Using WordPress as a web content management system.

All of the new websites we design use WordPress as their content and website management system. The latest data show that 14.7% of the top million websites in the world, up from 8.5%, and that 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

Why? Here are 5 reasons we offer WordPress as a web content management system:

1. It is an amazingly powerful, award winning web content management system, and because it is Open Source, it is free to use.
2. It is the world’s most commonly used website publishing platform (over 48,000,000 sites), so there is a huge developer community – making development less expensive.
3. With the almost 15,000 Plugins available, there is almost no limit to what you can do in WordPress. Why develop a functionality from scratch, when someone has done it before and is prepared to let you use it (often for free)?
4. WordPress enables good search engine optimisation (SEO) right out of the box. There are some Plugins that can help, but most of the SEO benefits are included in the codebase. Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO pretty well” in this video: Matt Cutts gives tips to small business owners.
5. Even Fortune 500 companies use WordPress to manage their blogs and micro-sites, including UPS, Old Spice, PlayStation, Ford, eBay, Nikon, Fisher Price, Samsung, Best Buy, Pepsi, Intel, GE, GM, and Xerox and major media publishers like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

One of the greatest advantages of managing your website with WordPress is that it keeps content and design separate. This means that you can publish web content in minutes with as much technical knowledge as it takes to write and send an email. This advantage alone can save you thousands in development costs every year (we’ve seen this happen, first hand with our clients after transitioning them from other website platforms to WordPress).

As a businessperson, you may not know about designing a website, but you do know about your content. The ability to add, edit, and delete web content as easily as you’d type and send an email puts web publishing into the hands of everyone. Here are just a few of the things that you can do in WordPress as a content author or editor, without involving a website developer:

• add, edit, delete pages
• add, edit, delete blog posts
• move pages from one header to another header in your navigation
• add images, videos, audio, or other multimedia to your posts or pages
• manage users of your website

How to manage your content in WordPress

In this Post (of course, our website is also powered by WordPress), we describe the Administration Screens that are most commonly used  by content authors and editors with beginner-level WordPress knowledge or experience. We have also embeded some great videos that show how to manage content in a WordPress website.

The features below are usually within the ability of even the most technically-challenged amongst us. Much of this content has been adapted from the content found in the WordPress Codex. We have edited and summarised the relevant sections here for your convenience.

In the early stages, you may want to leave the following activities to us (or any of the thousands of good WordPress developers out there):

• Installing updates to the WordPress software
• Installing and configuring Plugins
• Modifying the Appearance of your site including Themes, Widgets and Menus
• Modifying CSS (i.e. the styles used for your Header and Paragraph formatting)
• Configuring some Settings

WordPress is like a modern car: easier than ever to drive, but considerably more complex under the hood. While you are welcome to learn more about WordPress administration to administer your website yourself, please be cautious with any settings on your site that you are not currently familiar with. If you’re unsure – just ask us. In the unlikely event that you create problems that you cannot fix, we will charge you to fix them at our hourly rate.

While nearly every mistake is reversible (with a good Backup System), you can materially affect how your website looks and operates by modifying important settings that are outside of the Screens described on this page. Therefore, please limit your activity to these Screens, until you have more knowledge.

Logging in to your Administration Screens

After we design and launch your website, we provide you with a webpage address to access your WordPress Administration site. This address will usually be formatted like this:

• www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin

You can access the Administration site online making online publishing something you can do wherever you find an internet-enabled computer;  you can even add content using your mobile phone (with a WordPress App for the iPhone for instance).

The password we give you is your own. You can, however, change it if you like.

On the Login Screen, you’ll be able to enter your username and password to access the Administration Screens of your website. You can add as many users as you like. And, you can assign different levels of permissions to your users. Adding users, like many other functions in WordPress, can be done through the Administration Screens.

Understanding the most commonly used WordPress Administration Screens

For content authors and editors, the most commonly used WordPress Administration Screens are

• Dashboard – a Screen where you can access most WordPress features at a glance
• Pages – a Screen where you add and edit your static content.
• Posts – a Screen where you add and edit your latest content. You can also add Tags and Categories to your Posts
• Comments – a Screen where you can moderate comments that external visitors leave on your Posts (optional)
• Users – a Screen where you can add, edit, and delete users, and adjust their user permissions

There are many other options that you can access through other Administration Screens. Again, be cautious when modifying settings in Administration Screens that are not included in this Mini Manual.

Using the Dashboard Screen

The Dashboard Screen tells you about recent activity both at your site and in the WordPress community at large and provide access to updating WordPress, plugins, and themes. The Dashboard Screen provides you a number of quick links to start writing Posts or Pages, statistics and links on the number of posts, pages, Categories, and Post Tags.

A Recent Comments box shows the number of Comments awaiting moderation and a list of the recent comments. Configurable boxes of Incoming Links, and RSS feeds from the WordPress Blog, the Plugins blog, and Planet WordPress are also displayed.

This video features the main elements of the Dashboard Screen. (In the videos that follow, the word “Blog” is interchangeable with the word “Website”)

Adding and editing Pages

A Page is another tool to add content to a WordPress site and is often used to present “static” information about the site. Pages are typically “timeless” in nature. A good example of a Page is the information contained in the “About” or “Contact” Pages.

Pages live outside of a normal blog chronology, and as such, are not displayed with the rest of your Posts, but are displayed individually. Importantly, Pages can be organised in a hierarchy (the way in which most websites are laid out) whereas Posts cannot. There is no limit to the number of pages you can create, although we recommend you topping out at about 50 (7 sections with 7 pages within each section).

The Pages Screen provides the necessary tools to edit, delete, and view existing Pages. On this Screen you can select the Page to edit or delete. Multiple Pages can be selected for deletion and for editing. As with Posts, a powerful bulk edit tool allows certain fields to be edited for a whole group of Pages. A handy in-line edit tool, called Quick Edit, allows you to update many fields for an individual Page. Various search and filtering options allow you to find the Pages you want to edit or delete.

This video shows how you can manage your Pages.

Adding, editing, categorising and tagging Posts

A Post is very similar to a Page, except that it lives within the chronology of your Blog. A Blog is simply a section of your site where you can continuously add more content. Usually, this content is presented in descending chronological order with the most recent Post above older posts. One advantage of posting content is that you needn’t clutter your website navigation with every new piece of content you write.

Via the Posts Screen you can select the Post or Posts you wish to edit, delete, or view. Multiple Posts can be selected for deletion and for editing. A powerful bulk edit feature allows you to change certains fields, en masse, for a group of Posts. A handy in-line edit tool, called Quick Edit, allows you to update many fields for an individual Post. Various search and filtering options allow you to find the Posts you want to edit or delete.

This video features a visual illustration of the main features of the Posts Screen. Here you can see how you can Add Posts:

And Edit Posts:

You can also apply Tags and Categories to your Posts. Adding Tags and Categories to Posts enables an alternative method of organising posts (as opposed to descending chronology) and can have some technical applications and SEO benefits.

The Posts Categories Screen allows you to add, edit, and delete Categories, as well as organize your categories hierarchically. Multiple Categories can be selected for deletion. A search option can help you to find the Categories you want to edit or delete. Also remember Categories can be added in the Posts Add New Screen.

Tags are the keywords you might assign to each post. Not to be confused with Categories, Tags have no hierarchy, meaning there’s no relationship from one Tag to another. But like Categories, Tags provide another means to aid your readers in accessing information on your blog.

This video shows how you can organise your Posts using Categories and/or Tags:

Moderating Comments

Comments are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to Posts. Typically readers simply provide their own thoughts regarding the content of the post, but users may also provide links to other resources, generate discussion, or simply compliment the author for a well-written post.

Comments can be controlled and regulated through the use of filters for language and content, and often can be queued for approval before they are visible on the web site. This is useful in dealing with comment spam.

In the Comments Screen you can edit and delete as well as mark comments as spam. Comments that are awaiting moderation can be marked as approved or previously approved comments can be unapproved. Multiple comments can be selected and approved, marked as spam, unapproved, or deleted. A section at the top of the Comments Screen displays the number of comments awaiting moderation and the number of approved comments. A search box allows you to find specific comments.

This video introduces you to the Comments Screen

The Users Screen – Your web publishing family

Every website probably has at least two users: admin, the account initially set up by WordPress, and the user account you, as the author/owner of the website, use to write posts. But maybe you want more; perhaps you want several authors for your blog. If you want a person to be able to post to your blog, that person must have access to a user account. Typically, every person will have her or his own user account.

Via the Users option in the main navigation menu you can set up all of the user accounts you need, as well as change user information, or delete users.

An important administrative feature here is the Roles feature. Depending on their Role, different users have different Capabilities. Briefly, a user can be assigned the following Roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, or Subscriber. You can learn more about different user Roles here.