Basics Of WordPress

Let me explain some of the basic things & some basic settings in WordPress so that you can immediately start posting on your blog.

There are 2 main things in WordPress. The first one is Themes & the second Plugins.

Themes

A Theme is the overall design of a site and encompasses color, graphics, and text. A Theme is sometimes called the skin. WordPress Themes can provide much more control over the look and presentation of the material on your website.

A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files.

You can change your default WordPress theme anytime from the WordPress dashboard. You will find different options in different themes which you can use to change the look & feel of your website.

There are thousands of WordPress themes available which are developed by hundreds of web developers around the world. Some are free and some are paid.

There are thousands of free themes available. Just click on Appearance & then themes & then install themes to check the themes. You will select different options to find different themes.

You can click on Preview to preview the themes, check Details & if you like one of the theme click ‘Install Now’ option. You can further customize your theme from ‘Theme options’ link.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to add new features to your WordPress websites that don’t come standard with the default installation. There are a rich variety of Available Plugins for WordPress. You can add, remove or check installed plugins from the ‘Plugins’ link on the left side in your WordPress dashboard.

Here are some of the plugins you must use while making your website. They do wonderful job for your blog.

Akismet:

Already Installed – just need to activate it. Search for this plugin & click on activate plugin. Don’t forget to add ‘Akismet API Key’ which you can get free from the link available in the Akismet Configuration.

All in One SEO:

Search for this, install and activate. This is one of the best plugin for SEO benefits. Just refer the image above to understand how I installed ‘All in One SEO Pack’ plugin.

Contact Form 7:

This is the standard plugin for creating a quick and easy contact page. Just go into the plugin settings, copy the auto generated short code and paste into a new page (doesn’t have to be in HTML mode).

Code looks like this (where x is the form ID): [contact-form-7 id=”XXXX” title=”Contact form 1″]

JetPack Plugin:

JetPack can do the job of many plugins alone. You need to create a free account at WordPress.com in order to activate this plugin after installation. Click on ‘Connect to WordPress.com’ once you install & after authorizing you can start using this plugin.

Important Settings in Creating a WordPress site

You may have any reason to create your website but all reasons have the 'common' interest of getting traffic on their website. When we talk about traffic, we only focus on Big Boss ‘Google’.

So its very important to write original & valuable contents on regular basis on your website. The updated contents will be published on your blog page. Either you can use the blog on the home page or create a separate blog page where all your new contents will be published.

You need to do some simple settings in your WordPress dashboard for this.

·         Click on Settings –>Readings

·         You will see there 2 options. First ‘Your Latest Posts’ & Second ‘A static page’.

·         If you like to publish all your contents on the home page then choose the first option.

·         If you want to publish a different static page on home page & your new content on separate page then choose second option.

·         You need to create a new blank page from Pages –>Add New. Name this page as ‘Blog’ & click publish.

·         Now choose the page you want for front page (homepage) as the one you created for homepage & posts page as the Blog page.

Just refer this image for more clarification;

Another important setting is the permalink structure. By default, WordPress uses question mark (?) & numbers in the URL for all the contents you publish. This is not good for users & for search engines.

You can create your own custom structures of your URL. Click ‘Settings’ & then ‘Permalinks’.  You will many options there. Check the last option ‘Custom Structure’.

Now write /%postname%/ in the box & click ‘Save Changes’ & you are done.

HomeWork:-

Experiment with your blog. Try different themes, plugins & settings so that you will know how it affects your WordPress blog with some changes in your settings.

Check the WordPress sites & blogs of other people. Read more about WordPress, themes & simple designing tweaks on other blogs. Come to a final WordPress site of yours.

I am sure, once you become an expert, it won’t take more than 30 minutes to create any of your website or blog.

If you have any doubt regarding this topic, please feel feel to clarify it using the 'Contact Me' form at the end.

Think I missed something? Please remind me of it using the comments section.