If you’re like me and have realized the impressive power of WordPress, whether as a CMS or just simply a blog, then you’re probably quite familiar with the frequent WordPress update notifications in your dashboard. And probably also like me, you’re zealous about always being up-to-date and taking advantage of the latest featured and newfangled functions.

WordPress makes it super easy to do an automatic update to your installation (and even to your beloved plugins). So why not just do it?!? I’ll tell you why:

because your theme might not support the new version yet.

Before upgrading to the latest and greatest WordPress update, you’ll want to check in with the WordPress theme author for compatibility before you go and make the leap.

Question: How do I know what version of WordPress I’m currently using?

See? It's right here! In the top left corner.

Answer: The answer is right under your nose! Simply login to your WordPress admin dashboard (in most cases, located at yourspecificsitedomain.com/wp-admin) and it’ll be displayed in the upper section of the dashboard home page.

Don’t worry… You’re not alone. I overlooked this for years.

Sometimes we just like to over-complicate things for ourselves, don’t we?

If you’re looking for assistance with your WordPress based website or perhaps a brand new web design in Redding, California - please feel free to contact me using my easy contact form!

Let’s face it: when you’re still new at WordPress, even the easiest of tasks to even the brainiest of computer geeks can be like solving a word puzzle devised by some superior alien race.

Don’t worry, I get it. I was there not so long ago myself. So lets take a look at how to login to your WordPress administrative control panel, affectionately named the “Dashboard”.

Here are your super-simple 3 easy steps:

1. Assuming your WordPress installation is in the root of your public folder (“public_html”), your administrative login is located at http://www.yourdomainnamehere.com/wp-admin
   • For regular non-jedi users like the commenting public – it’s at http://www.yourdomainnamehere.com/wp-login
2. Enter your WordPress user name into the ‘Username’ box
3. Enter your WordPress password into the ‘Password’ box, then click ‘Log In’
4. Voila! You’re in. Ok, that’s not really a step. But just the three steps just seemed so lonely without this one

A picture says more than a thousand words.
WordPress makes it easy for you to add images to your WordPress site. There are 2 steps involved to inserting an image into a post. First, the image file must be uploaded onto your web server before it can be inserted into a post. The second step is to actually insert the image into the post in the appropriate location.

The simplest way to do this is to use the “Add Media” function on the page/post screen (see the Upload/Insert buttons to the left of the “Visual” and “HTML” tabs). Choose the appropriate button depending on whether you are adding photos, videos, audio, or miscellaneous media (e.g. PDF files). This method will complete both steps as outlined above.

In the “From Computer” area of the screen you need to upload the desired image file. NOTE: Before hitting the “Upload from Computer” button it is recommended that you select the “Browser Uploader” instead of using the default Flash Uploader.

Click on the "Browser Uploader" link in the lower right for a simpler, more stable upload

After selecting the “Browser Uploader”, hit the “Browse…” button and choose the desired image file on your computer. Then, hit the “Upload” button. Your image file is now on your web server.

Make sure you give the image an appropriate title, as well as a relevant description if desired. Choose the desired alignment and size, and hit the “insert into post” button. Your image is now inserted into the post at the location where your cursor was last active.

Every time you upload an image to your web server it is added to the “Gallery” of images that are available for that blog. If you want to insert the same image into another post go to the “Gallery”, hit the “Show” link next to the image title, and then follow the same instructions to insert that image into another location or post.

This time, if you want to use an image you already uploaded, use the Gallery tab and then click 'show'. NOTE: The image shows the word 'hide' because it is already shown.

As you likely know by now, your WordPress blog-based website has many ways to publish content within, such as pages, posts and comments. In this tutorial, I am going to focus on the subject of Pages, explaining briefly what makes them different than posts and comments. Next I will take you step by step through adding a new page to your WordPress website.

Pages and Posts are very similar in their methods to publish. In many cases, they can even be displayed almost identically at your WordPress. The main difference between the two is that Pages are by design static while Posts can be static by are by design typically dynamic. In brief this simply means that pages are usually used to present long standing information so once you publish a page it will remain visible to the viewers until you remove them.

Posts on the other hand are most commonly used to present time sensitive or even frequently changing information and typically in chronological order.  If the administrator of a WordPress site chooses a number of posts to display in a specific location, for instance five, the standard practice is for WordPress to display the five most recent posts in the designated category or with the specified tags. (I will explain categories and tags in greater detail at a later date.)

Steps to Adding New Pages

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard. If you don’t already know how to do this, please read my tutorial here first.
2. To go to the Pages main menu, click on the word ‘Pages’ in the left sidebar of your Dashboard. Your sidebar items may or may not be expanded to show their sub items. You will not need to expand them this time but, if you are simply curious, you may click the down-pointing triangle to the right of each title.
   

   You will find Pages below Links in the sidebar

3. Now that you have reached the Pages main dialog, Click on ‘Add New’ near the upper left of screen. This will open a blank page ready for you to fill in. It’s going to feel much like writing an email, just with a few extra options involved, so don’t be intimidated!
   

   You will see a list of any existing pages, as seen in this example taken from my client's dashboard

4. In the top blank white box, give your new page a title. In most cases it helps to be concise because this title will be how your page is listed in the navigation menu of your site. If possible, try to keep it to 3 or 4 short words.
5. Create the content of your new page. The next blank white box below the title is where the content goes. If you have ever used email or word processing software, you will see some very familiar buttons at the top of it, including text formatting like bold, italic and strike-through, font color, underline, text alignment left, center and right and pre-formatted options in the drop-down menu titled “Format”. In the format submenu, you can designate the way WordPress should stylize a block of text you have highlighted. For example, Paragraph (or normal formatting), Address (generally italic) and Header (generally larger and bolder than Paragraph).
   1. Editing Modes. There are two modes in which to edit your content in WordPress: using the Visual mode tab or the HTML mode tab, both at the upper right of the content box. In most cases you will use the default Visual mode as it presents in a “what you see is what you get” method. In the event that you need to do more advanced editing to the end product using HTML, you can use the HTML mode tab which will show all the coding markup while you edit. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, it is unlikely you will need to use this.Your WordPress page can contain much more than just simple text.
   2. Multimedia (photos/songs/video). You can use the multimedia buttons just right of “Upload/Insert” at the top of the content box to place photos, music and video into your pages. Upon clicking on the relevant boxes, you will be prompted either to upload a file from your computer, provide the address of such content that is already hosted at another website or to select a multimedia file you have already uploaded which will be in your Gallery. Click here for a tutorial on inserting pictures, music and video.
   3. Don’t Sweat It! Feel free to experiment with your content. You don’t have to worry about wrecking anything. The New Page dialog you are at is isolated to affecting just the new page. If you get frustrated and lost, you can always click “Move to Trash” at the far upper right in red to throw it away and start over!
6. Choose where your new page will appear in the navigation menu. This is accomplished in the right sidebar under Attributes. If your new page is going to be a top level item on the menu bar, you can leave the default Parent selection of “Main Page (no parent)”. However, if you would like your new page to show as a sub-menu item under a parent, then choose the menu item you would like to be its parent.Next, if your WordPress theme has multiple templates for page layouts, pick the one that fits the way you want your new page to be displayed in the Template drop-down menu.Lastly, under Order is a box with a zero in it by default. If you replace this with a number, it will designate which order position your new page will appear in either the Main Menu or Sub-Menu, depending on whether you chose a parent and if there are other items in it’s same menu location.
   

   This is found in your New Page dialog's right sidebar

7. Choose whether you will allow Comments and Pingbacks. Allowing comments will mean that readers, most likely with a required approval from you depending on how you have your site configured, can leave their responses to your comments. When approved, these comments are displayed below the comment in a discussion thread with information about the commenter. In my opinion, allowing comments makes any page subject to become a discussion and therefore it would potentially have a “bloggy” feel. If your content is informational by nature and doesn’t really need the input of the public, you might choose to uncheck the “Allow Comments” option. Pingbacks are a method to notify you when somebody on another website provides a link to your page you are creating. By allowing this, you will be notified when somebody references your content and you can therefore investigate whether you approve the usage of your content and how it is presented. I have not seen a way that pingbacks visually effect the presentation of my original content, so I generally leave this option on.
8. Publish or Preview the page. Your required information is now complete. If you click on Preview in the upper right corner of the New Page dialog, you will see a preview of how the page will look to the public. This is an option if you want to avoid prematurely allowing anybody to reach your content.If you click on Publish, your new page will then appear where you chose to place it once you revisit your site. (Note: if you do not see the new page, click on your browser’s refresh button to make sure it is loading the latest content.)

   See the examples in the screenshot below - you may click to see larger size. On the left, I put the new page as order “2″ but with no parent (on this particular site, ‘Home’ is always present in the menu so it essentially is position order “0″). On the right, I chose ‘Carriers’ as the new page with order “99″ to be sure it went to the bottom.

   

   Notice on the left the New Page has no parent, where on the right Carriers is the parent

So you just got the keys to your new bright and shiny WordPress-based website. It’s feature-packed. It’s attractive. It’s got all kinds of spots to put valuable information about your area of specialty. And it’s all yours, baby! There’s just one thing you forgot to ask the geek who set it up for you to show you…

How do I manage this newfangled thing?!?

Fortunately for you, WordPress is actually user-friendly take on the once daunting process of building a website. The first step to adding new or modifying your existing material is getting logged in. So let’s get started – it’s going to be quick and easy.

Steps to Logging in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard

1. Open your web browser of choice (for example, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome or even -gasp- Internet Explorer). Your administrative login panel lives at a web address, or URL, and this is how we’re going to reach it.
   

   Your web browser icon probably looks like one of these.

2. Type your admin login address into your browser’s address bar, then hit enter. If your website is purely WordPress-based (as opposed to a traditional HTML website that ALSO has a blog on it), your admin login address lives at http://www.yourwebaddress.com/wp-admin .
   

   Example: Logging-in using Safari.

3. Type your Username and Password into their respective fields and hit ‘Login’. If you did not build your WordPress site on your own, your web professional or helpful nephew Skip should have provided you with this.
   

   Right smack-dab in the center you should see this.

4. Lo and behold! You’ve made it! The very next screen you will see, provided that you entered the correct login credentials, will be the standard WordPress Dashboard.
   

   Your Dashboard should look a lot like this with minor variables. Click on image to see full size.

   Your Dashboard is the place from where you will accomplish tasks such as:

• Creating new static content Pages
• Creating new blog Posts
• Approving Comments left on your Posts and Pages by readers and subscribers
• Installing WordPress Plugins that help you to accomplish more advanced tasks on your site
• Creating new Users of various permission levels for collaborators who want to help you build your WordPress site
• and many more tasks from simple to advanced. The sky is the limit!

So now you’ve made into your WordPress Administrative Dashboard. For tutorials on how to accomplish specific tasks while logged in, check the WordPress Development page under Blog & Tutorials for more how-tos.