Get familiar with the dashboard

September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series WordPress 101

Once successfully logged in to your WordPress Dashboard, administrative panel or control centre, there are a few things you need to do to get the full functionality of WordPress.

But first, you need to familiarise yourself with the controls or menus you have on the left panel. Most of the menus are collapsible. On the screenshot, Posts is collapsed to show the menus under it.

I have been using WordPress for a number of years now, but from time to time I still get lost trying to locate the command I need.

You will get familiarised with the control menus as you go along, but if you want to get on the fast track, spend a few minutes exploring the left panel control panel. Prior knowledge of what that left panel has in store will come very very handy.

Filed Under: Installation

How to install WordPress

September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series WordPress 101

The first step to installing WordPress is to find a web host for your domain. These days, finding one is not that difficult. And web hosting is really very inexpensive, with some webhosts throwing in bonuses like free Adwords and other vouchers, even more valuable than the cost of hosting.

Setting up WordPress


When you sign up for webhosting, you’ll get a CPanel login from your host. Your CPanel control panel gives you an array of web management tools, one of which is WordPress.

It’s really a couple of clicks to install a new WordPress package on your new domain. You can install WordPress either in your domain root or in a separate folder under your root like yourdomain.ext/blog/.

You enter your WP admin username and password, which of course you should remember.

Once confirmed by your Cpanel that WP is installed, you’ll then log in to WordPress admin area at yourdomain.ext/wp-admin/ (or yourdomain.ext/blog/wp-admin/ if installed in a folder) with the username and password you just created, and you go straight in to the WordPress dashboard.

That’s all there is in installing WordPress.

NOTE: You can of course manually install WordPress using an FTP client. This means, you need to set up an FTP account in your CPanel and also, you need to set up a WP database, again using the Cpanel. You will be better off using the automatic installation. Installing WP via FTP is also very time consuming.

Filed Under: Installation, Wordpress