How to use WordPress

To keep up with the times, you too have decided to open a website dedicated to your business. Having no experience on the subject, you turned to professionals in the sector who, however, gave you a quote that you considered too high, also considering that, in the future, you will have to deal with the publication of new content yourself. For these reasons, you have decided to roll up your sleeves and use your free time to build your own website with WordPress.

Excellent choice, no doubt about it! WordPress is a free CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create websites and manage their contents with ease. It is used not only by “experts” but also by those who do not know any programming language but have the need to build an Internet site from scratch. Today, WordPress is one of the most used platforms in this area and, consequently, the one with the most support, assistance and development. It can be implemented in a few clicks and supports add-ons of all kinds and for every need that, both free and paid, allow you to model a site, and its features, according to your needs.

If you can’t wait to learn more and start building your website, make yourself comfortable, take a few minutes of free time and let me explain how to use WordPress. By reading the next paragraphs carefully, you will find all the information you need to publish online content, choose/modify the graphic appearance of your site and install new plugins to increase the functionality available to you. All that remains for me is to wish you good reading and, above all, happy learning!

Index

• Getting started on WordPress
• Create pages and articles
• Change the look and feel
• Install new plugins
• User settings and management

Getting started on WordPress

Before going into the details of this guide and explaining how to use WordPress, you must know that to use the famous CMS you must have purchased a hosting service, have installed WordPress locally or have chosen one of the services that allow you to create websites with WordPress. ready to use without spending a cent.

If you are already ready to use WordPress and you simply want to understand how to move between its features, all you have to do is continue reading this guide. If not, I leave you to my in-depth guides to choose the solution that best suits your needs.

• Best hosting for WordPress
• How to install WordPress on Aruba
• How to create a site with WordPress
• How to install WordPress locally

If you are a beginner and have never had anything to do with WordPress so far, my advice is to rely on a service like Altervista, which offers both the webspace (hosting) and the domain for free, with a ready-to-use WordPress package. use. By doing so, you will be able to carry out all the tests you want without worrying about creating “damage”.

After you have made your choice and completed the WordPress installation, you are ready to start using the famous CMS. If your site is already online, connect to its main page, locate the Login button and log in with your login credentials. If the graphic theme of your site does not include the Login button, to access you will need to connect to the page www.nomesito.it/wp-login.php.

By entering your credentials in the fields Username or e-mail address and password and pressing the button Login, will open a new page, called Board of WordPress (or dashboard ), where you can see the latest news of WordPress, use some shortcuts and verify the latest activity on your site. By clicking on one of the options visible in the sidebar on the left, you can access the WordPress features.

• Dashboard: in addition to the information indicated above, in this section, you can view any new updates to WordPress, plugins, themes and translations.
• Articles: to create new articles to publish on your site. It also allows you to manage categories and tags.
• Media: it is the archive that collects all the files (images, text documents, audio files, etc.) that are uploaded to the site.
• Pages: to create the pages of your site.
• Comments: it is the section in which all the comments that readers post in the comments space of articles and pages are collected. The site administrator can choose to approve, trash or mark each individual comment as spam.
• Appearance: it is the section that allows you to choose the graphic aspect of the site (by installing new graphic themes), to make changes and to manage the menus.
• Plugins: to install new tools that allow you to increase the functionality of WordPress. There are plugins of all kinds and for all needs, both free and paid.
• Users: this is the section in which to manage users registered on the site, change their role (and therefore permissions) and to add new users manually.
• Tools: to access basic WordPress features, such as importing or exporting files and deleting users’ personal data.
• Settings: to set the site title and manage general WordPress settings, such as language, time zone, default categories and much more.

As I will show you in the next few paragraphs, installing new plugins may add new entries in the left sidebar.

Create pages and articles

One of the fundamental points for the success of a site is the creation and publication of new content. On WordPress this operation (which is usually daily) takes place through the creation of pages and articles.

Before giving you the walkthrough for posting new content, it’s helpful to make a distinction between pages and articles.

• Pages: they are used to contain static information that will remain unchanged over time, such as pages about who we are, where we are, our history, They can be primary pages (called Parent pages ) or sub-pages, inserted in a hierarchical order. The Biography page of this blog, in which I write my story, is indeed a page.
• Articles: these are the posts that make up a site, that is, those informative contents that have a publication date and a specific topic ( Categories ). What you are reading is a WordPress article.

Now that you understand the difference between WordPress pages and posts, you can move on to creating and publishing your content.

To create a new page, click on the Pages item in the left side menu and press the Add page button. In the new screen that appears, type the title of your page in the Enter title here field and enter its content in the text field at the center of the page.

Using the page Attributes box, you can choose the template to attribute to the created page (if required by the graphic theme installed) and set its order, useful for any positioning in the menus of your site. Furthermore, through the Parent page drop-down menu, you can set the degree of the page created: by choosing the Base page (set by default) the page created will be a parent page, while to set a sub-page you must select the one that must be parent page.

Once the creation of your page is complete, locate the Publish box and click the Save draft button to save the page without publishing it, otherwise press the Publish button. By clicking on the Pages option in the sidebar on the left, you can access the list of all the pages created (both those published and saved in draft) and, pausing with the mouse pointer on the title of the page of your interest, you can proceed with its modification ( Edit ), its quick modification ( Quick Edit ) or its cancellation ( Trash ).

The procedure for creating and publishing an article is almost similar to what has just been described for the pages. Then click on the item Articles in the sidebar on the left, press the Add article button and enter the title in the field Enter the title here. Then proceed with the writing of your article, then locate the Featured image box and click on the Set featured image option to upload an image or choose one already present in the Media archive to use as a preview image of the article.

Also, if you wish, you can enter a short description of your article in the Summary field. This description (for the more experienced known as meta description ) will be the visible content under the title of the article in the search engine results. If you don’t enter any description in the Summary field, WordPress will automatically use the first words of your article as the meta description.

Finally, locate the Category box and put the checkmark next to the category to which the article belongs. The categories are nothing more than containers that collect the articles of the same topic: to create new categories click on the Add a new category item in the Category box indicated above, otherwise click on the Articles and Categories options in the left sidebar.

In the new open page, enter the name of the category in the Name field, indicate any parent category using the drop-down menu under the Parent Category item, enter the description in the appropriate field and press the Add a new category button.

Once the creation of your content is complete, press the Publish button to immediately publish the article or the Save draft button to save the changes made and postpone the publication. Also in this case, to modify or delete an article, click on the Articles item, pause with the mouse pointer on the title of the article of your interest and select one of the items among Edit, Quick Edit (to quickly change the title or the category) and Trash that appear on the screen.

In the creation of new pages and new articles, you can customize the written content using the toolbar visible between the field Enter the title here and the text field dedicated to the content of the page/article. Then choose the tool that best suits your needs to customize the page. For example, by pressing the B icon you can insert bold, by clicking on the chain icon you can add a link, while by choosing the Add media option you can upload an image from your computer or choose one already available in the Media archive and insert it into your page or article.

Change the look and feel

Changing the graphic appearance is an operation that allows both to completely change the graphics of your site and to modify individual elements, such as menus or widgets  (the boxes, usually displayed in the sidebar of the site that may contain links to social networks, tag lists, counters, information from third-party sites and more).

To choose a new graphic theme to install for free on your website, click on the Appearance item in the left sidebar and click on the Add new theme button. Then choose the theme you prefer from those available in the WordPress library, click on it and press the Install button. If you want to apply it to your website right away, click the Activate button as well.

To start customizing the installed theme and, therefore, the look and feel of your website, click on the Appearance and Customize items. If, on the other hand, you want to create a new menu and make it visible on your pages, select the Appearance and Menu options and, in the new open page, click on the item Create a new menu. Then enter the name in the Menu name field and press the Create menu button.

Now, choose the items that will make up your menu by placing the checkmark next to the pages, articles or categories you want to insert in the newly created menu, then specify the position by placing the checkmark next to one of the positions visible in the Menu Settings section, next to the Display Position option and presses the Save menu button.

You should know that, depending on how the graphic theme installed on your site is built, you could also manage the position of the menus through the Widget section. Then click on the Appearance and Widget options, locate the Navigation menu item in the list of available widgets and drag the box in question into one of the boxes visible on the right (which vary according to the theme installed and identify the usable positions of your website). Then select the menu of your interest through the drop-down menu  Select the menu, enter the title in the appropriate field and press the Save button.

The procedure described above for the Navigation Menu widget also applies to the other widgets. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, widgets are elements that allow you to add visual options to your website.

Let’s take a practical example to better understand: if you need to insert an image in a site position (such as the right sidebar), with the Image widget you can easily place the image on your site without writing a line of HTML code. It will be useful to know that installing new plugins may also add new widgets related to the installed plugin.

Install new plugins

If the native WordPress functions don’t completely meet your needs, you can install new plugins and implement new features. It is a simple procedure: all you have to do is understand the tool you need, look for a plugin that suits your needs and install it from the Plugins section.

To understand better, let’s take a practical example. If you need to insert a contact form on your website and you do not know any plugin suitable for your needs, first of all I suggest you connect to the main page of Google and write ” WordPress plugin contact form ” in the search bar present in the center of the page. By doing so, you will be able to know the name of some plugins to create a contact form, read their ratings and characteristics and choose the one that best suits your needs.

Alternatively, go to the Board of WordPress, click on the item Plugins present in the left sidebar and presses the button Add New this up. In the new open page, write the keyword of the plugin you are looking for (if you already know the name of the plugin that suits you, enter its name) in the Searching plugin in progress field and wait for the results of your search.

Once you have identified the plugin of your interest, click on the Install now button, wait for the installation to be completed and press the Activate button to activate it on your website. If, on the other hand, you have purchased a paid plugin and it is present on your computer in ZIP format, click on the  Plugin and Add new items, press the Upload plugin button at the top and, in the new open page, click on the Choose file button to load the plugin from your computer.

After installing a plugin, select the Plugin item from the left sidebar to view the list of all the plugins installed on your site and click on one of the available options: Activate to activate and use the plugin; Deactivate to deactivate the plugin without deleting it; Delete to delete the plugin from WordPress and Settings to access the plugin settings. The latter item may not always be present. If so, it means that the plugin does not need any further action from the user or, if not, that the plugin settings are accessible from another section (usually Settings, Tools or directly in the sidebar on the left).

In the Plugins section, you can also locate a plugin by accessing the Recommended, Popular, Recommended and Favorite categories which lists a list of popular plugins recommended by the WordPress community. In this regard, below you will find a list of plugins that might be right for you.

• Jetpack: can be considered an all-in-one plugin as it allows you to take advantage of numerous features, such as the ability to view site statistics, implement related articles, prevent spam and much more. Registration is required.
• Google XML Sitemaps: one of the best tools to automatically generate a sitemap of your WordPress site and submit it to search engines.
• Contact Form 7: to create contact forms by customizing every aspect.
• MailPoet: allows you to create a newsletter, using both ready-to-use templates and creating new ones from scratch. Furthermore, it allows you to manage subscribed users, create lists and schedule the sending of the newsletter. All within your site. In this regard, my guide on how to create newsletters may be useful.
• Broken Link Checker: On sites consisting of numerous pages and articles, a tool that continually scans your website for broken links is useful.
• Google Analytics by MonsterInsights: the useful tool for those who need to monitor the progress of their website but want to avoid having to deal with the PHP code of WordPress. With this plugin you can connect your site with Google Analytics and view statistics, such as daily accesses, pages viewed, active users, etc.
• WP Super Cache: is a plugin that allows you to create a cached copy of the pages of a site in order to increase the loading speed.

User settings and management

As mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this guide, by accessing the WordPress settings it is possible to set some information, such as  Site title, Motto, Email address,  Site language,  Time zone and much more. In addition, by clicking on the Setting item and choosing one of the available options among Read, Discussion, Write and Media, you can access more WordPress-specific options, such as the default setting for articles or standard image sizes.

If you’re already worrying about the work to be done, know that all of these settings are most likely already set right by default. However, I recommend that you take a quick look, check that all the options are set according to your needs and make the changes you think are most useful.

Finally, let me also tell you how to manage WordPress users. First, you need to figure out if your website offers any additional functionality for subscribed users. If not, I advise you to block registrations by accessing the Settings and General sections and removing the checkmark from the option  Anyone can register.

You can still add new users manually by clicking on the Users item in the left sidebar and pressing the Add user button. On the page for adding a new user, in addition to his personal data, you must know that you can also set his role, choosing one of the options between  Subscriber (has read-only permissions), Contributor, Author, Publisher and Administrator (I suggest you to make administrators only trustworthy and competent people). If you have collaborators who help you with publishing content on your website, you can choose one of the roles among Contributor, Author and Publisher who differ from each other for a few writing permissions, such as the ability to delete and modify the contents of other users (Publisher).