WordPress requires you be able to click a mouse, learn a few things about the toolbar, and be able to write about the things you know a lot about. Sure you have to learn how to use it, and it can be very advanced for those who are techies. That is what I love about it. I belong to a WordPress Meetup. I have attended “WordCamp” two years in a row. I am learning a lot, but in comparison with the developers and coders, what I know about fills a thimble in comparison to them.
But, it doesn’t matter. I do the basics and learn along the way. The great thing is, that is what a lot of people just like you and I are doing. In the meantime, they are connecting with the world and looking professional to boot. Better yet, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. So, last time I showed you how to navigate the basics of using a cPanel with Bluehost to download WordPress. We left off with the administration panel after you downloaded WordPress. I know you may have been frustrated with that. After all, I got you all excited, you were able to download WordPress and you automatically had a website-boom.
So, let’s just get down to business. There are some things you need to do in terms of setting some things up. You only have to do these things once, basically set it and forget it stuff. You can always make changes later, another great thing about WordPress. Go to the admin panel and take a look at the menu on the left side.
You lots of options for the tools you are going to use to build and manage your website. Clicking on most of those things will expand the menu to show you more options. Settings is one example of that. The settings button will expand into a bigger menu and that is where we will do a lot of the set it up and then forget it stuff.
It will allow you to add your domain name, determine how many posts you want to show on your first page, set the time zine you live in, whether or not you want the entire post or just a summary to show up in your RSS feed and a lot of other things. Most of what you find under the settings tab can be left at the default settings for now, but there are a few initial things you have to set up yourself so that you can proceed.
The first thing you have to do is click on the settings tab that you see circled in the picture here. When you click on that, it is going to open some extended options that you can choose from. The very first option it gives you is “General”. You will need to click on that. The next screen to open will have information about your website, starting with the name of your website, also referred to as your domain name.
Once you add the name of your site, it will take the place of “Hello World” in the header of your site. Now you are really on track. As you can see there are other things on this page you should fill in, your url for example.I suggest that you leave the box where anyone can register blank. Leave the new user setting on the default of subscriber. Then at the bottom be sure to click on “Save Settings”.
For now, just to get you started, we will leave all the other settings at the default setting. The only other change I would recommend is under permalinks. I would recommend that you add a custom setting and insert the text that is circled in the next screenshot. You can just copy and past that. The reason you do that is to make the url for each blog you write easier to identify. For example, the title of this post will appear in the url. That is helpful and the link won’t just be a bunch of gobbly gook.
For toady, I am going to close with this general set up. There are some things you can do for “homework”. You can start think about the organizational structure you will want on your site. You are going to set up categories next time. You can think of that as your filing cabinet so to speak. For example, if your site is about food, you could have a baking category, and salad category, dinner category etc. Then when you write a post, you assign it to a category. Take some time to make these decisions. It can be changed later, but it is a pain, so putting some thought into the initial set up will make your life easier later. You guessed it, that is a word from the wise. If you have questions, please leave them in the comment section.
If you are feeling confused or just want to move faster, you can contact me for some private coaching. We can make things happen pretty fast!
