You’ll be able to see your site by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/. You’ll more than likely see the default, which is a “Hello World!” message. In order to configure your website, you’ll need to log into the configuration area which can be accessed at:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin
After logging in, you should come to a page that looks like this:
This page is called WordPress Dashboard. You should make yourself familiar with the interface, you’ll be using it quite often. Anything and everything that you do to your website will be done from the Dashboard.
Overview of the Dashboard
In the “Right now” section you’ll notice a quick link section to posts, pages, tags, category and comments. This will allow you to quickly get into the areas that you’ll most frequently use. Pay close attention to the “Update” button as well, it’s important to keep your WordPress software updated at all times!
On the left side, you’ll see a navigation menu that will give you access to all the other tools available to you. There are tons of things, but I’ll talk about the important ones:
- Posts — This is used more often when your website is acting as a blog. It will allow you to publish articles, select the category in which they’ll be archived, and let to set options specifically for that post.
- Media — You’ll be able to manage your images, videos, sounds from this menu.
- Links — If you’ve ever wanted to create a “friendly links” list, this is where you would do it. You can then use it for your sidebar widget.
- Pages — This is where you’ll create static pages, like about us, product information, contact information, etc.
- Appearance — This is where WordPress is absolutely amazing. You’ll be able to totally customize the look and feel of your website by using themes, menus, widgets and more.
- Plugins — There are thousands of plugins available to make your site cooler or your life easier for managing things. Browse the plugins area to find what you’re looking for.
- Users — You can give access to other people to modify your website, add posts, pages, etc.
- Settings — This is where you’ll manage the configuration of your WordPress installation, such as site name, URL, date format, media settings, comment settings, etc.
Now that you’ve set up your site, let me give you a few pointers of how to get your site indexed on the leading search engines.