3 Resources To Help Manage Your New WordPress Site

So, you’ve been handed the keys to your shiny new WordPress website. It has the bells, the whistles and all manner of web 2.0 niceties about it. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy to look at, and you just know the customers are about to start rolling in. However, you’ve decided that the “Contact Us” page should have your street address added to it…https://www.facebook.com/alok1984

Somebody has given you a username and password. You go to the URL they’ve provided and log in… but what now? What’s a post? What’s a page? What’s a category? What are these plug-ins you speak of? A widget, you say?

You do your best to Google for useful tutorials. The results are all highly technical and mainly related to installing and coding for WordPress… but you’ve just paid a red hot development team to do all that hard work for you. You pull your hair out in frustration and determine the website update belongs in your “Will do one day” file.

Below is a short collection of the most useful online tutorials for managing and editing content and media through your WordPress administrative interface. Keep in mind, the level of access you have to your site may mean you have different options available in the WordPress admin area, but a chat with your development team may clarify why some items aren’t there.

WordPress Quick Start Guide

Resource: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Quick_Start_Guide

Sourcing instruction from the equine’s oral orifice here. The Codex is a repository for all things technical and abstract about WordPress installations. The Quick Start Guide (linked above) is a useful place to commence your readings. You can delve further into the bowels of the system’s functionality including obtaining access to an array of plug-ins that allow you to accomplish all manner of things from contact forms to event management.

The information here can become a little overwhelming, though, so feel free to explore the more simplified and goal-oriented instructional sites below.

Simple WP Guide

Resource: http://www.simplewpguide.com

Aimed at providing direct instruction for the simple tasks you wish to accomplish on your site. Updating and creating posts and pages. It’s laid out in simple English and good imagery to support you. It talks you through what each button does in the WYSIWYG editor. It also gives you some basic advice on how to write for the web, including consideration of some SEO techniques… something we can all use a hand with.

Lynda.com WordPress Training Tutorials

Resource: http://www.lynda.com/WordPress-training-tutorials/330-0.html

Lastly, but by no means least, are the venerable video tutorials provided by Lynda. The video tutorials are comprehensive and you can undertake them at your own pace. You are required to subscribe to the network to view most of the tutorials, but at US$25/month, it’s affordable, informative and has no long-term lock-in contracts to worry about. So, it’s not so much an expense as it is an investment in your education.

The above links are a step in the right direction in terms of using your WordPress site. Spending some time familiarising yourself with the Codex will expose an infinite amount of information about the platform and allow you to make the best informed decisions when it comes to modifying your site… whether to employ a developer or tackle it yourself. One word of warning, however, make sure you back everything up before you go making changes as it can be heartbreaking to see your brand new site laying broken while you figure out what went wrong with your last update.