Overview of WordPress (Beginners Guide)
In this beginners tutorial, I’m going to give you an overview of WordPress! This is part 2 of my beginner tutorial series where I’m answering the top 5 questions for YOU who are just getting started with WordPress.
In this overview, we’ll cover the front end vs the backend, posts vs pages, how to create menus in WordPress and all the main aspects that you need to know so you can get going with building awesome websites.
Must trusted WordPress theme is Divi by Elegant Themes
As shown in the video, the main areas of WordPress (at least the most important ones to know about) are:
- Dashboard – Your main WordPress dashboard may look different depending on what hosting company you use to install WordPress but you can switch to the default dashboard and customize what options you see. Be sure to use “Screen Options” to select which options you want to see and remember, screen options are available on other WordPress backend options as well.
- Posts – These are where all blog posts will go. You can create different categories, tags, etc to help segment all your post types. The text editor will look just like what you’ll see for pages except you’ll have a few post-specific options.
- Media – This is where all your images, files, videos and other media will go as you start building out your site. You can do bulk editing and minor updating here.
- Pages – You guessed it, this is where all your actual web pages will be added and customized. It’ll function and look just like posts minus the category options.
- Comments – All comments, yes even most spam will show up here. Be sure to adjust the comment settings in Settings > Reading.
- Appearance – There are some important options under this however one important thing to note is when you add Divi (or whatever theme you’re using) often you can disregard the customization tabs here.
- Themes – This is where you’ll add your website theme before building out your site. I use and recommend Divi!
- Widgets – This is where your footer and sidebars are managed. You can drop a number of different modules here out of the gate or that are added via plugins.
- Menus – This is where you’ll actually create your website menus. You can set up a main navigation and additional menus depending on your theme options. It’s all drag and drop which is awesome and remember to use Screen Options to open up additional options for your menu items.
- Theme Editor – As you’ll see more in part 3, 4 and 5 in this tutorial series, once you get into custom coding things on your site, you can see and adjust your code here.
- Plugins – This is where you can add, delete or manage all additional plugins for your site. These need to be updated to keep your site secure. If you have many WordPress websites, I use and recommend ManageWP to easily update numerous plugins and website tools in bulk.
- Users – This is where you can add additional users to your site, assign their roles and adjust profile names, details, etc.
- Settings – This was covered in part 1 of this series.
And just remember, when you add themes, plugins and additional tools, more options will show up on your dashboard tool bar.
Links & courses mentioned:
- Purchase Divi Theme
You’ll get a discount OFF Divi when you purchase use that link! - Divi/WordPress Beginners Course
Use code “diviwp22” at checkout to get the course for only $75!
Other resources and links mentioned:
- 5 Ways Divi Changed My Life – Elegant Themes
This is my article on the Elegant Themes blog on how Divi has changed my life and why you should use it for all your website builds!
Full Beginner Tutorial Series Links:
