At PageMaster we want you be successful in your online marketing. We create websites and provide you training to see you succeed. This post is part of our series from our Site Training Workbook.
The WordPress Dashboard will become very familiar. You will see it every time you log in to your Site. Assuming you’ve logged in, you’ll see the Dashboard. So what is this thing? This Dashboard area shows you some basic information about your website, and provides links to many important areas of your site and common tasks you’ll want to tackle.
Main (Left Hand) Menu
A menu runs down the left hand side of the WordPress admin area giving access to all areas of the WordPress Admin panel. This menu is dynamic, which means it interacts to your mouse movements. Hovering over (placing your mouse pointer on top of) a top-level menu item, like Posts, which produce a ‘fly out menu’ to the right of that item, with links to the main areas under that particular option. Take a moment to run your mouse over the various areas of this Main Menu and explore what is available.
Dashboard Widgets
In addition to the main menu, the Dashboard is made up of several content areas, or Dashboard Widgets, that can be customized, dragged around the screen to your liking, or even turned on and off as you need then. Each module handles a certain type of information or content. You can explore them to discover what they do, but here is some basic information for you.
Right Now
This area shows you basic stats about your website. Under Content, you see how many Posts you’ve added to your blog, how many Pages your Site has, and how many Categories and Tags your are using (you may not use these at all). This area also gives you information on the theme your site is using, whether or not Search Engines can see the site, what version of the WordPress software you are using, and, under Discussion, how people are engaging with your site through comments. From here, you can view comments, approve comments that are awaiting your approval, etc.
Incoming Links
This area will show you who is linking to your website, if anyone. It can sometimes take a while for these to show up, but when they do, it’s a good idea to look into who is linking to your site, and perhaps even link back to them or contact them to say thanks. Getting people to link to your site is one of the best ways to get more traffic to your site and improve your listings with search engines.
QuickPress
This is ‘quick’ way to post something to your blog. The options are limited, but if you just want to type a quick update to your blog with limited formatting, this is the easiest way to do it. You can simply enter a Title, some Content and if you choose, some Tags (tags can be a useful way to organize content on your blog). You can then click Save Draft to save what you’ve created to be worked on more later, or Publish to post to your blog right now.
Recent Drafts
Just as it says, the Recent Drafts widget shows you the most recent drafts you’ve been working on. These are pieces of content that are not yet ready to be published to your site, but have been saved as a draft. You can simply click the name of the draft you’d like to edit to get back to work on it right away.
Further Options
These are just some of the Dashboard Widgets that are available. They are the ones you will most commonly access. You can turn on additional widgets by clicking the Screen Options tab at the top of the screen. All available Widgets are displayed, with a simple ‘on/off’ checkbox next to their name. You’ll find Widgets for news about WordPress, news about Plugin releases, advanced comment moderation and more. You can enable or disable Widgets in this way at any time. They are not deleted, but only hidden, when you disable them.
You’ll see this same Screen Options tab on many of the WordPress Admin screens, and find that it functions in much the same way (though giving access to different Widgets applicable to those areas of your site’s admin panel). Experiment and explore and set up your WordPress admin area just the way you like it, with all of the options you use, and none that you do not.
Help
One more thing. You’ll see a Help tab next to Screen Options. Clicking this tab, available on most areas of the WordPress Admin, will bring you help on the particular area of the site you are working with, as well as links to other online help from the WordPress community to go as in-depth as you wish. Don’t forget that Help is always a click away.
Log Out
If you’re done exploring for now, don’t forget to log out of WordPress. Click your username in the upper right hand corner of the screen, then scroll down to Log Out. It’s good practice to log out each time you finish work on your Site.