Exploring the WordPress Dashboard
Hey lovely readers!
The WordPress dashboard is what we see as soon as we login to our site. It consists of all the menus that are necessary to build our blog. Since we are gonna use this a lot, I decided to brief you all about the basic components and menus on the WordPress dashboard. In the beginning, you all may get nervous by the navigation menus on the admin sidebar. Initially, I was hesitant to start a blog because I was unsure if I will ever be able to learn the different components on the dashboard but then I discovered that WordPress is extremely simple and user-friendly. So let’s begin…
In the image we can see the WordPress dashboard home screen and the sidebar.
Dashboard Home Screen
The dashboard home screen consists of all the notifications and shortcuts to various plugins. You can add new posts/pages, create a campaign or view your site statistics. You can also write a quick draft on what’s on your mind for your next blog post.
Sidebar
I have only written about the basic navigation menus like menus to add new posts or changing themes, etc. The sidebar expands as you install more and more plugins.
Posts:
This menu consists options to view all your posts, add a new post and add or view categories or tags. The posts appear in chronological order on your blog where the latest post is at the top. We can assign categories to the posts according to the content.
Media:
Media contains all the pictures or videos that we have uploaded to this library. We can also add more media using the “Add New” option.
Pages:
Pages are not same as posts. Posts appear in chronological order and they are the main contents of your blog. Example for pages are contact info, about page, etc. These appear at the top near the site title.
Comments and Feedback:
This consists of the comments and the feedbacks that you have received on your posts.
Appearance:
Here you choose your theme, customize it, add menus and widgets, edit the widgets and do everything to improve the overall presentation of your blog. You can change the color of the text, add a logo to your site and customize it however you want your blog to be. Under widgets, you get to decide what goes to the sidebar, the footer and the header.
Plugins:
Plugins are very important for the smooth running of your site. Different functions have different plugins. We have plugins for security, adding social media icons, to view site statistics, to create forms and campaigns, for SEO and everything that you need for your blog. In the plugins menu, we can view the active plugins, add new plugins or edit them.
Read: How to install a WordPress plugin?
Users:
In the users menu, we can see the names of the administrators of the site. You can see the username, email address, number of posts and last login. Also, you can add multiple administrators to a single site.
You can also view your profile info and change the admin theme color, change you name, reset your password, add your social media URLs etc. under the profile section.
Settings:
Under the settings menu, we have different sections. Under General, we have the options to rename the site title, site URL, time zone, site language, etc.
Writing section allows you to set default post format and category. You also have the facility to post your articles through mail which you can setup here.
Reading section is all about how you want the posts to be visible to your visitors. Also, you can also customize the mail text that you want your audience to receive when they follow your blog.
Discussion is all about the comment settings, post settings and comment approval settings. You can also decide when do you want to receive an email as shown in the image.
Media is all about the size of the images that you add to your blog posts. You can edit them anytime.
The format of the Permalink is very important because that’s what people see before clicking on the link to your article. You must keep the permalink very simple. If it’s complex, it may look kinda odd whereas if it’s in the form of sitename.com/postname for example, it’s not only easy to read and to understand but also, users can immediately identify the title of the article. In the image, we can see the first option plain, which is the default option. It consists of letter and numbers so, it may look a bit complex while the post name looks very simple. So, don’t forget to change your permalink settings.
Privacy is to change the privacy policy page. Well, it’s not so important to again change it. I never modified anything under this section till now because I didn’t feel any need to do so.
So, that’s it guys… I hope you all loved this post. I tried my best to keep it as simple as possible. Did you find this useful? Let me know in the comments.
Thank you all…..