Website designers

WordPress is one of the most fantastic products available on the web.

•  For one thing, WordPress is free.
• Secondly, it’s a snap to get started - you can be up and running in less than half an hour.
• Third, it is search engine optimized out of the box.
• And fourth, you can assign separate user levels for authoring, editing, and publishing

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

For those of you who have never seen the inside of WordPress, this brief user’s guide will take you through basis operating steps.  I am assuming that you already have WordPress installed on your site.  What you are reading now, by the way, was generated through my WordPress editing interface.

WordPress Dashboard

When you first sign into your WordPress admin page, you will notice a few things:

1. Top level navigation:
   1. You have the ability to write and manage pages and posts
   2. Moderate comments to you blog left by website visitors
   3. Manage your blogroll - a key SEO tool and strategy
   4. Change the presentation to a completely different look and feel
   5. Manage your plugins, which are mini applications
   6. Administer users and their relevant privileges: author, editor, publish
2. Dashboard snapshot of latest activity, posts, stats
3. Quick links to write a post, update profile, change blog theme

The beauty of WordPress is in its simplicity.  Both my 10 year old daughter  and my 80 year old grandmother could figure this thing out.  In fact, I don’t know why I’m even writing a WordPress user’s guide, it’s that simple.

WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)

Things to note on the WordPress editing interface:

1. You can manage either your blog or your website with WordPress.  When you “Write Post”, you are making a blog entry.  When you “Write Page“, you are managing your website.   The primary difference is that with your website, you typically have permanent pages, that are prominantly accessible in a primary navigational section, and the page names are static, they do not get dynamically generated.
2. If you or one of your contributing authors have started a page but it has not been published, then it is very easy to see at the top of the page under a section called, “Your Drafts“.  Sometimes, especially in a busy news room type website, it is easy to accidentally forget to publish a news release.  This section makes it obvious.
3. The title section is extremely important for a couple reasons.  First, search engines like Google and Yahoo both look very closely at the blog title to figure out what the rest of the blog is about and whether it is relevant to a surfer’s search query. Second, you need to write headlines using keywords that both grab your website visitor’s attention AND would include the types of keywords that they would put into Google when they are looking for sites like yours. So, pay particular attention to your blog post title.
4. There are two types of editing windows: 1) a Visual interface, and 2) a Code interface.  The visual window is what we call WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get.  You don’t need to have any technical or HTML skills in order to use this visual interface.  It’s as easy as writing an e-mail.  The code interface is for people who have at least basic HTML skills.  Usually, the only reason I go into the code section is when I want to deliberately create a header tag or perhaps change the border size on an image to zero.  Then, I toggle back to the visual interface.
5. You have all of the normal font treatment and format tools like Bold, Italics, Strikethrough, bullet lists, numbered lists, indents and blockquotes, justification (left, right, center), links, insert image/photo, and the ability to split a long post with a More >>> tag.
6. The final element to the extraordinarily simple and easy WordPress editing inteface is the ability to categorize your posts.  Categorizing is important for a couple reasons: 1) It helps with your search engine optimization, especially if your categories contain the keywords that your website visitors would most likely Google to find you.  2) As your blog and website grow into hundreds of posts, it helps people find  specific and browse relevant articles more quickly and efficiently.

Well, that’s all for now.  Tune in later for more WordPress tips and templates by inQbation, Washington DC web designer and Los Angeles web designer.