• Home
  • Rapid Startup Sequence
  • Quoted
  • Who We Are
  • Write For Us
  • Contact

Mighty Little Startups

Take your startup from mini to mighty

Lesson 5 – The Anatomy of WordPress

  • by Mark Patchett
  • in Part 2 – Build & Launch · Start Your Own Startup

What we’re going to cover

    • 1. The elements that make up a WordPress site
    • 2. How to edit the elements

After this lesson you’ll have a solid understanding of the WordPress backend and how to tweak your site.

**Please note: WordPress has recently given the backend a nice facelift, so your admin section may look a little different – all the navigation is exactly the same ; )

1. The elements of a WordPress site

Every theme is unique, so comes with different options. The are however some core WordPress elements that will remain somewhat consistent across all themes.

We’re going to go over the consistent elements.

For more “theme specific” info you should refer to your theme documentation, which is located in the original file you downloaded from ThemeForest and unzipped. (Assuming you downloaded the “MainFiles” as opposed to the “WordPress Install File”)

WordPress is broken down into roughly 7 main sections.

  • Pages: Permanant content, such as contact pages, about us, privacy policies and landing pages displaying blog posts etc
  • Posts: Used for frequently updated pieces of content, such as blog posts or news. Posts can also be organised into categories.
  • Menus: The navigation of your site. Menus include your main navigation, footer navigation and so on.
  • Widgets: Widgets are cool little add ons such as email signup forms, social media writemyessayfast.co.uk boxes for displaying all your cool Facebook friends, highlights for the most popular posts on your blog and so on.
  • General settings: There are two sets of “settings” here. Sitewide settings that you will generally set once, and plugin settings. Some plugins (we’ll cover these in the next lesson) will be controled via this area.
  • Theme settings: Here you will edit things like the colour and general set up of your theme. Many themes also have other options such as social media buttons controlled in this section.
  • Plugins: Add ons that allow your site do pretty much anything you want. From taking payments to creating contact forms. (We’ll cover this next lesson.)

2. How to edit WordPress elements

To kick off, login to your WordPress site backend (www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin)

Creating pages in WordPress

We’re going to create a “Contact Us” page

  1. Hover over “Pages” in the sidebar then select “Add New”
  2. 1-Creating-Pages-In-Wordpress

  3. Under “Enter title here” type “Contact Us” without the “”
  4. In the main body type whatever, perhaps, “We’d love to hear from you…”
  5. Select “Publish”
  6. 2-Creating-Pages-In-Wordpress

  7. You can then “View page” to have a look

Creating posts in WordPress

  1. Hover over posts then select “Add New”
  2. 1-how-to-create-a-post-in-wordpress

  3. Under “Enter title here” type “My first post!” without the “”
  4. In the main body type whatever, perhaps, “This is some really interesting content, don’t you think?”
  5. Next, we’ll organise your post. Select “+ Add new category” on the right sidebar
  6. 2-Creating-posts-in-wordpress

  7. Give a relevant title then click “Add new category”
  8. 3-Creating-Post-Categories-In-Wordpress

  9. Then scroll back up and “Publish”
  10. 4-Creating-Post-In-Wordpress

  11. Nicely done.

Now let’s create your main navigation bar

  1. Hover over “Apperance” and select “Menus”
  2. 1-Creating-Menus-Wordpress

  3. Type “Main Menu” for the “Menu name”
  4. Then “Create Menu”
  5. 2-Creating-Menus-Wordpress

  6. On the left you’ll see “Theme Locations”. This will determine where your menu will be placed. The placement options will be determined by your theme. Under “Header” or something similar select your new “Main Menu and “Save”.
  7. 5.5-Creating-Menus-In-Wordpress

  8. Now, scroll down to the “Pages” box, select the “Contact Us” checkbox and “Add to Menu”
  9. 3-Adding-pages-to-menus-wordpress

  10. Under “Categories” do the same but with your new category
  11. 4-Adding-Categories-to-Menus-Wordpress

  12. Scroll back up to edit your menu
  13. You can customise the label by clicking the downward arrow and editing the “Navigation Label”
  14. You can leave the “Title Attribute” blank for now.
  15. Click “Save Menu” to finish up
  16. 5-Creating-Menus-Wordpress

  17. To check out your new menu hover over “My Website” up the top left and click “Visit Site”
  18. 6-Creating-Menus-Wordpress

  19. As you’ll see below, the new menu has successfully been added.
  20. 7-Creating-Menus-Wordpress

Widgets

As mentioned, widgets are handy little add ons, perfect for displaying social media feeds/friends or adding email signup forms.

We’ll touch more on widgets in the plugins lesson, but for now we’ll just briefly go over how to add/delete/move widgets.

  1. Hover over “Appearance” and click “Widgets”
  2. 1-How-to-install-widgets-wordpress

  3. On the righthand side you’ll see “Default Sidebar”. This will contain all your active widgets
  4. The large area titled “Available Widgets” contains all the currently installed widgets ready for use. To add a new widget, simply drag and drop it into the “Default Sidebar”
  5. 2-how-to-install-widgets-on-wordpress

  6. You can edit active widgets by clicking the downward arrow to display that widgets options. The options will vary based on the widget. Just make sure to click the “Save” button when you’re done
  7. If you wish to remove a widget, expand the options and select “Delete”
  8. 3-how-to-change-widgets-wordpress

  9. If you only want to temporarily switch the widget off and keep the settings, drag it to the “Inactive Widgets” area down the bottom of the screen. This ensures no settings are deleted
  10. 4--how-to-make-widgets-inactive-wordpress

  11. Aside from the “Save” button for individual widget options, all other updates/changes save automatically

General settings

Site title and www

  1. Hover over “Settings” on the sidebar and click “General”
  2. 1-how-to-change-wordpress-settings

  3. Your “Site Title” text will typically be used in place of a logo unless you upload a specific image instead
  4. Your “Tag Line” will generally be added along side your site title in a more subtle font (this is theme dependant)
  5.  
    Adding www infront of your domain

  6. By default wordpress removes the “www.” infront of your domain when displayed in peoples browsers. Call me old fashion, but I like the look of the www. – if you do too, manually input “www.” for both “WordPress Address” and “Site Address”
  7. 2-how-to-add-www-infront-of-wordpress-site-address

  8. Make sure you “Save” down the bottom

 
Changing permalink strucutre
This sounds complicated, but “permalinks” are simply how wordpress generates your urls for pages other than the homepage. E.g. www.yoursite.com/?p=123 vs www.yoursite.com/how-to-hug-a-panda.

Not only will your urls be more memorable, but Google will love you for it, too.

  1. Back under “Settings” on the sidebar select “Permalinks”
  2. Select “Custom Structure” and add “/%category%/%postname%/” without the “”
  3. This will add the category of your post followed by the post name. If you’d like just the post name to appear directly after your domain, use “/%postname%/” with the “”

    how-to-add-category-to-permalink-structure-wordpress

  4. Make sure you “Save Changes”
So that’s a brief overview of the anatomy of the WordPress backend.

As with many things in life, 90% of what i’ve learnt has come from tinkering over and over again.

WordPress is great, but it’s inevitable that you might come across some tricky things.

Luckily, another massive benefit of WordPress is the sheer amount of people using it. Meaning, if you have a problem, someone else has most likely encountered it, solved it and shared the solution.

So whenever you’re your stuck just head to our trusty friend Google.

Next lesson

Up next, we’re going to supercharge your site with plugins. These plugins will drastically enhance the backend of your site and prepare your for online domination.

 

Lesson 6 – All Plugged In

 

Where to next?

  • how to choose a domain name Lesson 1 – Domain Name/Hosting 13 May, 2013
  • How to create a google analytics account Lesson 2 – How to Setup Google Analytics 14 May, 2013
  • how to install wordpress Lesson 3 – Installing WordPress 15 May, 2013
  • how to find a theme for a wordpress website Lesson 4 – Choosing A Theme 16 May, 2013

1 Comment

  1. Lesson 7 | Essential Website Content | Mighty Little Startups says:
    June 14, 2013 at 2:27 am

    [...] you’ve forgotten how to add menus head back to Lesson 5 – The Anatomy of WordPress and scroll down to “Now let’s create your main navigation [...]

  • Member Links

    • Members Home
  • Course Navigation:

    • Part I – Setup
      • Lesson 1 – Domain Name/Hosting
      • Lesson 2 – How to Setup Google Analytics
    • Part II – Build & Launch
      • Lesson 3 – Installing WordPress
      • Lesson 4 – Choosing A Theme
      • Lesson 4.5 – Getting A Pro Logo
      • Lesson 5 – The Anatomy of WordPress
      • Lesson 6 – All Plugged In
    • Part III – Killer Content
      • Lesson 7 – Essential Content
      • Lesson 8 – Content Marketing
    • Part IV – Driving Traffic
      • Lesson 9 – Keyword Research Essentials
      • Lesson 10 – Search Engine Optimization
    • Part V – Analytics
      • Lesson 12 – Google Analytics
  • Home
  • Lesson 5 – The Anatomy of WordPress
  • Start Your Own Startup
  • Part 2 – Build & Launch
  • Lesson 5 – The Anatomy of WordPress
  • Recent Posts

    • Something Big Is Coming To Mighty Little Startups!
    • Weddingbids – Success Story
    • VIDEO: 9 Things Breaking Bad Can Teach You About Entrepreneurship
    • Want To Skyrocket Your Twitter Traffic By 324% Now?
    • Forget Google AdWords. Want Cheaper, Better, Traffic?
  • Follow me on Twitter

    My Tweets
  • Trending

    • coming-soonSomething Big Is Coming To Mighty Little Startups!December 12, 2013
    • mls-photoWeddingbids – Success StoryJanuary 14, 2014
    • launching-creativeVIDEO: 9 Things Breaking Bad Can Teach You About EntrepreneurshipDecember 21, 2013
  • Write For Us
  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Contact

©Copyright 2013 Mighty Little Startups