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The WordPress Global Dashboard and What you can do with it
Once you log into your account, you’ll be presented with a page titled Dashboard. The first thing on the page is an announcement from WordPress. Under that, in the section called Your Stuff, you’ll find links to your most recent posts. What’s Hot, displays links to the hottest posts, blogs and the newest content.
Now, go over to the left side of the screen and click on Blog Stats. This page will be very important to you, once you have content on your site.
You’ll see a great chart here, that we’ll show the number of people going to your site. Referrers: are people that were nice enough to link to your site. Top Posts & Pages: display data on which of your posts people are visiting the most. Search Engine Terms: will display the keywords people used in search engines to get to your site. Clicks: displays a list of your most popular links.
The final bit of data, can be found under Blog Stats. Here you can find out information on how busy your site is, information on your own activity, and the number of people who subscribed to be notified every time you make a change to your site.
A brief explanation maybe in order here. Posts: are the individual articles you have put on your website. By default, WordPress provides the readers of your site the opportunity to comment on each of your articles. This option can be withdrawn if you like.
Categories: provide an organizational structure to your site. Let’s say I plan to talk about marketing and cats on my website. It would make sense to separate these two things into separate categories, so that people who visit my site can easy chose which subject is important to them. By separating my information into separate categories, I give them that ability.
Tags provide you with the ability to assign keywords to each of your posts. This is a great way for you to allow people to search through your site and find exactly what they want. If you associate the tag turtle to one of your posts, people will be able to click it and find all of the posts you have written on turtles. By using tags you will also increase your odds of ranking well with search engines. So, take the time and use tags through out your entire site. I’ll go into doing this in a later article.
The final bit of data on the Blog Stats page, refers to email subscribers. You can set up a system in which, those who chose, can be sent an email every time you post a new article. On this page, you’ll see how many people have chosen to be alerted. I’ll cover this in more detail in a later post.
Now click on the link Blog Surfer, which is located on the left side of your screen. Here you are able to search and track other blogs that would be of interest to you.
Click on the link to the left titled My Comments. This page will show you all of the comments you have made on other people’s WordPress blogs.
If you click on Readomattic, you’ll be taken to a page that displays the top news posts made by the WordPress community.
Tag Surfer, provides you with the ability to see the posts of others that write about the same topics that you do. Just type a topic into the subscribe box and hit add. Your page will display the newest posts made on WordPress.com blogs that refer to that topic. To remove those posts, just click on the X next to the keyword you just typed in.
If you click on the My Blogs link, you’ll be taken to a page that lists out every blog you have hosted on WordPress.com. You can use this page to quickly jump to stat pages, set up a system to automatically post your posts to Yahoo Updates and/or Twitter and setup a way to post to your blog just by sending an email. I’ll cover these topics in a future article.
On the final link under Dashboard you’ll find Subscriptions. Here you’ll see, what blogs you have subscribed to. By subscribing to a blog, you have chosen to receive an email every time someone makes a change to their blog.
You may or not have noticed, that there is a drop down box across the top of your screen. One of those links is called My Account. There are duplicate links found here, that are also found under the Dashboard link, we have been working with. I’ll now cover those links that differ between the two.
The first new link found under My Account is Edit Profile. You can also access this page by just clicking the link labeled Profile, on the left toolbar. Here you will find a reference to what they call an API key. This series of letters and numbers, is a password of sorts. We will use it in a later post to set up a spam blocking tool. Don’t worry about it at this time.
Under Personal Options leave the Visual Editor box unchecked and chose the color palette of your dashboard, if you like. Keyboard Shortcuts, will be of use when your website is getting a large number of comments. Refer back to it when this day comes.
The Browser Connection option, provides you with the ability to add a layer of security, whenever you log on to your WordPress Dashboard. If you chose to use HTTPS, every time you make an update to your site, those changes will be encrypted before they are sent. The only negative to using HTTPS, is that it will take longer to update your site.
The next two options allow you to change your specified language and assign your Primary Blog. The Primary Blog is considered, the blog to be the blog you will make the largest number of posts to.
WordPress comes preinstalled with a great grammar checker. You can decide under Proofreading, what errors you want WordPress to check for.
The information under both the Name and Contact Info section are self explanatory. Make sure you fill in as much information as possible here. AIM, Yahoo IM, and Jabber / Google Talk are all instant messaging clients. If you know what they are, have one, and want others to contact you through them, enter that information here. If you need to change your password you can also do so on the Account page.
The final two options available for you on the Profile page are My Gravatar and My Location. A Gravatar is simply an image that you want to represent you in your posts. You can set up a system in which this image will represent you not only on your blog, but also other social networking sites. I’ll describe Gravatars in a later post.
Geotagging can be enabled, if you want to give others very specific data on your location. I’m referring to latitude and longitude information. If this sounds great, go for it. I may cover this subject further in a later post.
There are three final links provided under the My Account link, found in the upper left hand corner of your browser window. Click on Support, if you have any questions on using WordPress. WordPress.com, will take you to the WordPress home page. Log Out should be clicked if you don’t want others to gain access to your blog without entering a username and password.
The only link left to cover is the link labeled Tools, in the left toolbar. Here you can decide if you want to install Gears on your home computer. Never do this on any other computer other than your own. As it states, Gears allows you to install your site content on your home computer. If installed your interactions with your WordPress blog will receive a speed increase.
Finally, here you have the option to set up a system, that will allow you to post to your blog by just sending an email. If you post often, this could be a great option for you. You set up this account by clicking on the link My Blogs, under Dashboard in your left toolbar. Locate the blog you wish to publish to by email. Click on the button located under Post-by-email to enable the account. Now you have an email account set up for posting to your blog from any where.
That completely covers all the options found both under the Global Dashboard and My Account categories. Next, I’ll cover everything you ever wanted to know about posting articles and every other feature available on WordPress.com.
Posting Articles, Images, Video, etc. in WordPress
So, now your ready to start posting articles in WordPress. There are two approaches to writing articles on the web. One, is to just write about whatever you want randomly and hope someone finds your content of interest. The other is to start out with a plan. I’ll cover search engine optimization of websites in another article, but for now I thought I’d introduce some things to think about as you plan your articles.
If you want to attract a large number of visitors to your site your articles most be valuable, timeless, original, and personable. By valuable, I mean, your articles should be of value to a large percentage of people. Try to write about subjects that people are definitely interested in. You can find out what people are reading about by going to:
- http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
- http://www.google.com/trends
- http://technorati.com/
- http://www.alexa.com/
By timeless, I mean, the article should be of interest to a large number of people a month from now. This is important, when your trying to create a large content driven website. Let us say, you want to have 100 interesting articles on your site. If you create 5 per day, but 4 of those five will have no value to anyone in a month, you are working against yourself. Instead of reaching your goal in 20 days, it will take you 100 days, to reach your goal.
Original content, is invaluable. There are far to many aggregators of information as it is. The only way you can make your site different, is to create content that is not available any where else. So, go get inspired by something, and create some original content.
Finally, do your best to talk like a real person. Try to be funny, tell stories and don’t get stuck writing articles that are aimed only at pleasing the search engines. Many search engine optimization tricks are geared toward making it seem like a website is of value. Do your best to appeal to real people and search engines, by just making a valuable, timeless, and original site. Now, Back to WordPress posting.
Everything you Ever Wanted to Learn About Posting in WordPress
I’m assuming, you are logged into your WordPress.com account right now. At the top of your page, drift your mouse over the link titled My Dashboards. When you do, a drop down window will show all the blogs you currently have set up at WordPress.com. Click on one.
You are now on a catch all page. Under Right Now, you’ll see a listing of your total posts, pages, categories and tags. The posts, are your articles. Pages, refer to static pages you created, that are more similar to normal website, rather than blog pages. Categories, refer to how you have grouped your articles, with other similar articles. Tags are keywords, that help you define the topics covered in a post.
The Recent Comments section, will list all the comments others have made on your blog. Incoming Links, shows you other websites that are linking to your site. The Your Stuff section, shows all of your recent posts. What’s Hot, describes what other sites are talking about.
The Section labeled QuickPress, allows you to post onto your blog without thinking about the styling of the post. You just plug in your title, content, tags and whether you want to add media and hit Publish. If you want to save a draft, which will keep others from seeing the post later, click Save Draft instead.
- To Add an Image to your Post, from somewhere on the web
- Click the first icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- Click the From URL tab, at the top of the window that just opened.
- Type a descriptive title for the image
- Type a description of the image, in the Caption box
- Choose whether you want the image aligned to the Left, Center, Right, or Default (None) format
- Type a link to the image
- Click the Insert into Post button
- To Add an Image to your Post, from your computer
- Click the first icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- Click the From Computer tab, at the top of the window that just opened.
- Click the Select Files button
- Choose the image or images, you want to use
- Click the Open or Select button, depending on if you have a PC or Mac
- After the image uploads, you can edit the image, by clicking the Edit Button
- Give the image a title
- Fill in the Alternate Text, which is what someone will see if the image doesn’t load
- Fill in a Caption that you wish to associate with the image
- Fill in a Description of the image
- If you want the person sent to another page if they click the image, fill in the Link URL, or click None
- Choose whether you want the image aligned to the Left, Center, Right, or Default (None) format
- Choose the desirable size for the image
- Now click on Save All Changes or if you changed your mind click on Move to Trash
- If you have already uploaded images, you’ll find them under the Media Library tab
To Add a Video to your post from your computer
- Click the second icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- If you have a video upgrade, you can upload your own videos
- Click the Select Files button and select the video file. Once the video has been uploaded you’ll see a message stating “This video is being processed”
- Check your media library, in a bit, and when your video is ready click Show
- Now enter the Title, Description, and Rating
- Click Insert into Post
To Add a Video to your post from another website
Just a Note. You are able to link and show your visitors videos for free, as long as they are not being stored on a WordPress Server.
- Click the second icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- Click on the From URL tab
- Here is a list of some common video websites
- Blip.tv
- DailyMotion
- Flickr Video
- Google Video
- Kyte.tv
- LiveVideo
- PodTech
- Redlasso
- Splashcast
- TED Talks
- Viddler
- Vimeo
- Vodpod
- YouTube
- Paste the link to the video you wish to upload
- Click the Insert into Post button
To Add Audio to your post from another website
- Click the third icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- Type the web address of the audio file you want to upload
- Give your audio file a title
- Click insert into post
To Add other Media to your post from your computer
- Click the fourth icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- Recognize that you can only upload the following types of files:
- jpg / jpeg: JPEG image files, which are normally used for photos on the internet
- png: PNG image files, which try to be good at showing photos and few color images
- gif: GIF image files, which are normally used when a photo has few colors and gradients
- pdf: Adobe PDF file
- doc / docx: Microsoft Word documents
- ppt / pptx: Microsoft Power Point documents
- odt: Sun Microsystems Open Office Document
- Click the From Computer tab
- Select the file you want to upload, then click Open or Select
- Click Insert into post
To Add other Media to your post with a URL
- Click the fourth icon next to the words Upload/Insert
- Recognize that you can only upload the following types of files:
- jpg / jpeg: JPEG image files, which are normally used for photos on the internet
- png: PNG image files, which try to be good at showing photos and few color images
- gif: GIF image files, which are normally used when a photo has few colors and gradients
- pdf: Adobe PDF file
- doc / docx: Microsoft Word documents
- ppt / pptx: Microsoft Power Point documents
- odt: Sun Microsystems Open Office Document
- Click the From URL tab
- Enter the web address (URL) of the file you want to upload
- Give the file a Title
- Click Insert into post
The Rest of the QuickPress Dashboard Page
The last two parts of the page, show you your recent drafts and stats on the activity of your blog. Recent Drafts are links to posts you have not made public yet. The Stats section shows you how many people are visiting your site and what they are looking at and searching for.
Posting the Proper Way
To finish off this post, I’m going to walk through the best way to post your articles. First click on the link labeled Posts, on your left sidebar. A new window will open titled, Add New Post.
In the big unlabeled box at the top of the page, enter the title of your post. You see under that, the same icons we talked about previously, that allow you to upload different forms of media. Under that is a mini word processor area. You will find the following text editing tools here:
Bold Text
Italic Text
Strike Through: Which people use to eliminate a thought, without deleting it. I’ve never understood this concept.
Unordered List: If this list your reading had little dots next to each item, instead of numbers, you’d have an unordered list.
Ordered List: The list format I’m using currently
Block Quote: When used white space, shows up, before and after a block quote element. It also insert margins for the block quote element.
Alignment Icons: Positions your text to the Left, Center or Right
Hyperlink Buttons: One allows you to create hyperlinks, while the other eliminates them.
Insert More Tag: When you decide that you want to cut off the article, you can insert the More tag to effectively split the post (mark where the excerpt officially ends).
Proofread Writing: Checks for spelling and grammar errors, based off of the preferences you set on your Profile page in WordPress.
Toggle Full Screen Mode: This will make the posting area take up your whole browser window.
Show / Hide Kitchen Sink: If toggled on, you’ll see additional text editing icons pop up. Toggle it on now!
HTML Styling Drop-down: This will allow you to quickly add HTML styles to your article.
Underline Text
Align Full: Will stretch your text spacing to make your left and right margins line up with each other.
Select Text Color
Paste as Plain Text
Paste as Word
Remove Formatting
Insert Custom Character
Outdent: Creates a paragraph, in which the first line is left justified and each additional line is indented.
Indent
Undo
Redo
Help: Gives you additional information on Rich Text editing
The next box is labeled Excerpt. You should create excerpts for all of your articles. It is a brief description of your article. By writing one, you allow your visitors to easily see what content you have that would be of interest. RSS feeds from sites that use excerpts for their articles are much preferred. Also search engines love the keyword heavy excerpts. So just take the time and write them.
It is considered a nice gesture to use trackbacks. If you write a post and reference a post from somewhere else, you should paste the URL to that post your referencing here. It provides website owners, with the ability to see who is linking to them. Think of it as a kind gesture.
In the Discussion area, you have to decide if you want others to be able to comment on your article. It’s in your best interest, search engine wise, to leave both of these boxes checked.
That leaves us with the last three editing areas. Once you write your post, you have to decide what to do with it. Under Publish, click on Save Draft, Preview or show it to the world, by clicking Publish. In the Publish section, there are other options concerning, who you want to see the post or if it should be published later.
That ends the “Posting Articles in WordPress” Post. In the next article, I’ll cover the Media, Links, Comments, Ratings and Poll links in your left sidebar.
WordPress Media, Links, Pages, Comments, and Ratings Explained
Finishing Up the Sidebar: Media, Links, Comments and Ratings
I’m assuming, you are logged into your WordPress.com account right now. At the top of your page, drift your mouse over the link titled My Dashboards. When you do, a drop down window will show all the blogs you currently have set up at WordPress.com. Click on one.
This article will cover, the rest of the left sidebar, not covered in previous posts. Pages will be the most complicated issue I’ll cover in this article; and I plan to cover it last.
If you click the link labeled Media in your side bar, you’ll be taken to your media library. Here you’ll see a list of all the different media types, you have uploaded to WordPress. You can sort or delete these files, either individually or as a group. If you click on the Add New link, which opened on your sidebar when you clicked Media, you be taken to a page, from which you can upload more media. For information on uploading media please refer to the previous post, Posting Articles in WordPress.
The Link hyper-link, if clicked will take you to a page that will list all the links you think are important. They are placed in a link category titled Blogroll. A Blogroll, is just a list of links. On the page titled Edit Links, which should be on your screen, you can delete and order those links currently in your blogroll.
If you click on the link labeled Add New, under the Links sidebar link, you are ready to add new important links. You can enter the following information on each link you add to your blogroll:
- A short name that you want to associate with the link
- The web address of the link your adding
- A description of what a person will find if they click on the link
- The category you wish the link to be associated with. You can create a new category here as well.
- Under the Target Option, it’s probably better to always click _none. Most people, don’t like a website that opens windows all over their screen.
- The Link Relationship area is were you describe the relationship you have with the person that posted the link.
- In the Advanced area of the Add a New Link page, there are a few advanced subjects to cover! An Image Address, would be a small photo you would want to be associated with a link.
- If you type in the address of a RSS feed for the link, WordPress displays the link to the site’s RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. With an RSS feed you can share the headlines from your blog. By adding the RSS feed to your blogroll, your users can easily gain access to this information at the same location as the link.
- In the note block, you can add any additional information about the link. Now give the link a rating, if you wish. Go to the top right hand corner of the page, decide if you want to keep the link private and then click save.
If you click on Link Categories, on your left sidebar, you can now sort your links into different categories. Enter a Link Category Name, that would be descriptive of the links it will contain. Add a Description for the link Category. Now click Add Category. If you want you can go back to the Edit page under Links, in your left side bar, and move your links into your newly created link categories.
By clicking the Comments link, in your left sidebar, you’ll be able to Approve, mark as spam, or trash any comments, all in one place. There are Bulk Actions, you can use to handle many comments with just a few clicks.
By clicking on the Ratings link, in your left sidebar, you can give commenters the ability to rate their favorite Posts, Pages, and Comments. You can enable these rating systems, by clicking on the tabs across the top of the screen. If you enabled ratings, by clicking on reports, you’ll see the ratings your posts, pages, and comments have received.
There is an option to add polls to your posts. You do this by setting up either a free or pay account with a company called PollDaddy. You can find out more information on that here, polldaddy.com, or check back for a later post.
Making Traditional Website Static Pages
You can create pages, on your site, that do not change. These are called static pages. You create these pages by clicking on Pages, in your left toolbar. You are now looking at the familiar text editing tool you saw when you created posts in the past. Give the page a title. Refer to the previous post, to learn how to use the text editing tools if needed. Decide if you want others to be able to comment on your static page.
Now on to the Attributes part of the page. Each of the pages you create will be listed in a menu that goes across the top of your website, down the left, or down the right side depending on the template you choose for your site. Each of these static pages can be all alone or they can be associated with other static or blog pages.
If you want this page to be at the top of your page hierarchy, leave the select box, under parent set at Main Page (no parent). If however you want it associated under another page, in the select box, select the page you want it associated with. Under Template, you can choose what template you want associated with this static page as well. Finally, click on the order of your hierarchy of pages if you don’t want them to follow the alphabetical default.
Now, click on Save Draft, Preview or Publish after you decide if this page should be available for public consumption.
If you want your new static page set as your home page, being the first page people see when they go to your site. Click on Settings, in your left sidebar. Then click reading. Now, under Front Page Displays click in the circle, next to a static page (select below). Select the Front page, or home page you want displayed and then click Save Changes, at the bottom of that page.
The next article will be about styling the appearance, or theme of your website. Then will move on to adding users, and finishing up with a review of all the final settings available in WordPress. You’ll be an expert then.
I hope this article was helpful.
The Appearance Tools: How to Change your Entire Site with a Click
Now for the reason most people use WordPress. You can change your entire site design with a few clicks. That’s right. The most daunting task a web designer faces, is handled in a few clicks.
I’m assuming you are logged into your account at wordpress.com and you have clicked on one of your blog names under the My Dashboard link at the top of your screen. Now, let’s change the design of your site. Click on Appearance, on your left tool bar.
The default theme is called Kubrick. You will see a preview of the theme, at the top of your screen along with a list of options.
What are Widgets
Widgets are tools that help your readers use your blog or website. Click on the link labeled widgets. You add widgets to your right toolbar, most of the time. You add them simply, by dragging and dropping them to the little box labeled sidebar on the right of your screen. You can then order them by continuing to drag and drop them inside of the sidebar. The most common widgets that everyone uses are Search, Archives, Categories, Pages, Top Posts, Links, and Akismet (a spam blocker).
Previous articles explain what each of these terms mean. I’ll briefly explain a bit about the widgets that are not easily understood.
Box.net file sharing: If you have an account at box.net (you can get 1 GB of space for free) you can create a folder, containing files that anyone you chose can access.
Category Cloud: Displays your categories in a list and increases the font weight/size to emphasize which categories are the most important.
Del.icio.us: del.icio.us, is an online service where you can manage and share your bookmarks with other people. With this plugin you can add a “Bookmark this page on del.icio.us” link to your posts or sidebar. This will allow your visitors to add your page directly into their del.icio.us profile and makes your blog more popular!
Flickr: This plugin allows users of WordPress to display their Flickr photos on their own site. Flickr, is a free photo sharing website.
Gravatar: A Gravatar is an image that represents you not only on WordPress, but can be used on most any social networking site. You can sign up for a free account at en.gravatar.com
Meebo: Meebo me lets you chat with your site visitors using your free Meebo account. Sign up for Meebo at Meebo.com.
Platial MapKit: Allows you to imbed a map lookup tool on your site. People have found it to be buggy.
RSS: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The RSS widget will let you display entries from any RSS feed. If you want to share the posts made on other sites this is the tool for you. To find a large list of feeds go to http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/rss/. If you find a feed you like click on the orange square with 3 white lines in it. This will take you to the feed. Copy the link that is in the top of your browser. Then click on the downward pointing arrow to the right of the tool labeled RSS, that you just dragged into your side bar. Paste the link into the top text box, where it states Enter the RSS feed URL here. Assign a title if you like, as well as how many posts and what data associated with each post you’r like to be displayed and then click Save.
RSS Links: Are links you provide to others, to reach your RSS feeds.
SocialVibe: Places an ad in the sidebar of your blog, where readers can engage and help you earn money for charity.
VodPod:The Vodpod videos widget lets you display image-links to your favorite videos from around the web in your sidebar. To use this tool you must sign up with vodpod. Then paste links to videos into the VodPod drop-down in your right sidebar.
What are Extras
These are general extras that you can enable for your entire blog. There may be an extra that will put a snow animation on the list (seasonal).
The extra labeled, Enable mShots site previews on this blog, is a bit complicated.Media Shots (mShots) enable anyone visiting your site to get a glimpse of the sites you are linking to without having to leave your site. By rolling over a link a visual preview will popup showing the linked site without requiring any clicks or a visit to the linked site. This is a nice extra, hence it is checked by default.
The Display a mobile theme extra should also be checked. It will automatically create a mobile version of your site for smart phone owners. Another reason WordPress is amazing!
Finally, leave the last box unchecked. By leaving the Hide related links extra unchecked you will increase your overall traffic and when is that a bad thing?
The Custom Header, Header Colors and Edit CSS Extras
By clicking on the Custom Header link, you can chose to hide your title, change the text color, change back to the default color, or upload your own custom header. As it states, if you chose to upload a custom header image make sure the dimensions are 740 x 192 pixels.
If you click the Header Colors link, you’ll be able to change the font color of your title, your slogan, revert back to the original colors, or click on advanced an enter the hex code for the text color you want. If you know what a hex code is use it, otherwise just change the colors using the other options.
The last option is Change CSS. If you want to pay $14.97 per year to change your CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) styling on your website, you can do that here as well in other ways. I’ll cover how to use CSS in a later post, because it is a little more advanced to cover it at this time.
Change the Theme Design Already
Now it’s time to change themes. It’s so simple. If you click on Appearance, in the left toolbar, you will be taken to a page listing the most popular themes. At the top of the page is your current theme. Probably Kubrick at this time. To see what your site will look like with another theme click on Preview under the name of each theme. There are 77 possible themes as of December 2009. If you like a design click on Activate and your done. To see your new design click on the Visit Site link at the top of your page.
That is everything there is to know about editting the appearance of your website at wordpress.com. In the next article I’ll cover every remaining topic being, Users, Tools, and Settings.