Sunday, December 18, 2011

WordPress How To – Complete Guide On Using WordPress For Your Site

By Raag Vamdatt


So you have decided to start a website. And after some analysis, you have boiled down to WordPress as your blogging backend. And now that you have started looking into WordPress, you are having plenty of "WordPress how to" queries - the 1st being the simplest way to install and use it! Well, here are the answers to your simple WordPress queries!



How to start a WordPress blog

All you need to do is sign up for a hosting account, and have the WordPress application installed. After that, you can start making your blog right away!



Where to log in?

When you've your WordPress blog installed, you want to log in to the WordPress administration area from where you can write posts and articles, manage comments, change your theme, etc. To log in the WordPress admin panel, navigate to your blog's WordPress login page or immediately type the URL in your browser:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/



Writing a post in WordPress

Writing posts and pages is the core activity in WordPress. You can start writing your post by clicking the "Add New" button found in the Posts menu inside the WordPress admin area. You can continue with entering the required content for your post - this includes the text, images and videos as well! When you are ready, the new post can be released just by clicking the Publish button.



Creating pages in WordPress

Making individual pages in WordPress is very much like publishing a post. You simply have to click "Add New" in the Pages menu inside the WordPress administration backend. When you are ready with your new page, click "Publish" to publish it. Just like a post, a page can also include images and videos above and beyond the text content.



Posts vs Pages

Should you publish posts or pages? What is the difference? Well, they seem kind of the same! Pages are often made for more stable information - things that aren't expected to to alter often, like your contact info.



Categories

To have a correct structure for your blog and to help your visitors navigate thru your posts and pages, you want to categorize your posts. A new category can be created from the Posts menu's Categories submenu in the admin area.

So as to move a post from 1 category to another, you must click on "Edit" in the Posts menu, hover over the post you need to edit and click "Quick Edit". From the Categories section, decide on the new category and click "Update Post" to save the change.



Handling Comments in WordPress

Your readers have the choice to leave comments on your website. This plays a huge role in making your site interactive - it creates a dynamic exchange between you and your visitors. You can moderate your visitors' comments through the Comments menu in the WordPress admin back-end.

You've got many options you can set for your Comments. They're listed under Settings > Discussion menu. Here, you decide if comments are allowed, if pingbacks and track backs are acceptable, and the way to treat a comment as a spam comment.



WordPress Themes

In the basic WordPress installation, there are a few themes you can select from. You will find the themes in your WordPress admin area > Appearance > Themes menu. You can change the theme simply by clicking on the required theme and then clicking on "Activate ".

If you would like to employ another WordPress theme for your blog, you'll have to download it to your local machine. After you have the new WordPress theme on your local computer, you have to upload it to the 'wp-content/themes' directory of your website.

You have two options to do that: You can upload the .zip file of the theme to the 'wp-content/themes' directory using the File Manager in cPanel and extract it online, or you can extract the file in your PC and then upload the files to the destination folder using FTP.

After you have the new theme uploaded on your site in the correct folder, you can view it in your WordPress administration backend and select it as the theme for your site.




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