Most importantly it is critical to understand that WordPress is a BLOG tool with the ability to add pages and customize the design.
We have chosen WordPress for many reasons, being several things in one: flexibility in design, simple user interface, efficient publishing, customizable plugins, and price – FREE.
While WordPress has its many advantages, there are some downsides. There is a slight learning curve and not everything is customizable.
Basically, there are PAGES and POSTS. Pages being displayed (or not) in your menu, and (blog) Posts that can be displayed individually, in categories, altogether, or in searches.
There is the front end of your site that the visitor to your website sees, called SITE, and the back end where you can make the alterations in content called ADMIN.
< yourdomain.com/wp-admin > or there may be a LOGIN link located somewhere within your site. You will have a unique user name and password.
You can add, change and delete pages. These pages will appear in your main navigation. You can arrange the order of the pages, what template background they use, and what, if anything, will be their parent page. The tools to add and edit pages are very similar to posts. You can also make pages visible to only special people, those with passwords or subscribers. – Adding a Page: Video
You can add, change and delete posts. These will appear in your blog or wherever their particular categories are slated to display. Sometimes you will have a blog page, where all, or specific categories of posts are displayed. Sometimes you will have a static page where certain parts of posts will appear.
Writing a post, changing the font, size, adding a photo/video, etc. can be seen in this tutorial video
A post has these parts: Title, Date/Time, Content, Excerpt, Author, Category and/or Comments.
Within your static pages, there may be places where just a post’s TITLE and EXCERPT appear, for example.
In a magazine style website, for example, we may have a category called “Front Page” then code the front page to display the most recent 30 posts in that category. We can even specify:
– that the most recent include a photo (taken from the post and cropped), the content-up to your desired read more point, and a comment palate;
– posts 2-15 display a title and excerpt;
– and posts 16-30 just display the title and date/time.
Key things that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN look through is your:
– URL (the string of words and numbers that is your link to this page)
– PAGE TITLE (displayed on the search results)
– DESCRIPTION (displayed on the search results)
– KEYWORDS (though these are gradually losing importance)
We have setup a plugin called “All in One SEO” at the bottom of each post and page. Here you can type in your Title, Description and Keywords. How this displays in search engines – video
On the top of your page/post editing interface, there is the PERMALINK display and editor. You can edit this to your liking, though it often takes the default of the page/post title. Remember, no spaces are allowed in your URL, instead use dashes or underscores.
Organizing Your Dashboard – Video
Writing & Publishing a Post – Video
Post Excerpt and Read More – Video
