Building your WordPress website

This page was linked from Building a WordPress website from scratch

By now you should have a WordPress site installed locally (on XAMPP) or online (on a CPanel host), you have backed up your database and have done nothing apart from complete the initial wizard and crated an admin account.

Choose and install your theme first

Beware: It is tempting to start installing plugins and playing around in WordPress straight away but if you want to install a commercial theme (with sample data) playing around before installing the theme and associated data may break if you have customised your site (restoring an earlier backups will allow you to roll back if need be).

When purchasing a WordPress theme I always insist on a theme that also includes sample data (images and database configuration) as many hours if not weeks have gone into making the site look exactly like the theme you have purchased. Don’t worry if the theme you really like does not come with sample data/content you can fully replicate the theme with enough time and effort.

Each theme type has different ways to import the sample data so be prepared to read up on that (but usually you install WordPress, apply the theme, copy the sample images/content into the htdocs/wp-content folder then import a SQL database backup over the database in phpMyAdmin and activate the theme).

Once a theme is working you can the use the WordPress features to edit the menus, heading, links, pages, posts, colours and start adding your continent and deleting the sample content. This approach is a it different that building a webpage from scratch but you will save a whole lot of time.

WordPress Basics

Login to or domain by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.
WordPress will display a getting started strip at the top of your dashboard.

WordPress Online Help

Dashboard

The WordPress Dashboard is the main page of your administration interface to WordPress. You can access just about everything in the Dashboard (unless you have a plugin that limits or hides options for some users).

View the official WordPress dashboard help articles here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Dashboard_Screen

Media

The media library allows you to view, edit and upload images and video to your WordPress website

View the official WordPress dashboard help articles here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Media_Library_Screen

Pages and Posts

WordPress has two kinds of content types you can publish (Pages and Posts). Pages are like traditional webpages that you can create for static pages like “Contact Us”, “Products” pages and the other types of content pages are “Posts”.

View the official WordPress Pages help articles here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Pages

View the official WordPress Post help articles here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts

Posts are used for daily, weekly writings like “Articles”, “Reviews” etc. Posts can be grouped together into collections like “Articles” or “Testimonials” where pages are just pages.

Menus

Most themes have at least one menu, some themes use multiple menus (primary header menu, secondary header, footer etc). You can create a menu by clicking on Appearance then Menus in the Dashboard. A menu item can link to a Page, Post or Custom URL or even a whole category.

View the official WordPress dashboard help articles here: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Menu_User_Guide

Widgets

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.