WordPress for Dummies

So you’ve started a new WordPress account, and you’re freaked out because there’s so freaking much going on, right? Well, I’ve whipped up a page that should exhaustively help you with your new WordPress blog. Or make you more confused. WHATEVER.

First, you need to register yourself, on the main page, and WordPress will send you a password to your email address, which is why you need to give WordPress a VALID email address. Your password to your new WordPress Blog will give you a login and a string of garbled letters and numbers. Use it to login.

Then you will see this screen. It’s your WordPress Dashboard, and it should greet you by your name in the left hand corner. Below it, should be a quote from Sympathy for The Devil:

(click to enbiggen)

Ignore that guy at the bottom. I need to deactivate this plugin so he goes away. SORRY, Printers.

At the top of the screen will be a big red box asking you if you want to change your password to something easy to remember.

If you do, click on the “Yes, Take Me To My Profile Page.”

Another way to access your WordPress Profile Page at any time is right here:

This is what the profile page looks like, before you change anything:

At the bottom of the page is this:

This is the area where you can change your password from something garbled to something that you can remember. Either way, make sure that the password is changed to something that the computer is happy with. You’ll know it’s happy when it says “STRONG.”

Then, to make it all legit, click the UPDATE PROFILE button. It’s blue. You can’t miss it.

The other thing to note on this page is this, which, I need to stress is very, very important for the purposes of this particular site. WordPress offers the ability to change how your name is PUBLICLY viewed. This may not be important on your normal blog, but here, if you want to change your name and be more anonymous, you can. You won’t be anonymous to any of the editors, but you can be to any of the readers:

That pretty much rules.

You can change your WordPress display name for each post if you’d like, although your user name will never change (user name is your login name).

Let’s get to posting your very first WordPress post. Isn’t this THRILLING?

There are two ways that you can do this. Okay, there are more like a gazillion, but for the sake of this WordPress for Dummies Tutorial, let’s go with this:

Click on the “Add New” button post on either the top of the WordPress Dashboard or the sidebar (either of which should be available from any of the screens you’re currently on) and it should pull up…

This fake blog entry is CLEARLY one of my best works, and it will probably win me a Grammy, so WATCH OUT WORLD.

Anyway, you can see where I have cleverly highlighted the Title (that’s where you put your Title in the Box) and the Text Box (where you put your blog in the box) and the category scrolly area.

There are a ton of categories in this particular blog, and if you don’t choose one, WordPress is set up to auto-choose a category, so don’t worry about it. Plus, you have your editors, who will HAPPILY take over for you and choose one that best fits your entry. Not a big deal.

If at any time while you’re writing your own Grammy-Winning blog, you have to take a break, simply hit the SAVE DRAFT button, and you can come back to it at any time.

You don’t generally want to leave your brilliant new WordPress blog without saving it, because occasionally WordPress will take it upon itself to log you out if it feels it’s being neglected. It’s a security thing, and technically it should auto-save your blog, but if it doesn’t, well, that sucks. TRUST ME, I’ve been there before and it makes me stabbier than generic toilet paper.

Let’s move on to the slightly more advanced parts of publishing a WordPress Blog.

At the top of your blog text box are some odd numbers and letters and things, that, if you’re familiar with other blog platforms like Blogger/Blogspot, or Microsoft Word, you probably recognize.

The B at the top of the toolbar will take anything you highlight and make it BOLD. Clicking it once again while the item is still highlighted will undo the BOLDNESS.

The ‘I’ in the WordPress Toolbar will take anything you highlight and italicize it. Click once more to cancel out italics.

And the ABC with a line through it is STRIKE THROUGH. Click again while the area is highlighted to cancel the Strike Through.

If you depress any of these buttons at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph, it will automatically add this function to any words after the button is depressed. Click once to turn it on, again to turn it off. When it is on, the button is dark grey and when it is off, the button is once again, the same light grey as the rest of the tool bar.

These next two buttons are there in the event that you want to make lists, numerical or bulleted.

The last thing I’ll show you on the WordPress Toolbar is the Link Maker:

First, you need to highlight the area that you want linked, then click the link button I have the arrow pointing to above.

Clearly, you will only want to add links IF you are not blogging anonymously.

And now, if you’re done editing, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for! The time to submit your stunning work to our editing slores!

And now you wait. We don’t have any formal way of saying, “Yer up, yo,” so you’re just going to have to check back. Hopefully, I can update this and include some sort of expected wait time for how long you should have to wait and see your masterpiece grace these pages, but as of now, I have NO idea.

Mostly because I’m stupid but also because I have no idea what sort of turnout (if any) this will have.

If you’re bored, I suggest that you check out the other posts and perhaps volunteer to build houses for the homeless or even offer some ways that the site can be improved. Because, obviously.