WordPress for Beginners by wpwebwizards.com is a presentation deck used for my WordPress workshops, see http://meetup.com/webhelp/ for more information. This deck covers the basics of the WordPress dashboard, with the workshop structured around answering questions along the way, and with lots of time at the end for more specific questions to be answered.

1. WordPress for
Beginners
by Rob Marlbrough
For WiFi, connect to: bcenter

2. Logging In to WP
● Always remember: /login or /admin
Security Concerns
● Strong passwords, don’t get hacked
● Use LastPass.com or 1Password.com
● Avoid using “admin” as username
● Limit Login Attempts plugin minimum
● All in One WP Security and Firewall

3. The WordPress Admin Screens
● Toolbar on top
● The Dashboard
● Posts
● Media
● Pages
● Comments
● Appearance
● Plugins
● Users
● Tools
● Settings

4. Admin Dashboard “At a Glance”

5. ● Posts are dated blog posts
○ Sorted by date, or category, or tags
○ Excerpts or Full output options
○ Permalinks sets the web address style
○ Used for blogs, news, articles, updates
● Pages are static web pages
○ No dates, no categories, no tags
○ Used for About, Contact, Team, Support
Posts vs. Pages

6. Categories
● Large bucket of collected content
● Useful for menu navigation
● No more than 10-20 main categories
Tags
● Small drops of content tags
● Useful to form tag clouds
● Hundreds of tags
Categories vs Tags

7. ● Upload photos, PDFs, other media
● Upload & embed from a post or page
● Drag/drop files for easy bulk uploads
● Editing, scaling, and cropping online
● Library of all images to share site-wide
Media Library

8. ● Manage comments made on blog posts
● Comment spam is a big concern
● Use Akismet for comment filtering
● Switch to Facebook Comments or
Social Comments (Disqus)
● Comments can be moderated,
manually approved before they appear
- but slows engagement.
Comments

9. ● Themes (Upload custom themes*)
● Customize
● Widgets
● Menus
● Optional: Header & Background
(Theme dependent)
● Editor* (edit/break theme files
directly - dangerous) *self-hosted only
Appearance Section

10. ● Extend functionality of WordPress
● Search and install from the WordPress
Free Plugin Repository
● Upload plugin .zip files (premium)
● Activate/Deactivate plugins
● Keep plugins updated at all times
● Breaking the site vs. site being hacked
Plugins* (Self-hosted Only)

11. ● Add, Edit, Remove users
● Default Roles, levels of permissions
○ Subscriber: Read-only
○ Contributor: Create content, Submit for
Review - cannot publish
○ Author: Create and Publish own content
○ Editor: Create and Publish all content
○ Admin: Editor + all site config, themes,
plugins
Users

12. ● PressThis browser bookmarklet
● Categories & Tags converter
● Import (Blogger, Tumblr, WP, etc)
● Export (Full w/ images, or Partial)
Tools

13. ● General: Site title & tagline
● Writing: blog posts options
● Reading: Posts or Static Front Page,
Syndication (RSS) options
● Discussion: Comments & moderation
● Media: Default sizes
● Privacy: Search engine visibility
● Permalinks: Blog post address format
Settings

14. Questions and Answers
- Yoast SEO
- Photography themes
- e-Commerce / Digital Content
- Selecting themes and plugins

15. Don’t Be Afraid Of
Clicking Around!
Bad things have confirmations. There is a trash.
Posts and Pages have revisions/history. Holler for
help.

16. Thank You for
Attending!
Take a business card, email me with any follow-
up questions or want help with your site.
Rob
rob@wpwebwizards.com
http://wpwebwizards.com/