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WordPress Administration Panels & Dashboard Tutorial

dashboard

The infamous WordPress administration panel. It’s truly the hub from which you can control every aspect of your website, but few utilize its full potential.

But that’s about to change for you…

wordpress dashboard menu

WordPress Backend Administration Panel Overview

dashboard backend admin panel home

Home

You can see a great overview of the most important facets of your WordPress site. You can see how many pages and posts your site has, recent site activity and news, and even some user metrics if you’ve activated Jetpack*. Feel free to customize this area so it shows what’s most important to you!

Updates

You’re able to see what version of WordPress you’re running, and be able to update to a new version if it’s available. You can also see what plugins and themes are out-of-date and update them as well.

User Tracking

You can see an overview of the users on your site and their activity as well. It’s a great way to track what pages people are making changes to and what user activity looks like overall on your site.

Our team at WP Buffs helps website owners, agency partners and freelancer partners get acquainted with the WordPress backend admin panel. Whether you need us to manage 1 website or support 1000 client sites, we’ve got your back.

Jetpack

jetpack

Jetpack* is a collection of WordPress-built plugins to help drastically improve your website. It’s run by Automattic, the developers behind WordPress.com. Make sure you have a WordPress.com account and activate Jetpack to gain access to some great plugins!

Jetpack team

Settings

View all the Jetpack plugins listed out here. Plugins span from management and mobile assistance to photo and video tools.

Omnisearch

Here you can search across your entire WordPress site to find posts you’ve drafted, comments left by visitors, and more.

Site Stats

Jetpack offers comprehensive statistics to help you see what users are doing on your website. We prefer Google Analytics, but this provides additional user behavior to help you understand how your visitors are interacting with your WordPress site.

Jetpack stats

Akismet

This Jetpack plugin helps you fight comment spam on your site. Create an account and see the number of spammy comments on your site disappear!

Posts

posts

All Posts

You can see all your published and drafted posts here, and even ones you’ve previously deleted. Make any changes to those articles on this page.

Add New

Have an idea for your next great blog post? Use this to create a new article right away.

Categories

Categories provide a helpful way to group related posts together, and to quickly tell readers what a post is about. Categories also make it easier for people to find your content. Categories are similar to, but broader than, tags.

Depending on the theme and widgets you have activated, categories can be displayed at the top or bottom of posts, on the individual post view, on your menu, and/or in the sidebar. You can assign multiple categories per post (you must assign at least one), and categories can be organized hierarchically.

Tags

Tags provide a useful way to group related posts together and to quickly tell readers what a post is about. Tags also make it easier for people to find your content. Tags are similar to, but more specific than, categories.

Media

media

Library

The Media library can be used to manage your existing media files, such as images, audio, videos, and documents. See everything you’ve ever uploaded in an easily accessible gallery here.

Add New

Add new images, videos, or audio files here. WordPress automatically uploads them for easy implementation on a page or post on your site!

Pages

pages

All Pages

You can see all your published and drafted pages here, and even ones you’ve previously deleted. Make any changes to those pages on this page.

Add New

Have an idea for your About Us or Services page? Use this to create a new interior page right away.

Comments

comments

Comments are a way for visitors to add feedback to your posts and pages. If you choose to enable comments for your posts, then a comment form will appear at the bottom of the posts and people can respond to what you have written.

You are in complete control of the comments left on your blog. Users on the blog who have Editor or Administrator rights will have the ability to manage comments in this section. You may also turn off comments if you don’t want to use them in the Settings area.

Feedback

feedback

Here you can see feedback provided about drafted content. It can be helpful to ensure buy-in from multiple people is gathered before pushing something live.

Genesis

genesis

Theme Settings

This area allows you to make changes to some central theme features, including your blog page template, color style, default page/post layout, and more.

Import/Export

Here you can import theme settings from another website or export your current theme settings to implement them elsewhere. It’s like a copy/paste option for your theme settings.

Appearance

appearance

Themes

Control the themes you have installed on your WordPress site. You can preview, customize, and even implement different themes as you see fit.

Customize

Customize some additional features of your currently installed theme, including your site title and tagline, colors, header image, background image, navigation, widgets, static front page, and much more.

Widgets

Here is where you make most of the adjustments that affect the homepage of your website.

Menus

Make adjustments to your primary and secondary menus. This will help you direct website traffic to your most important pages.

Favicon

Here you can adjust the small image that appears in the internet tab for your website. This will give your website a more personal touch and good first impression to new visitors.

favicon

Edit CSS / Editor

In these areas you can adjust the Cascading Style Sheet and HTML of your website. Be wary that you’ll be making adjustment to raw code, which could cause your website to crash if not done correctly. Access at your own peril, or get in touch with the WordPress Buffs team and we’ll help you out!

Plugins

plugins

Installed Plugins

Here’s a list of every active and inactive plugin you have on your WordPress site. You can manage all your plugins here to help make your site more dynamic and user-friendly.

Add New

You can browse WordPress’ library of plugins and search by keyword for what you’re looking for. You can also upload a plugin via .zip file if you’ve already downloaded it from elsewhere.

Editor

In this area you can adjust the code of your individual plugins. Be wary that you’ll be making adjustment to raw code, which could cause your plugins, or even your entire website, to crash if not done correctly. Access at your own peril, or get in touch with the WordPress Buffs team and we’ll help you out!

Users

users

All Users

See an entire list of every user on your WordPress site. You can see their username, email, role, and activity on the site.

Add New

Add a new user to your site. Depending on what job they’re doing, make sure you select the right role for them. Is your new user writing content? Contributor works. Are they editing and publishing new content? Editor may be the way to go.

Your Profile

Make changes to your personal profile. Activate keyword shortcuts, proofreading options, or post-by-email options.

Settings

settings

General

This Settings General Screen is the default Screen in the Settings Administration Screen and controls some of the most basic configuration settings for your site: your site’s title and location, who may register an account at your site, and how dates and times are calculated and displayed.

Writing

Use the Settings Writing Screen to control the interface you use when writing new posts. These settings control WordPress’ features in the adding and editing posts, Pages, and Post Types, as well as the optional functions like Remote Publishing, Post via e-mail, and Update Services.

Reading

The options in the Settings Reading Screen are few in number, but still important. You can decide if you want posts, or a “static” Page, displayed as your blog’s front (main) page. You can also adjust how many posts are displayed on that main page. In addition, you can adjust syndication feed features to determine how the information from your site is sent to a reader’s web browser or other applications.

Discussion

The Settings Discussion Screen allows you to set the options concerning comments (also called discussion). It is here the administrator decides if comments are allowed, if pingbacks and trackbacks are acceptable, and what constitutes Comment Spam. On this Screen you also control the circumstances under which your blog sends you e-mail notifications of certain events at your site.

Media

The Settings Media Screen controls the various settings related to images and other media that are used in writing posts and pages.

Permalinks

By default, WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them; however, WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.

Want to give your feedback or join the conversation? Add your comments 🐦 on Twitter.

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If you enjoyed this article, then you’ll really enjoy the 24/7 WordPress website management and support services WP Buffs’ has to offer! Partner with the team that offers every aspect of premium WordPress support services.

From speed optimization services, to unlimited website edits, security, 24/7 support, or even white-label site management for agencies and freelancers, our expert engineers have your back. Bring us in as part of your team to make your site Bufftastic! Check out our plans

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