So, you’ve just installed WordPress…Now, it’s time to start building and customizing your WordPress website.
While WordPress is fairly ready to go out of the box, there are some basic housekeeping steps you’ll want to take to setup your site.
In this guide we will show you a few things to do to the default WordPress installation before you customize it. You will learn how to:
- Acquaint Yourself with the WordPress Dashboard
- Configure WordPress settings.
- Complete the Admin User Profile
- Check your email address, install the check email plugin.
- Add a Post and Page.
- Acquaint Yourself with the WordPress Dashboard
When you’ve just installed WordPress, the first thing you’ll want to do is get familiar with the WordPress dashboard.
The Dashboard is the control panel for your site, so you’ll be spending a lot of time in it throughout the rest of this post (and the rest of your site’s life).
You can access your WordPress dashboard by appending /wp-admin to the end of your site’s URL — for example, yoursite.com/wp-admin. If you haven’t already logged in, WordPress will prompt you to before you can view the dashboard.
The main dashboard gives you a basic summary of your site. To access additional areas, you’ll use the sidebar menu on the left:
Each menu item on the left will also include a number of sub-menus when you hover over it.
To create new content, you’ll use the Posts and Pages menus:
- Posts — these are blog posts.
- Pages — static pages, such as your ‘About’ or ‘Contact’ pages.
To manage your site’s extensions, you’ll use the Appearance and Plugins menus:
- Appearance — install and customize your WordPress theme, which controls your site’s appearance.
- Plugins — install and manage your WordPress plugins, which add new functionality to your site.
To adjust your WordPress website settings, you will use the Settings menu:
- Settings — controls some of the most basic configuration settings for your site: your site’s title and location, who may register an account at your site, and how dates and times are calculated and displayed.
When you first setup your website, you will spend a lot of time in the Settings area. However, once you configure all of the settings, you will mostly ignore this area in your day-to-day site management.
- Configure WordPress settings
Click on Settings in the menu.
Confirm the following settings match your credentials for your website:
- Site title – enter the name of your site (or blog) here. Most themes will display this title, at the top of every page, and in the reader’s browser title bar.
- Tagline – in a few words, explain what your site is about. Your websites slogan, or tagline, might be entered here. A tagline is short phrase, or sentence, used to convey the essence of the site and is often funny or eye-catching.
- WordPress Address (URL) – enter the full URL of the directory containing your WordPress core application files (e.g., wp-config.php, wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes).
- Site Address (URL) – enter the address you want people to type in their browser to reach your WordPress site. This is the directory where WordPress’s main index.php file is installed.
- E-mail Address – enter the e-mail address to which you want WordPress to send messages regarding the administration and maintenance of your WordPress site.
- Timezone – from the pulldown box, choose a city in the same time zone as you.
- Date Format – the format in which to display dates on your site.
- Time Format – the format in which to display times on your site.
Click the Save Changes button to ensure any changes you have made to your Settings are saved to your database. Once you click the button, a confirmation text box will appear at the top of the page telling you your settings have been saved.
- Complete the Admin User Profile
Click on Users in the menu, then click on the “Admin” username.
Confirm the following settings match your credentials for your website:
- First Name – enter your first name in this text box.
- Last Name – enter your last name in this text box.
- Email (required) – all users are required to list an e-mail address in their respective Profiles. The E-mail address must be unique for each user. Your website will use this address to notify you of new comments to your posts and for other administrative purposes.
Click the Update Profile button to save the changes you have made to your Profile and Personal Options.
- Check your email address, install the check email plugin.
By default, WordPress uses the PHP Mail function to send emails.
The most common reason for emails to go missing is that your WordPress hosting server is not properly configured to use the PHP mail function.
The first thing you should do is run a test on your WordPress site with the free Check Email plugin. The Check Email plugin designed to simply test if your WordPress installation and or server can send emails.
Click on Plugins in the menu.
Enter “Check Email” in the Search installed plugins…then click on Search for plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory.
Click on the Install Now button on the Check Email plugin.
Then click on the Activate button to activate the Check Email plugin so you can test if your WordPress installation is sending emails correctly by sending a test email to an address of your choice. You should see the following screen with the Check Email plugin installed.
Once installed, simply click on “Check Email” under the Tools menu in your WordPress dashboard.
Enter in an email address to send a test to, then click on “Send test email.”
After you click on the Send test email button. The following message will be displayed “The test email has been sent by WordPress”.
Check your email client to see if you received the test email. The subject line will appear as “Test email from https://yourdomain.com.” Also, make sure to check your spam or junk mail folder. If you received an email that means that WordPress can send emails on your web server.
- Add a Post and a Page.
WordPress comes with two content types; posts, and pages. These two content types offer a similar type of functionality, but there are key differences that one should take into account.
What are Posts in WordPress?
Posts have an official publish date and are displayed by date on your website. Posts are generally used for content creation that can be commented upon and shared with other potential readers. Think of them as articles or updates that you share to offer up new content to your readers.
What are Pages in WordPress?
Pages do not have a publish date and are meant for static, timeless content. Pages are more like static content in action. These pages hold equal value to posts, but they lack interactivity and social sharing. Two common examples of content that should be a page are your site’s “Contact” or “About” pages.
Pages are important because of their hierarchical nature. They simplify the navigation of the website, which is an important factor in Google rankings and retention of the user.
Let’s start by creating a Post for your website.
Click on “Posts” in the menu. By default, WordPress has already added a post to your website called “Hello World!”, which you can edit later, but first let’s add a Post to your website. Click on “Add New.
Next, you will see the following screen, where you can setup your post.
You need to add a title, click on the “Add title”, then type in “This is a Sample Post”, then click on the “Start writing or type / to choose a block, then type in “some text will be entered here for the post…” then click on the button “Publish…”, then click on the button “Publish”.
You will see the following screen, displaying a message “This is a Sample Post is now live”. To view the post, click on the button “View Post”, then click on the back button in your browser to return to the edit post page.
Next, click on the “View Posts” in the top left corner to return to your website posts.
You will see the post “This is a Sample Post” was added to the list of posts for your website.
Let’s create a Page for your website.
Click on “Pages” in the menu. By default, WordPress has already added two pages to your website, “Privacy Policy” and “Sample Page”, which you can edit later, but first let’s add a Page to your website. Click on “Add New” in the menu.
Next, you will see the following screen, where you can setup your page.
You need to add a title, click on the “Add title”, then type in This is a Sample Page, then click on the “Start writing or type / to choose a block, then type in “some text will be entered here for the page…” then click on the button “Publish…”, then click on the button “Publish”.
You will see the following screen, displaying a message “This is a Sample Page is now live”. To view the page, click on the button “View Page”, then click on the back button in your browser to return to the edit post page.
Next, click on the “View Pages” in the top left corner to return to your website pages.
You will see the page “This is a Sample Page” was added to the list of pages for your website:
Next, click on the Dashboard in the menu, then click on “Log Out” to exit the Dashboard.
Now, you should be logged out of WordPress and the login page should appear.
Click on “Back to My Things to Do”, to view your website, which displays the post you just created.
Click on “This is a Sample Page” in the menu to view the page you just created.
What is the difference between Posts and Pages in WordPress?
To summarize, following are the key differences between posts vs pages in WordPress.
- Posts are timely vs. Pages are timeless.
- Posts are social vs. Pages are NOT.
- Posts are organized using categories and tags vs. Pages are hierarchical and can be organized as child and parent pages.
- Posts are included in RSS feed vs. Pages are not.
- Posts have author and published date vs Pages do not.
The differences listed above may have exceptions. You can use plugins to extend the functionality of both content types.
Despite these differences, there are some similarities between pages and posts in WordPress.
They are both used for publishing content. You can add text, images, forms, etc. to both posts and pages. There is featured image meta-field in both pages and posts.
You can build a website without ever using posts or blogging features of WordPress. You can also make a business website with pages and a separate blog section for your news, announcements, and other articles.
Conclusion
If you are going to create a new article for your blog or website, always make it a Post.
If you are going to make a contact page, about page or any other landing page on your WordPress blog or website, always make it a Page.