WordPress Getting Started Guide Getting Started Guide WordPress Blog and Content Management for the Rest of Us AKJZNAzsqknsxxkjnsjx Getting Started Guides Page 1
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Getting Started Guide: WordPress Version 2.0 (03.11.10) © Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. WordPress® is a registered trademark of Automatic, Inc. All rights reserved. Distribution of this work or derivative of this work is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained from the copyright holder.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Welcome to WordPress No more is a blog just a single page with a “what I did at the store today” kind of dialog. Blogs are the lifeblood of the Internet, bringing publishing to the masses. Gone are the days of individual page creation to post an entry, too.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide How’s it different from Quick Blogcast? Both WordPress and Quick Blogcast are fantastic blogging solutions. But as with many things, the difference lies in the details. Quick Blogcast is “turnkey” blogging. It's quick, it's easy, and it's fast to get up and running. With a Quick Blogcast blog, we take care of all of the heavy lifting for you. Designs and themes are all built in and selected using templates.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide WordPress requires a little more tinkering, but with that you get a lot more flexibility. Where Quick Blogcast is a blog, WordPress can manage your entire site. There's no need to worry about integrating your blog in to your site, because it's all run from the same place (if you so desire). WordPress also offers no limit to its customization options.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide 5. In the category panels, click Blogs, and then click WordPress. 6. On the WordPress information page that displays, click Install Now. 7. Choose the domain name you want to use with WordPress, and then click Continue. 8. Enter a database description and passwords for the database. 9. Choose a directory to install WordPress into, and then click Continue. 10.Enter your Admin name, password, email and Blog title.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide What's Next? After WordPress is installed and you get the email from us telling you that everything is ready, it's time to log in to the WordPress Dashboard for the first time. Open your Web browser of choice and go to the domain name where you installed WordPress. For example: http://mycoolnewblog.coolexample.com (mycoolnewblog.coolexample.com is the domain name you used to set up WordPress).
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Get to Know the Layout of WordPress You'll notice that your new blog looks pretty basic. Before you dive in and start to change the look of things, have a look around at the layout. This will help you later when you do start to customize your site, as you'll know where everything is, and most importantly, what everything is called. The layout you are looking at is called a “Theme.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Back to the sidebar, you will see different sections with information. Among these you might find a list including Pages, Categories, Archives, Calendar, and Dates. This is part of the menu or navigation panel that people will use to move around your site, visiting posts from different categories or time periods. Now that we've got the lay of the land down, let's log in to the WordPress Dashboard and have a look there.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Once you’re logged in, the first thing you will see is the Dashboard of the Administration Panel. The Administration Panel is the brain behind your website. This is where the organization of your site begins. The Administration Panel provides access to the control features of your WordPress installation. Each Administration Panel is presented in sections: the header, the main navigation, the work area, and the footer.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide On the left side of the screen is the main navigation menu detailing each of the administrative functions you can perform. Two expand/collapse arrows just below Dashboard and Comments let you collapse the navigation menu to a set of icons, or expand (fly-out) to show an icon and description for each major administrative function. Within each major function, such as Posts, a pull-down arrow is presented when you hover your mouse over the title area.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Settings, Settings and, Yes, more Settings... Your blog’s configuration is handled through the Settings menu. You can access it at any time in the WordPress Dashboard by clicking the Settings tab in the left navigation. Clicking the Settings tab takes you to the General Settings pane where you can change your blog title (see, told you that would be easy to change later), your email address, time zone settings and lots more.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide So who are you, anyway? If you're going to post, you want to get credit for it, right? WordPress attributes every post to a user, and you certainly don't want to look like a WordPress rookie and have every post labeled “admin.” Let's create a user for you, shall we? Open the Your Profile sub-panel by clicking Users in the left navigation. The Users pane displays. At first you only see the users you created at install, or perhaps just the “admin” user.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Your first post! You're anxious, right? “This is supposed to be my blog and I haven't written anything!” You cry. Fear not, the blogging is just about to start. It's time to post. Posts are the entries that display in reverse chronological order on your home page. In contrast to pages, posts usually have comment fields beneath them and are included in your site’s RSS feed. In the left navigation, click Add New under the Posts section. The Add New Post pane displays.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Editing posts “Hey, there's still a post that says 'Hello World' on the front page of my site! How do I get rid of that?” Easy, just click Edit in the left navigation under Posts. The Edit Posts pane opens with a list of all of your posts. From here you can edit, view and delete posts at will. This page also tells you which categories posts belong to as well as the tags assigned to them, the date they were published and how many comments they've received (hopefully lots!).
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Posts vs. Pages In WordPress, posts are on pages, but pages aren't necessarily posts only. Huh? Pages are like posts, but they aren't included in the chronology of the rest of your blog posts. What that means, is that pages can be static (never change) and aren't dated or time-stamped like your blog posts. Pages are great for “About Me” pages or contact forms. You can add or delete pages by clicking on Pages in the left navigation. This opens the Edit Pages pane.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Comments What would a blog be without a place for your readers to give their two cents on your posts? Comments let your users comment on individual posts in an open forum where other users can see and comment on their comments. It's almost like every post is its own little forum. Cool! “But, what if I don't like what people say?” Don't worry, WordPress has you covered.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Spam – Not Just for Dinner No matter what you do on the Internet, there's going to be spam. That's a given. Unfortunately, that includes your WordPress site. Spammers spend countless hours creating robots, or “bots,” that crawl the Web looking for places to spread their wares, and your new WordPress site won't stay off their radar for long. WordPress comes pre-installed with Akismet, a top-notch spam filter installed by default.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide Troubleshooting... “Why is my site so slow?” There are a lot of things that might slow down your site. The usual culprits are improperly configured or misbehaving plugins, or using images that are hosted on other, slower servers. Try these solutions to speed up your site: • Install and configure WP-Cache, WP-Super-Cache, WP-DBManager, and BadBehavior plugins. • Replace links to external images with images uploaded to your WordPress site. • Disable all plugins.
1 WordPress Getting Started Guide More Details and Advanced Settings That about covers the basics, but there is a lots more to WordPress. A quick trip to their fantastic support site at http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page shows you everything you could possibly want to know (and probably a few things you don't) about this super-powerful, but easy to use, Web publishing platform.
