WP-Admin Area And Dashboard Settings

These days WordPress has drastically taken over web, especially for small business people want their websites in less time with low cost. So the first thing comes to mind is a web CMS and WordPress is that cms that is being widely used in more than 30% of the websites overall internet.

And that is a big success, every new developer or newbie in tech knows the installation of WordPress and using it by installing some theme and updating content of the website.

But there is more than that but being familiar to wp-admin dashboard settings is quite necessary in bigger picture, its necessary to know the followings:

• How to Login to WordPress
• How to change theme of your website
• WordPress plugins area
• WordPress basic settings
• WordPress users section

How to Login to WordPress admin area

There are two ways to login to WordPress dashboard, if you are using localhost or you are using a website domain, basically the basic process is same but i am going to explain it more for newbies.

1. Accessing WordPress admin area on localhost: If you are using WordPress to build your website on localhost then it depends upon the basic root folder how you are accessing it, mostly we do it http://localhost/website-name/wp-admin.
   
   
2. Now that differs if you have created a website and placed a folder in htdocs and structure of your folder is like   C:\xampp\htdocs\webiste-name then https://localhost/website-name/wp-admin is correct way but if your folder arrangement is something like this. C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\website-name then you can access WordPress admin are by writing this in browser URL : http://localhost/wordpress/website-name/wp-admin , you see your folder structure defines path of your WordPress admin area on localhost.
   
   
3. Accessing WordPress admin area on your domain name: If you are accessing the admin area on your online domain name, a domain name is something like “www.xyz.com” , through that way you are going to write http://www.xyz.com/wp-admin, so this will take you admin area but again it depends upon if you have placed WordPress main file index.php in public.html folder.

How to Change theme of your website

The best thing about WordPress is that you don’t have to stick to one layout before finalization of your website layout. You have this freedom to change the look and feel as you want.

Just after logging to WordPress Goto Appearance Menu on left hand side or left sidebar menu, and you will goto new screen showing all themes installed on your site and one that activated will be showing customize button, that is your currently activate theme, like we see in the picture below

WordPress Plugins Area

Do you want to check which plugins are installed in your WordPress website, ok click Plugins section right below Appearance in left hand side menu-bar in admin area. Browser tab will navigate to new page, showing all the plugins installed on your website.

Those which are in function and running will show a Deactivate link option below plugin name while others show an option of activation like in image below.

*Note: Keep one thing clear in mind, themes or plugins installed means those are lying in your website folder. Their files are copied in your website folders but those are not activated, so are nonfunctional unless activated.

WordPress basic settings

This is most important section in WordPress admin dashboard. Here you can set global settings of your website like the name of Website, its tag line and URL, most of these settings are set during initial installation wizard, where we write site title, a bird eye view of settings are highlighted in following image


On clicking the settings menu you will navigate to this section, the reading sub menu under settings is also an important part in determining the website’s landing page or front page as in picture below. You set it that landing page should show the blog posts or a static page.

Its your choice if you want your visitors to see the latest posts or a different page, to set a static page check the option static page and set a page to be the homepage of your website.

To add a new page goto Pages Menu and add a new page, add your desired information in description field of the page and now homepage will show this information and every user accessing your website will first see this page in start by selecting these options.

WordPress users section

Users menulink will take you to all users, screen by default an admin user will be created, which is created during initial configurations or installations. If you want to allow some users to your website’s content you can add these user from here by clicking on Add New button on top of page highlighted in image below. By default a new WordPress user can have different User Roles from Subscriber, Author, Editor, Contributor or Administrator like you. Now main thing what these users have control over is described here WordPress User roles and Capabilities, Enjoy this good read this will explain everything about user roles.