Welcome to our video to introduce you to WordPress, the open source content management system we use create your website for you. We use WordPress, typically a blogging platform, but it can also be used to create websites that are very easy to update and manage from any computer.
In order to manage the WordPress website we create for you, you do need a certain amount of computer smarts. WordPress is very easy to manage however, and if you are adept with such programs as Word, or you have set up a Facebook page, you should have no problem with WordPress.
This is just a brief introduction to show you just how easy it is to create, delete and update your own content and images once we have your website in place.
Here is a demo I prepared earlier to introduce you to the WordPress framework.
Let’s log in to a WordPress Website and have a look.
First of all go up to your address bar and type in wp-admin at the end of your address. This will give you access to your login page. You then type in the login provided in the e-mail we sent to notify you your website was ready to start adding your own content.
Once you’ve safely logged on, you’ll find yourself at the dashboard of the backend of your website. If you’ve never encountered anything like this before it may seem a little daunting at first, but once you have been through everything once, you’ll see it really is a piece of cake.
The reason we use WordPress as a CMS is because we believe there is no other content management system out there as search engine friendly as this one. The WordPress community tirelessly supports one another, so if we are offline and you wish to make significant changes to your website without us that just can’t wait, there is an incredibly responsive bunch of WordPress fanatics at wordpress.org, that will have an answer to your query in minutes.
So with a slight learning curve (about as much as learning how to use Word) you have access to a powerfully optimised system, that’s ready to start driving qualified traffic to your business or personal website straight away.
So let’s go through all of the options open to you in the backend of your WordPress installation.
As you can see, up here on your left is your dashboard. This is where you will find everything you need to manage WordPress.
First of all let’s take a look at the posts menu.
Your posts are typically what we use to create blog posts on your website. If you have opted to have a blog installed on your website, you will add posts to your blog with this menu. If you don’t have a blog on your website, then your website is most likely to be created as individual pages.
The two options you will use in this menu are edit, and add new. If we click on edit, this will bring up a post seen here under blog, and we can quickly click and edit this blog post however we choose. But we’ll go into more detail in our editing blog posts video later.
Next in our posts menu we have add new.
As your blog page generally acts as a latest news page about your business, every time something newsworthy comes up you could add a new post to your blog page telling existing and potential clients all about it. Constantly updating content is something the search engines absolutely love, so you should aim to add something newsworthy about your business to your blog page at least once a week.
Next stop is your pages menu.
This is where you will find everything else on your website, other than your blog page. Much the same as your posts menu you have an edit and an add new button, which work in the same way as your homepage posts. Again we have a video that goes into more detail on how to edit and add new pages.
The next thing to look at is our main menu control.
You will find the menu link to your horizontal and vertical menus under Appearance. This is where we control what is found in your main navigation bar and your vertical menu, if we have installed a vertical menu for you.
Here you will see it is very easy to control vertical and horizontal menu items, and change the navigation label in your menu. This is handy if you have along page title but you don’t want it all visible in your menu bar. As you can see here under the vertical menu list, you can drag and drop pages under others, to have them as sub items of a main heading.
All menu items can be dragged and dropped to where you require them quickly and easily.
The very last thing we need to look at is our NAVT lists right down here at the bottom.
This is where you will control the rest of your sidebar menus by dragging and dropping the list around, and renaming the link text. You shouldn’t have to edit these as much as your horizontal and vertical menus however.
The NAVT lists have been made defunct by the much easier to use native WordPress menus.