CS3 – Exploring the WordPress Admin Dashboard

Timestamps

00:24 Exploring the WordPress Admin
11:31 Installing a Theme and Customizing the Appearance
18:54 Installing Plugins
32:22 Creating Pages and Posts
38:22 Creating a Menu

 

Lesson Notes

In this Lesson:  we are going to discuss about

  • Exploring the WordPress Admin
  • Installing a theme and customizing the appearance
  • Installing plugins
  • Creating pages and posts
  • Creating a menu

 

Exploring the WordPress Admin

Now that we have installed WordPress, it’s time to get familiar with exploring the WordPress Admin and configure some important settings. First, we need to log in to our WordPress Admin by adding /wp-admin. On the left side, you will see all the admin settings of WordPress. Let’s discuss each of these.

DASHBOARD – The dashboard is essentially your home page, or welcome center, which you will see every time you log in. From here, you can view basic stats for your site, draft a new post, see reminders of what you’ve published recently and check out what’s new with WordPress.

  • UPDATES – This will show you whether your current version of WordPress, your themes, and your plugins are up to date. Please note that it’s important to make sure everything is up to date to keep our WordPress site running well and have the latest security or bug fixes.

 

POSTS – This is the section where you will create blogs or articles

  • All Posts – The All Posts page shows you, in a table format, every post that you’ve drafted or published. To write a new post, click Add New; to edit or delete an existing post, or to publish a draft, click on its respective title in the table or simply hover over the title and click one of the options that pop up
  • Add New – This is where you create a new post
  • Categories – You can use Categories or Tags to organize your posts. Categories are best used for broad groupings of topics. For example, if you’re creating a site that reviews media, you might use categories such as Books or Film, or TV.
  • Tags – Tags are much more specific topics that you want to use to associate related content. For example, if you were creating a site that reviews media, you might want to use tags such as science fiction or horror, or action-adventure.

 

MEDIA

  • Library – This is where all your images, files, and other uploaded items are housed.
  • Add New – To upload items to your library, click Add New. On the screen that pops up, you can either drag and drop something into space or click to browse for files.

 

PAGES – Pages are static “one-off” type content such as your about page, privacy policy, contact page, etc.

  • All Pages – You can view and manage the pages created here
  • Add New – Click on Add New to add a new page

 

DIFFERENCE OF POST AND PAGES

  • WordPress posts are for timely blog posts and have a publish date. If you want to write a normal blog post, you should use a post.
  • WordPress pages are for timeless static content and don’t have a publish date. This can be your Home page, About or Contact us page

 

COMMENTS – The comments section is the place where you moderate the comments on your posts and pages. Hovering over a comment displays a set of actions you can take with regard to that particular comment, such as editing or deleting it.

 

APPEARANCE – This is all about how your site looks on the front end.

  • Themes – This shows you the themes you have installed in WordPress; if you want to install a new one, click Add New. You can find some nice free themes in the WordPress theme directory
  • Customize – This section is where you can choose background and header images (if you want them) or change your color scheme. From here you can also customize other pieces that appear on your front end.
  • Widgets – You can add widgets for the sidebar or footer of your pages like Calendar, Gallery, Image, Video and many more.
  • Menus – is where you create and organize menus for your site. Building menus is simple – just check the pages, posts or taxonomy links you want to include, click the “Add to Menu” button, and then drag & drop to rearrange your menu links.
  • Background – This is an option to add a background image for all the pages on your website
  • Theme Editor – This is where you can customize the coding of your themes. Best to leave this if you are not familiar with PHP programming as it may result in a broken website.

Note for Advanced Editors: If you really need to customize, make sure to have a child theme so any changes will not be lost when the theme updates. A WordPress child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits its functionality from another WordPress theme, the parent theme. Child themes are often used when you want to customize or tweak an existing WordPress theme without losing the ability to upgrade that theme.

 

PLUGINS – Plugins are very helpful in maximizing the capabilities of your website. Later, we will discuss all the essential plugins to install on our WordPress site.

  • Installed Plugins – This section shows the plugins you have installed 
  • Add New – Click on Add New to install Plugins
  • Plugin Editor – The Editor part is just like the theme editor – it’s where you can edit the code for the plugins you have installed. But again, this is not recommended if you are not familiar with how the plugins are programmed.

 

USERS

  • All Users- This section is where you manage all the users who have logins for your site. If you’re the only one with access, you’ll be the only one listed. If you allow multiple people to have access, they will be listed here along with their role and number of posts written.
  • Add New – To add a new user click on Add New
  • Your Profile – This section is where you manage or update all the information of the user.

 

TOOLS

  • Available Tools – You will see options here that can help you in setting up the site
  • Import – If you are bringing content over from another site, you’ll probably need to use the Import tool.
  • Export – To prepare content for moving to another site, use Export.
  • Site Health – This section shows critical information about your WordPress configuration and items that require your attention.
  • Export Personal Data – This tool can generate a (.zip format) file containing the personal data which exists about a user within your WordPress site.
  • Erase Personal Data – This is a feature to delete a user’s personal data upon verified request. Deleted data is permanently removed from the database. Erasure requests cannot be reversed after they have been confirmed.

 

SETTINGS

  • General – This is where you manage everything about your site information.

IMPORTANT: Remember to change the default Tagline “Just another WordPress site”. This is where you may put the tagline you have created in the Business Branding lesson from CS1. It’s important for a website to have a tagline to let the users know in a brief summary what the website is all about. It also helps in SEO optimization by including the right keywords in your tagline. You may also update your WordPress Address and Site URL from HTTP to HTTPS.

  • Writing – This is the setting for your posts. You can configure this later on when you have already created categories for your posts.
  • Reading – This is the setting for your blog page. You may leave this to the default settings for now.
  • Discussion – This is the setting for the comments section on your site. You may leave it to the default settings.
  • Media – This is the setting for your media. You may leave it to the default settings.
  • Permalinks – This is where you customize the URL structure of your site

 

IMPORTANT: The best permalink setting is the Post name. It’s easier to read and most recommended for SEO purposes.

  • Privacy – This is where you can create a Privacy Policy page for your website that you can use in the future once you have already built a fully functional website. By default, there’s a Privacy Policy draft included on the Pages section.

 

Sources:
https://www.wpexplorer.com/elements-wordpress-back-end/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories-vs-tags/
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-is-the-difference-between-posts-vs-pages-in-wordpress/
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/wordpress-pages-vs-posts.html
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/wordpress-child-theme-pros-cons/
https://wordpress.org/support/article/tools-export-personal-data-screen/
https://wordpress.org/support/article/tools-erase-personal-data-screen/

 

Installing a WordPress Theme

Now that we are familiar with the WordPress admin and configured some important settings, it’s time to start building our website. First, we are going to install a WordPress theme.

  • To do this, go to Appearance → Themes
  • Click on Add New

There are several options to choose from the WordPress Theme directory. Some of the popular themes are:

  • Astra – Fast, fully customizable & beautiful theme is suitable for blog, personal portfolio, business website, and WooCommerce storefront. It is very lightweight (less than 50KB on the front end) and offers unparalleled speed.
  • OceanWP – Lightweight and highly extendable, it will enable you to create almost any type of websites such as a blog, portfolio, business website, and WooCommerce storefront with a beautiful & professional design.
  • Storefront – Designed and developed by WooCommerce Core developers, it features a bespoke integration with WooCommerce itself plus many of the most popular customer-facing WooCommerce extensions.
  • Hello – A plain-vanilla & lightweight theme for Elementor page builder
  • Divi (Premium) – The Most Popular WordPress Theme. Comes with an Ultimate Visual Page Builder

For this lesson, we’re going to use the Astra theme and it’s my most used and recommended theme because it’s lightweight and very easy to customize. But you are free to use any theme of your choice.

  • Search for Astra and click on Install then Activate.
  • Once installed, it will be shown as Active on the Themes.

 

Customizing the Theme Appearance

Now that we have installed a WordPress theme. we are now going to make some initial customizations on the Theme Appearance. This is where we are going to make use of the Logo and Icon we have created in our Business Branding lesson from CS1.

  • From your WordPress backend, go to Appearance → Customize
  • The first thing we need to customize in our theme is the Site Identity.
    • Go to Header → Site Identity
    • This is where we will add our Logo and Icon.
    • Click on Select Logo and select the image file to upload as a logo. When the logo is uploaded, select the image.
    • Crop image to fit.
    • Change the Logo Width according to preference.
    • The Logo will appear on the header section of the website
    • Next, upload the Site Icon. Upload the site icon, select, and crop the image. The site icon will appear on the browser tab.
    • Under the Site Title, this is where you can change your Site Title and Tagline under the Site Tagline.
    • If you already have the site title in your Logo, you may uncheck the Display Site Title so it will be hidden on the Header, you can also choose to display the site tagline.
    • When done with changes, click on Publish found on the upper part of the Appearance page.
  • Next, we are going to customize the Footer.
    • Go to Footer → Footer Bar
    • You can change the layout of the Footer Bar if you want the Footer text to be in the middle or on the side
    • Then change the default custom text and you may remove the “Powered by [theme author]” to remove the Powered by Astra.
    • Your custom text may be set as: Copyright © [current_year] [site_title]
  • You may also customize the default font and colors in your site by going to Global
    • Typography → Base Typography – This is the font settings for the Body & Content
    • Typography → Headings – This is the font settings for the Headings
    • Color → Base Colors – These are the color settings for the text, links, and background
    • Container – This is the width settings for your website, whether you prefer Full Width or Boxed
    • Buttons – These are the color settings for the button text and background
  • Other features that you may customize later on:
    • Header – Layout of your Primary Header and Menu
    • Blog – Structure of your blog posts
    • Sidebar – Default Sidebar layout for pages and posts
    • Widgets – Widgets for the sidebar on pages and posts
    • Homepage Settings – This is for selecting what to display on the home page and the posts page. We will get back to this later on when we have already created a post and page
    • Additional CSS – This is where you can customize the CSS codes of your website. CSS is a coding language used for additional styling of a website. If you are familiar with CSS, this is where you can add your custom CSS but if you’re not familiar with this, we won’t be needing this much because we’ll be using a page builder later on to design our website.

 

Installing Plugins

A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. To install a plugin, click on Plugins → Add New. Select a plugin, click on Install Now then Activate. Note that when installing a plugin, things we need to consider is the rating, no. of active installations means that it is a trusted plugin, and it should be compatible with your WordPress version to work properly. Some of the plugins that we can start installing are:

  • Classic Editor
  • All-in-One WP Migration
  • Really Simple SSL
  • Smush
  • WP Fastest Cache
  • Wordfence Security
  • Yoast SEO
  • Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights

Source: https://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/plugin/

 

Classic Editor – This is an official plugin maintained by the WordPress team that restores the previous (“classic”) WordPress editor and the “Edit Post” screen. By default, WordPress version 5.0 and up comes with its own drag and drop editor called Gutenberg and replaces the old Classic Editor. The Classic Editor plugin disables Gutenberg and reverts it to the old Classic Editor. In my own experience, Classic Editor is much simpler and easier to use and we will not rely on Gutenberg for designing pages but instead, we will use a page builder later on in the next lesson.

 

All-in-One WP Migration – Move, transfer, copy, migrate, and backup a site with 1-click. 

Cons: Limited to 512 mb. Other alternatives for backing up/migrating website:

  • UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
  • Migrate Guru

Also, most hosting providers like Interserver and Siteground come with a free website backup/restoration. If the chosen hosting provider does not have this feature, make sure to always have a local backup.

 

Really Simple SSL – automatically detects your settings and configures your website to run over HTTPS. There are instances when a website may still show as HTTP (not secured) especially when typing www on the website name, even if there is an SSL certificate installed, this plugin automatically configures the website to be secured. Note that this plugin does not provide an SSL certificate if your hosting doesn’t offer one, it just forces the website to run over HTTPS. After installing and activating the plugin, just click on Activate SSL.

 

Smush – Compress and optimize (or optimize) image files, improve performance and boost your SEO rank using Smush WordPress image compression and optimization.

  • To configure, go to Smush → Dashboard
  • Go to Image Resizing to automatically resize all images
  • Bulk smush images to compress all the images.

 

WP Fastest Cache – The simplest and fastest WP Cache system. This is used to improve your page load time and also improve your SEO ranking. To configure, hover on Delete Cache on the upper part of the Dashboard and click on Clear All Cache. You can do this from time to time to keep your website cache cleared.

 

Wordfence Security – Secure your website with the most comprehensive WordPress security plugin. Firewall, malware scan, blocking, live traffic, login security & more. WordPress sites are very vulnerable to hackers and malware, so this plugin helps to keep our website secure. To configure, go to Wordfence → Dashboard. You may increase the website security by configuring the Firewall options → Brute Force Protection

 

Yoast SEO – Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is helpful in optimizing your web pages and posts. It gives recommendations on what parts of your site content need to be optimized.

 

Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights – The best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. See how visitors find and use your website, so you can keep them coming back. Tracking your website traffic is important so you can monitor the data and visitors of your website. This data can be useful later on for marketing your business and finding your target audience. Before we proceed to install this plugin, we need to configure our Google Analytics account to get the Tracking ID to be connected to this plugin.

  • Go to analytics.google.com
  • Click on Admin
  • Create an Account name
  • Input Property Name, select your Timezone and currency
  • Click on Show Advanced Options and enable the Create a Universal Analytics Property
  • Enter your website URL
  • Select Create a Universal Analytics Property only
  • Select your Industry category, Business size, and your intention for using Google Analytics
  • Accept terms
  • Go to Property Settings and Enable Demographics and Interest Reports
  • Go back to the WordPress Dashboard to proceed to install the Google Analytics Monster Insights plugin and run the Wizard.
  • Sign in with your Google Account to proceed with the setup.
  • Proceed with the configuration by saving and click continue. You can view the overview report of your Google Analytics by clicking Insights → Reports

 

Creating Pages and Posts

Now that we have initially set up our website with theme and plugins, we are now ready to start creating pages and posts for our website. For your portfolio, you may start by creating a Coming Soon page.

  • Go to Pages and Add New.
  • Input the Title Name and input some Content. You can also add images by clicking on Add Media and upload your image.
  • You may disable the Sidebar, Title, and Featured Image by configuring the page settings.

It’s important for a page to have a featured image so that when you are going to share your page on social media sites, you will see a preview of the image. You may update your featured image to the latest preview by going to Facebook Debug to fix and scrape the featured image you are using in your page.

  • When done with any changes, click on Publish or Update to publish your page.
  • When the page is already published, click on the View page to view your page.

We also need to create a page where the posts will be displayed. Just add a page, input the Title and add a featured image. No need to add content, we will use this page later on for viewing posts.

  • Then we need to assign a Home page and Post page for your website.
    • Go to Appearance → Customize → Homepage Settings. Select Static page as a display for Homepage. Select the page for the Homepage (This will be the main page when you type your website address.) and the page for the Posts.
    • Click on Publish.
  • The next step is to create Posts. Go to Posts and Add New. The process is just the same as creating Pages.
    • Assign a category for your post
    • Remember to add a featured image. Click on Publish then view the post.

For your portfolio, please write a simple blog sharing something about yourself or your business/freelancing journey. Sample topics can be:

  • What is your WHY’s for starting up your business or freelancing journey?
  • What made you interested in Web Designing?
  • What are your dreams or the goals you wanted to achieve in your career or business?

 

Creating a Menu

By default, all the pages we create are automatically added on the Header Menu and may look unorganized especially if there are pages that you don’t want to be accessible on the menu. We need to create a menu where we can select only the pages that we need to add and arrange the sorting.

  • Go to Appearance → Menus and create a name for your Menu
  • Under the Pages, select View All and check all the pages you want to add on the menu, then click on Add to Menu
  • You may drag the items to arrange how you want them sorted. Select the Display Location, if you want it to be the Primary Menu and/or Footer Menu. You may also have a different menu for the Footer. When done, click on Save Menu.
  • The Primary Menu is displayed on the Header of your website.
  • If you want to display a Footer menu, go to Appearance → Customize → Footer → Footer Bar, then add Footer Menu on any of the unused sections.

 

Portfolio

  1. Configure the General and Permalinks settings
  2. Install Astra theme or your theme of choice and customize
  3. Install the essential plugins
  4. Create a Coming Soon page and Posts page
  5. Create 1 blog about your business/freelancing journey
  6. Create a menu

 

Email Subject: WD – Portfolio 3

 

PORTFOLIO SUBMISSION GUIDES:

1. Video-On-Demand (VOD) Access
Submit your portfolios to courses@surgedigital.agency.
You can submit individually per coaching session or submit all required portfolios as one, in one email (attach your Google Drive).

2. VOD with Class Coaching
Send your portfolios to courses@surgedigital.agency.
Please submit individually per coaching session.

3. VOD with Mentoring
Send your portfolios to courses@surgedigital.agency.
Please submit individually per coaching session.

4. Premium Members
Submit your portfolios to courses@surgedigital.agency.
Please submit all required portfolios as one, in one email (attach your Google Drive).

 

CONTACT US!

For Technical Issues: members@surgedigital.agency

For Submission and Certificate: courses@surgedigital.agency

For any Concerns or Questions: info@thesurgemarketplace.com