Articles on: 3. Building Your Website

3.1.1. Dashboard Overview for WordPress

1. Logging In

  • Go to your website’s URL and add: /wp-admin
  • Example: www.yoursite.com/wp-admin
  • This brings you to the login screen, where you’ll enter your credentials. Once logged in, you will land on the Dashboard.




2. User Profile


In the top-right corner, click your username to edit your profile.


Here you can:

  • Update personal details
  • Change your password



3. Posts 


They are dynamic content entries that are displayed in reverse chronological order—newest at the top. 


They are typically used for:

  • Blog articles
  • News updates
  • Announcements
  • Editorial content



4. Media Library


  • Add images, PDFs, videos, and other files here.
  • After uploading, click on a file to get its URL — useful for download buttons and links.



5. Pages


Pages work just like posts but are usually static (e.g., About, Contact).

  • Create a new page (e.g. “About Me”)
  • WordPress will auto-generate the page URL (slug), but you can edit it
  • Example: change /about-me to /about or /about-melissa to match an existing site structure.



6. Appearance


Themes
  • Go to Appearance > Themes
  • Here you can browse the theme repository
  • Or install your own custom theme
  • Once activated, it adds options like a Customizer and changes the look of your site


Menus
  • Create a new menu (e.g. “Main Navigation”)
  • Assign it to a location (e.g. Primary Menu)
  • Add pages or custom links and save



7. Plugins


Just like themes, plugins extend functionality.

  • Go to Plugins > Add New and install plugins
  • You can activate/deactivate plugins easily



8. Users


See a list of users and their roles:

  • Administrator – full access
  • Editor – manage content
  • Author / Contributor – write posts
  • Subscriber – basic access



9. Settings Overview


General
  • Change your site title and tagline
  • Never manually change your WordPress Address or Site Address — this can break your site


Writing
  • Controls default post categories/formats — usually safe to leave alone


Reading
  • Assign your Home page
  • Leave the Posts page empty - this way you'll be able to create your own custom blog page
  • Set how many blog posts show per page (this is not for the custom blog page, this is mostly for the Search and Category pages)
  • Disable search engine indexing if this is a staging site (this is good for SEO so your staging site would not be indexed by Google)


Discussion
  • Control comments settings
  • Completely disable them if you prefer


Media
  • Adjust default image sizes
  • Thumbnail: 800 x 800px
  • Medium: 1500 x 1000px
  • Large: 2500 x 1500px


  • Always choose Post Name for clean, SEO-friendly URLs


Privacy
  • WordPress auto-creates a Privacy Policy page — customize it for your site


Updated on: 29/07/2025