My clients want a website that looks beautiful, engages their audience, and highlights their product/service… But they also want one that they can manage on their own without having to learn a whole new skill set or pay someone each and every time they need to post to their blog or update their hours. This is why I work with WordPress: it’s completely customizable and user-friendly.
Each time I hand over the virtual reins of a website to a client at launch, I give them the following basics to get started. Taking a cue from support like this, that I provide over and over again, I am making this the first in a series of “Your WordPress Website” articles to help you better manage your WordPress website.
Get started: Log in to the back-end of your site (http://YourURL.com/wp-admin) with your WordPress username and password.
To edit an existing page:
- From the dashboard, go to the pages tab, then click on the title of the page you want to edit.
- Make the required changes, then hit the update button on the right.
To add a new page:
- From the dashboard, go to the pages tab, then click on add new.
- Write the page title and body, insert your images, and choose your page parent (if necessary).
- Once your page is finished, under the publish menu, click on the save draft option to save the draft to edit later or publish to publish the page immediately.
- In order to have the new page show up in your navigation, you might have to contact your webmaster… Until I add a post on how to do it yourself!
To edit an existing blog post:
- From the dashboard, go to the posts tab, then click on edit.
- Open the post you want to edit, make the required changes, then hit the update post button on the right.
To add a new blog post:
- From the dashboard, go to the posts tab, then click on add new.
- Write the post title and body, insert your images, and choose your category.
- Once your post is finished, under the publish menu, click on the save draft option to save the draft to edit later or publish to publish the post immediately.
To add an image to your post/page:
- You can follow the instructions below and insert a gallery or you have the option to add image individually.
- Once you’re in the post or page where the image is going to go, click on the add an image icon next to the words “upload/insert.”
- Select all of the files you want to include in the post and upload them.
- Edit the individual image names to reflect the image or the gallery (visitors to the site will see the photo title).
To edit an existing photo gallery:
- Go to edit the post or page where the gallery lives.
- Once the post is open, you’ll see a yellow box where the gallery lives within the post.
- Click on it and then click the edit gallery icon that pops up.
- To remove a picture, find it in the list, click on the show link, then click on delete.
- To add a picture, click on the from computer tab, upload the image.
- When you go back to the gallery tab, you’ll see the image there. Open it and make sure the title corresponds with the other image names in the set (if it doesn’t, change the title).
- Set the gallery settings to the number of columns you’d like.
- Click save all changes, then update gallery settings, close the image window, then update post/page.
To add a new photo gallery:
- Once you’re in the post or page where the gallery is going to go, click on the add an image icon next to the words “upload/insert.”
- Select all of the files you want to include in the gallery and upload them.
- Once the upload is complete, you will see a new gallery tab in the photo upload window.
- Edit the individual image names to reflect the image or the gallery (visitors to the site will see the photo title).
- You can change the order of the images by dragging them or numbering them in the order you would like them to appear.
- Once you have made any changes to the images, including their order, save all changes, then insert gallery.