Options and Menus Available in a WordPress Blog
To login into your blog for the first time you will need to make sure you have completed the final step of the WordPress installation. This is outlined in my guide on The Final Steps of the WordPress Setup Process.
Now that you have your WordPress blog setup, let’s take a look at some of the options available to you.
As I mentioned in a previous article I think that WordPress is definitely the way to go if you plan to get serious about your blogging because it gives you a lot of control over your website.
Now whether you choose to actually focus on becoming an avid blogger or decide to use WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System) the options will still apply. So let’s take a look at what we can do with WordPress.
The first thing you will need to do is login to your blog for the first time. To do this go to your domain (www.yoursitename.com) and check on the front page of your blog for a “Meta” section that will provide you with a login link.
This can also be done by typing your domain name followed by “WP-Admin”.
http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin
Both of these options will bring you to the admin login screen of your blog. If you do not have the option available to you when you go to your web address it may because you have not fully configured your blog. If this is the case check my article on using Dreamhost one-click installs for the details on fully configuring your blog.
Now that you are at the admin screen, login with the username and password you created, or using the admin password provided in the final step of the setup process.
Now that you are logged in we can checkout all the options available to you through WordPress.
The screen you are taken to by default when you login is known as your WordPress “Dashboard”. From the dashboard you can see a lot of good information.
The main area you will notice is the “Right Now” section in orange, which allows you to write a new post or page for your site. We will cover this in more detail in “How to Write Your First Money Making Post”.
Down below this you will notice an area that says “You Have”, which keeps track of all the Posts, Pages, Categories, and Tags located on your website.
At the very top of your screen you will notice two fields of information. The first one on the left has links to Write, Manage, Design and Comments. The section on the right has links for Settings, Plugins, and Users.
We will look at the options on the left first. The options on the left have four main sections you will use regularly.
WRITE
The Write section allows you to create new posts and pages for your site. When you click on the Write link it will take you to a page where you can create a page, post or link for your site. I will discuss the differences in more detail in my article on writing your first post.
MANAGE
The Manage link takes you to a screen that allows you to edit various sections of the website. From this screen you can edit existing pages or posts. You can also modify links, categories and tags on your site. You also have options for Link Categories, a Media Library, and the ability to Import and Export data from your blog.
The Import feature allows you to import posts from an existing blog if you have moved over from a blogger blog to WordPress. The Export feature allows you to export a backup of your WordPress database, which allows you to save all the data in your blog including comments people have left on articles.
This is a very handy feature to make a note of. I recommend doing daily or weekly backups of your blog to safe guard your hard work.
DESIGN
The third option we are going to look at is the Design category. If you click on the Design link you will be taken to a screen that has three options. The options are Themes, Widgets and Theme Editor.
The Themes link will bring you to a screen where you can change the look and feel of your blog by applying a new theme. Themes are very flexible and allow you to have a lot of customization over your blog. When you change your theme only the look and feel of the blog changes, not your data. This way you can try out as many different themes as you like without having to worry about losing information.
You can also upload new themes to your hosting to use with your blog. I will cover this in a future guide on FTP (File Transfer Protocol). For now let’s focus on learning about your new blog.
The next link is the Widgets section. Widgets are customizable programs that provide certain functionality to your blog. A Widget can be as simple as a menu or calendar or as advanced as a Polling system that allows users to cast votes.
I will cover Widget in detail in future guides. For now, there are three things you should know about Widgets.
01. Your theme must be Widget enabled to make use of Widgets. Most new themes are.
02. When you add a widget your default sidebar options disappear because they are making room for the Widgets. Make a mental note of what is on your sidebar by default and re-add those options as Widgets. Now you have full control over the side panel.
03. Random HTML code can be run in the “TEXT” Widget. This enables you to add custom Widgets from places like Google Gadgets, Adsense, Amazon Associates, EntreCard, etc.
The last link is the Theme Editor section. The Theme Editor gives you direct access to your themes PHP & CSS code. This will become useful down the road as you learn more about blogging and modifying themes to suit your needs.
This may sound advanced now. To be honest I knew nothing about code or PHP until I started blogging. Let me just say, it is very easy to pickup. There are many guides out there to help you. And forums are another great source of help when working with the Theme Editor.
COMMENTS
The last section at the top of your blog is the Comments section. This is where comments on your blog can be moderated.
Whenever you receive a comment on a post you will see an orange box with a number appear next to this link. The number lets you know how many comments you have awaiting moderation.
You have three main options for moderating comments, Approve, Delete, and Spam. Approve marks the comment as ok to post on the blog. Delete will remove the comment without anyone else having seen it. Spam flags the comment for review by your spam filter. The spam filter will learn various patterns over time to make it more useful in blocking spam from your blog.
If you approve a user’s comment, any future comments from that user will automatically be posted to your blog. This can sometimes lead to spam so it’s a good idea to check your comments section once a day.
Moving On…
Ok. Now that you have a good understanding of the main navigation menus in WordPress let’s move on to the options on the top right-hand portion of the screen.
These are the Settings, Plugins, and Users options.
These settings are also very handy to know because they control other important functions of your blog.
SETTINGS
The settings link on your blog contains several sub categories. They are:
- General
- Writing
- Reading
- Discussion
- Privacy
- Permalinks
- Miscellaneous
Lets take a brief look at each one and what you need to know about each section.
General
Settings as you would probably guess controls all the main global settings for your blog. When you click on the settings link you are taken to a screen with the following options:
- Blog Title
- Tag Line
- WordPress Address
- Blog Address
- E-mail Address
- Membership
- New User Default Role
- Timezone
- Date Format
- Time Format
- Week Starts On
The main options to make a note of here are Blog Title, Tag Line, WordPress Address, Blog Address, and E-mail Address.
The Blog Title is the name of your blog. This should be set to the Title you entered in the final steps of the WordPress setup. You can change it here if you want. Usually you would want this to remain the same, but incase you spelled the name wrong or want to add or remove spaces this is where you would do it.
The tag line is kind of like the sales pitch for your blog. My tag line for Make Money Life is “A beginners guide to making money online”. It is good to put some thought into your Tag Line because it will show up in the Title of your site in search results. This way you can get a few more keywords into your title.
The WordPress Address and Blog Address is how you want your domain address to show up when people type it in. This is handled through a modification WordPress makes to the htaccess file on your site.
The two common variations would be:
mydomainname.com
Or
www.mydomainname.com
The other option to make a note of here is the E-mail Address setting. This is pretty much the default address for your site. It does not need to be the email address that you post on your site though.
For mine I will usually create an admin email address for each site and use it here. This can be really handy if you use the email provided by your hosting and set it to forward to the email address you normally use. For more information on how to do that, you can checkout my article on “How to Setup a Professional Looking Email for your Domain”.
Writing
The Writing section lets you specify all the global settings that pertain to writing posts for your blog. Everything in here is set well by default.
The one setting to make a note of is “Size of the post box”. This is the setting that controls how large the blog editor window appears in WordPress. By default this is set to 10, which I find just a little too small for my tastes.
I would recommend setting this options to 25 lines or larger. If you want to see the difference then write a test post with the option default of 10 lines. Then go back and change it to 25 lines and see if it feels better for your work style.
Reading
The Reading link gives you some good options to manage the display of your articles on your blog. The first option is “Front page displays”, which allows you to select if you would like a static front page for your site or your latest post to be displayed so the front page always has fresh content.
Depending on how you are setting up your site and the type of content you will be providing this can vary. Some of my sites utilize the latest posts option and some use a static page. Most blogs use the latest posts options as their default.
The next two options control how many posts are displayed on your front page as well as your RSS feed. (Syndication)
- Blog pages show at most
- Syndication feeds show the most recent
By default these are both set to 10. This is fine for starting out. As your blog grows, and you make various monetization and SEO choices you may decide to change these options so make a mental note of where they are.
For the “For each article in a feed, show” option I would leave it set to its default of “Full Text”. It is considered bad netiquette to offer only partial posts in your feed so I would recommend leaving this set to the default.
The “Encoding for pages and feeds” option can be left as is, so now let’s take a look at “Discussion”.
Discussion
All the options are set well in this category to begin with. Just take a look at the page so you have an idea of what options are offered here. If you find yourself looking for any of these settings in the future you will know where to find them.
Privacy
This option controls your blogs visibility. By default this will be set to:
I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers.
This is exactly what you want. Since the whole point of our blog is to eventually become a money making website, we want all the exposure we can get.
Permalinks
The Permalinks section has a useful feature that lets you change how permalinks are displayed. A permalink is the address that shows up in the address bar of your browser.
This is useful because it can provide a descriptive link to your readers and anyone linking to the site. This is also good because it can be setup to provide excellent SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your site.
We will cover the SEO benefits in detail in a later guide so for now make a note of where this is located.
Miscellaneous
The Miscellaneous section is another section where the default settings are fine. This mainly controls where the files you upload through WordPress are stored and their default sizes.
I very rarely need to change anything in here, so it’s just good to know where to find this stuff if you need to.
Those are all the sub categories of the Settings link in the top right. The next important section to be aware of is the Plugins section.
Plugins
The Plugins screen is the area of your blog that allows you to activate and deactivate plugins. Plugins are very useful programs people create for WordPress that add additional functionality to your blog.
By default you will have several plugins installed. These display the plugin name, which will take you to the author’s website when you click on it. It also displays a brief description of the plugin and what it does. To the far right you will see an Activate / Deactivate link that allows you to turn plugins on or off.
One of the great benefits of WordPress is you can download additional plugins to add even more functionality to an already great program. We will cover this in more detail in a future guide.
The other subcategory to Plugins is the plugin editor. This is very similar to the theme editor in that it allows you to modify the PHP code and change the way plugins function. As a beginner you won’t have much need for this so we will cover it at a later time.
Users
The last section at the top is the users section. This section allows you to add users to your blog if you are working with friends or multiple authors.
For more information on the Users section checkout my guide titled “The Final Steps of the WordPress Setup Process”, which walks you through adding a user account to your blog.
Overview… Phew!
So now you should have a solid understanding of all the major options and settings within your WordPress blog. If you were able to make it through this whole article you deserve a cookie (or a beer).
I know this one got a little long, but I wanted to cover all the major functions that make WordPress such a flexible content management system.
Now that you are a WordPress Pro let’s put what we have learned into practice and “Write Your First Money Making Post”.
Tags: blog, Blogging, configure, guide, make money, money, options, setup, tutorial, wordpress