking “Add new”
- Comments:- A complete Overview of all comments maid till now. Comments are filtered with Pending, Approved, Spam and Trash.
- Appearance:- Most needed option includes Theme Option, Customize, Widgets, Menu, Header, and editor.
- Plugins:- See Deafult or existing plugins or can add a plugin. The editor option gives you the ability to edit your theme file (Not recommended). Use FTP or sFTP.
- Users: – Click All users to see all the users or can click “add new” to add a new user. Click o “Yur profile” to edit your profile.
- Tools:- You can import or Export your contents to WordPress using a .xml file.
- Settings:- The most important option includes General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, and Permalinks.
- General Settings- It gives you the ability to change your Default WordPress installation settings like site title, description, and email. You can change your Site and WordPress address(URL) (need to be careful).
- Writing Settings- Provides you the ability to set default WordPress category and Post format. You will also see an option to Post via email (not recommended).
- Reading Settings- It gives you the choice of displaying your post or custom page and how they will appear on your front-page and home. There is also an unchecked option to hide your site from search engine.
- Discussion- This will gives you to control over comments, how they will appear on a post or a page. You can restrict comments for logged users or can disable commenting after a particular time.
- Media- You can manage your image setting and cropping and can organize it as you want. Uncheck to stop cropping the images.
- Permalinks- The most important setting option. This gives you the ability to show your posts using different structures. The recommended option is “Post name” but you can go with of your choice. It also includes optional settings to rename your category and tags links.
So, These are all default options and you will see more options under a list or additionally in left panel depend on the theme and plugin you have installed and activated.
Go and Try it yourself.