As your WordPress software is installing, one of the things they ask you to do is pick your username & password so you can reach the backend where you build the site. Or, if I’m building your site, I can add you later. Then I can make you an admin so you can get to the backend. I will of course be adding a few pages to get you going. But if down the road you decided to add more or remove any you do so from here.
In fact, unless you decide to have a community where you allow people to join & login from the front end, you do everything from back here. So if you ever visit your website & don’t see a way to login don’t despair. Simply add /login/, /admin/, or /wp-login. php at the end of your site’s URL to the address bar & you’ll reach the login page.
One of the first things they try to get you to do is choose a theme. They have themes for biz sites, restaurants, construction companies, real estate agents, attorneys, etc. I’ve seen at least one for a pre-school. I’ve seen a couple for vets. That was just on WordPress’s site. There’s no telling what’s floating around the net – some free & some you have to pay for. I found a very nice crochet theme somewhere. Keep in mind that some of these themes need their own plugins to look the way they do. So I’d upload & install them first to check before going plugin shopping.
Depending on your theme – you may have to add several pages or posts before it looks like it should. I had to do so here. Another theme’s featured content rotator required 8 posts with featured images. But once you’ve installed & activated it, installed & activated the plugins & made it look like it should then you can go plugin shopping. You could add a plugin & turn your site into a community. You could add forums. You could add an events calendar with RSVP capabilities. They also have various shops if you’d like to sell some products.
Notice the more plugins you have the longer the list to the left will get. Not only does the software have settings but so do many of the plugins. You’re going to want to tweak the software’s first. Then you’re going to want to add one plugin at a time & tweak & test their settings before adding another one. That way if you end up with a bug – you know which one did it. You can simply deactivate & delete it. Find a better one or do without whatever feature it offered.
After all this plus adding some blog categories then it’s all about adding web pages & blog posts. For those they have an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor. Below is a screen shot.
You can either start typing. Or you can click on the + sign & add a block. It auto adds the URL slug. If it’s a blog post you can choose what category to post it in. You can add tags. You can add a featured image. And when you’re done you can click on publish & it’ll be live within a few seconds.
No more download, editing & reuploading html web pages. You click on 3 dots next to the post like in the first picture & click on edit or delete. If you edit then you simply click on update so the changes will show on the page. If you delete it’ll go to the trash folder. You can also delete things in the trash folder to get them completely off your site.
As you’re posting pages & posts any media you post on them shows up under the media link. You can easily post images & even galleries via blocks. If you’re paying for hosting, you can also upload video & audio files & easily link to them or link to files hosted elsewhere like YouTube. If you’re not paying for hosting, you can only link to files hosted elsewhere.
If you have a contact form or use polls & surveys you can check for feedback under feedback. The contact form is also emailed to you. I don’t know about the polls & surveys. I haven’t used either one in a while.
If you choose to allow it people can comment on your pages &/or posts. I don’t allow it on pages but I do on posts. Out of the box it allows people to post comments & has it set so only one has to be approved before people can then post freely. I’ve changed this setting. Since it’s my biz site I want to moderate everything before it gets posted.
If you decide to go it alone there are help files all over the place. You can see in the 2nd pic the big green circle with the question mark in it. That’s the help for here. Plus, there’s always YouTube vids.
