What Is WordPress?
With over 44% of the internet built upon it, WordPress lets users of any skill level quickly and easily create a website. And today I'm going to give you a quick beginner's guide of all things WordPress.
So before we get too deep into it, the first thing we need to ask ourselves is what exactly is WordPress? WordPress got its start way back in the '90s as a blogging platform and since then it has evolved into a complex content management system that's capable of building any website from a membership site to a forum to an online store.
There are so many reasons I love WordPress, and the first one being that it's free. Well, sort of. The platform is entirely free but there are hidden costs including hosting, a domain, plugins, and a theme, which can add up quickly. And then the other main benefit being that WordPress is extremely easy to customize. Whether you're making a blog, e-commerce site, or a huge online community, there's a wide range of themes and plugins available to help you create a unique browsing experience for your visitors.
WordPress is extremely powerful and as I mentioned before, it's also easy to use, which is a big reason that so much of the internet is built on it.
Choosing a Hosting Provider
So let's talk about all the things that you need to get started with WordPress. And the first thing is going to be to pick a good hosting platform. Before we dive into the details of the WordPress dashboard, we'd be remiss if we didn't explain the importance of picking a good hosting provider. Choosing the right hosting partner is essential to your website's success. In fact, it can make or break it. You want your website to be fast, reliable, scalable, and secure, plus it needs to fit within your budget. That may seem like a tall order, but there are plenty of amazing hosts out there and a great one that we recommend would be SiteGround.
SiteGround offers three plans which appeal to WordPress beginners and experts. It'll fit within any budget, with prices ranging from $15 to $40 a month. SiteGround runs specials often as well, so there's an excellent chance to get a great deal.
Now, there is a lot that goes into picking a good hosting provider, but thankfully for you, I've already done a video that runs down all of that. There'll be a link floating above me and I'll leave a link down in the video description. If you check that video out, it goes a lot more into depth about all things hosting.
How to Install WordPress
But with hosting out of the way, now let's talk about setting up WordPress. There are a lot of ways you can install WordPress, including through your hosting provider, manually installing it yourself, or installing it locally using something like Flywheel or MAMP Pro. Now, using your hosting provider is a really easy way to set up WordPress and that's another reason that we mentioned SiteGround before, because setting up WordPress through SiteGround is extremely easy. With SiteGround, you can quickly and easily install WordPress right through your hosting provider as well as set up your domain name as well. They let you either transfer an existing domain, buy a new domain, or even use a temporary domain that you can use to test out your website. All you have to do is follow through the tutorial, select that you want to use WordPress and it'll set it all up for you.
Now if you do need any additional help when it comes to setting up your WordPress site, I will link a blog article down in the video description. If you check that out it does have a step-by-step guide on setting up WordPress should you need a little more help.
Dashboard Tour: Updates
Now once you have your WordPress site installed, let's check out the dashboard itself. Now when you log in for the first time, you'll notice the WordPress toolbar on the top left side of the screen, and this contains all the tools and settings you need to begin building your website. Now if you go down here where it has updates, if you click this tab here, this lets you review any plugins, themes, or core files that you need to be updated. You want to keep your software updated for functionality and security. Otherwise, your site could fall victim to hackers or at the very least, it could break. Here you can see that there's some plugins and some themes that I have that need updated. And to do that you can just select the ones that you want to update and then click update your plugins, themes, or whatever else you need to update on your site.
Dashboard Tour: Posts, Media, Pages, and Comments
Now if we go back over here to the toolbar, we can see Posts as well. Here you can create new posts or edit existing ones. You can also set up your blog's categories and tags, which is great for keeping our content organized, helps with SEO, and makes it easy for users to find what they're looking for.
Over here is the Media tab, and WordPress comes with this own media library where you can add and edit images for your site. And all of the media that you've added will be over here in your media library.
Next, we have Pages over here, and this is what allows you to add pages to your website. Now although pages are created much like posts, there are some differences. These pages will appear in the main navigation allowing visitors to browse your content easily. Another difference is that posts enable categories and tags, whereas pages do not.
Then we can check out the Comment section. And when you publish posts to your website, WordPress automatically provides a comment section for each post. Your site's visitors can add remarks to your posts, providing interest for other readers and opportunity for you to boost engagement.
Dashboard Tour: Appearance, Plugins, and Users
Now some of the most beneficial tools in WordPress are contained within the Appearance tab, right here. Here you can install themes, customize them, add widgets to display important information, create navigation menus, and so much more. Now depending on which theme you choose, these tools would vary. If you're using a full site editing block theme like 2023, you're limited to themes and editor, whereas premium WordPress themes such as Divi generally have more options, including the ability to edit your themes' files.
Now another super important area is going to be your plugins. Here, WordPress offers extendability to its platform through the use of plugins. This allows you to add whatever functionality you need, such as chatting with visitors, tracking your site's performance, or hundreds of other tasks. Here you can see which plugins we already have installed. It'll also show you if there's any new updates available. And if you want to add a new plugin, you simply can click Add New Plugin here, and this is where you can browse all of the plugins available that you can install. There's a nice, simple search bar over here so you can search for types of plugins that you're looking for. So for instance, if I was looking for a Google Maps plugin, I could search for that and then it'll bring us up any relevant plugins available. And then once you find one you like, you can just click install. You can also search over here by featured, popular, recommended, and favorites plugins as well.
Then if we go back over here and look some more, we have the Users tab and this allows you to manage your site's users. If you want to add a new user, you can simply click add new user and go through through all the steps here to create a new user for your site.
Now the Tools section over here in the dashboard offers features to manage and maintain your site. You can import or export WordPress posts, pages, and media through an XML file, monitor your site security and performance, or export or erase users' personal data to maintain GDPR compliance.
Then down here we have the Settings tab. Here you can set your site's title as well as a tagline, you can set a homepage, default media sizes, privacy, and so much more. And that'll all be taken care of here in the settings area.
So those are the basics of navigating the dashboard of WordPress.
Customizing with WordPress Themes
Now what we want to talk about is customizing the look and feel of your website. And the best way to do that is through a theme. You can kind of think of a WordPress theme as the face for your website. When a potential customer lands on your site, you want them to find the information they're looking for and be engaged visually. That's why finding the best WordPress theme for your overall needs is super important.
Once you find the perfect companion, there are two ways to install your theme. You can search for and install a theme from the WordPress directory, or you can upload a premium theme such as Divi. Sometimes you can also find themes through your hosting provider as well. SiteGround for instance offers you the choice to install recommended themes. You can browse through the WordPress directory of themes and you can also upload a theme as well through them. Depending on your hosting provider, these options may appear different but function similarly.
Creating Content: Posts and Pages
So earlier I briefly showed you the Posts and Pages, but let's talk about how you can create content for your website. So let's go back to our WordPress dashboard and we'll talk about Posts and Pages a little more in depth. So let's go back to Posts here and if you want to create a new post, all you have to do is up at the top here click 'Add New Post'. Now if you are using a premium theme like Divi, you have the option to use the Divi Builder to do this. And you can also use the default editor if you want as well. If you're not using something like Divi, this option won't pop up and you'll use the default editor.
So first you want to create a title for your post. 'My Awesome Post'. And we'll use the default editor here. Now here you can see what the editor looks like. And to add content, you'll want to go up here to the top left and click the plus icon here. This will show you all the different type of blocks you can add to your post. Things like a paragraph, heading, any quotes, code, various media like an image, file, audio, etc., etc. That'll all be over here in the different blocks and you can see you have a lot of different blocks to choose from.
Once you have all of your content for your post set up here, over here on the right also, you can assign it to a category, add any tags, set a feature image and excerpt and get that all set up. And then when you're ready you just click 'Publish' here to publish your post.
Pages are similar as well. So let's go back to the WordPress dashboard and we'll go to Pages and then we'll click 'Add New' to add a new page. It's similar to post. So since I have Divi installed, it'll ask if I want to use Divi or we can use the default editor. Make a title. Then we can add content the same way. So I'll go up here and click the plus sign and it'll show us all the blocks that we can use. So you can see if I wanted to add an image I could click 'Image' here, choose an image from our media library. We'll use this picture of some soap and put it in. And then we can go through here and customize to our heart's content. The block editor is super powerful and lets you customize your posts and pages to be exactly how you want them. Then once you have all of the content the way you want, you can go up here to the top right and click 'Publish' to publish your page.
Conclusion
Now those are just the very basics of navigating and getting some content set up on your WordPress site. There is a lot more to WordPress, especially when it comes to customizing your site, and rather than going through all of that, I'm going to leave a link to that blog article down in the video description I talked about. It goes a lot more into depth and some more tips and tricks, including things like how to conduct a speed test on your site, setting up your SEO, and so much more.
Thank you so much for watching this video. Hopefully you found it helpful. Before you go though, make sure you check out some of our other content. And I'll see you in the next one.
