In my previous article, How to Install WordPress on your Computer Using WAMP Server, I showed you guys step by step on how get your WordPress ready for use. here, I’m going to be showing you how to navigate the admin area (Dashboard).
In order to access your WordPress dashboard, you’ll first need to log in to your WordPress site. Once you’ve logged in to your WordPress site, you’ll be redirected to the Dashboard.
How to Navigate the WordPress Dashboard
The WordPress Dashboard allows you to control all of the behind-the-scene details of managing your site. Once you get yourself familiar with the dashboard, you’ll realize it’s very easy to use and navigate.
First we’ll take a look at the dashboard home screen. After you first log in, you’ll see a top welcome box from WordPress with some quick links to help you get started. (See diagram below)
The Dashboard Sections
At a Glance section: Here you’ll see the number of post, pages, categories and tags for your site’s content. You’ll also see discussion information for comments, like the total number of comments, and numbers for those approved, pending or marked as spam.
In the Right now section, you’ll also see the theme you’re currently running on your site and the number of widgets and your current version of WordPress.
Activity section: This shows you, recent comments. Here you can quickly unapprove or approve comments, reply, edit, mark as spam or send to trash, too.
If you scroll back up to the second column, you’ll find the Quick Draft section of the WordPress Dashboard. QuickPress will allow you to publish or save a draft of a post straight from this screen, which is great for quickly publishing content. You just won’t have all of the formatting options like you do in the WordPress post editor.
The Next section is for recent drafts of posts. Once you start creating posts and if they’re saved as drafts, the five most recent drafts you’ve started will be visible here.
In the WordPress News Section, These are Updates from the official WordPress project and the WordPress Planet feed.
If you’d like to customize what sections you see from the WordPress dashboard, visit the Screen Options tab on the top right side of your screen. Click the arrow to expand this section and you’ll see checkboxes for each of the sections usually included in the WordPress Dashboard. To remove any of the sections, just unclick the checkbox beside the section you’d like to hide. You can also choose the number of columns for the screen layout, too.
If we return to the Dashboard Home, you can also expand each of the sections by clicking the arrow to the right. You can also drag and drop the boxes to change the order.
In addition to the WordPress Dashboard Home screen, the other major component of the WordPress Dashboard is the left-hand navigation menu. This navigation menu provides links to all of the WordPress administration screens for posts, the media library, pages, comments, appearance options, plugins, users, tools and settings. We’ll explore the rest of these menu items in more detail in the upcoming tutorial; keep watching out for my updates.
See The 6 Reasons Why We Use WordPress
If you ever find yourself needing help, just click the Help tab in the upper corner. Click the arrow to expand and you’ll now see helpful information that walks through the overview, navigation, layout and content of the WordPress Dashboard. From here, you can also find a link to the WordPress.org Codex documentation and to the support forums.
Should you have any Question, Comment or Contribution, leave it in the comment box below so we can attend to it
