WordPress.org Tutorial: How to use the WordPress dashboard

Getting Familiar with the WordPress dashboard

Log in to your WordPress dashboard

Upon logging into WordPress.org  (www.YourWebsiteUrl.com/wp-admin) you’ll be greeted by your  WordPress dashboard. Here, you will get an overview of all that is going on in WordPress. There are a variety of widgets at your disposal. Your widgets can be rearranged by clicking and dragging. You can collapse widgets by hovering over the title and clicking the small triangle.

The “Right Now” box

On the top left you have the “Right Now” box, which is an overview of your stats on WordPress. You have your total number of posts, pages, categories, tags, comments, approved comments, pending comments, and spam comments. It will also tell you what theme you’re using, how many activated widgets and what version of WordPress.org you are running on.

The “Quick Press” box

In the upper right you have the “QuickPress” box. This is where you can quickly write a post and save it as a draft or publish it. It’s awesome for getting those fleeting ideas out of your head before you forget them. However, you can only provide the title, content, uploads, and tags from here. Anything further like categories or custom fields requires that you edit the post within the post’s page itself .

The “Recent Comments” box

On the left we have the “Recent Comments” box. Here you can see all of the most recent comments to be submitted to your site. Comments that have a gray background are already approved and live on your site. Comments that have a yellow background need to be moderated. To moderate a comment, all you need to do is hover over the comment row and click “Approve,” “Spam,” or “Trash.” You also have the option to edit comments or reply to comments. If there’s an approved comment that you want to take off the  site but do not want to delete or mark it  as spam, you can simply click “Unapprove.”

The “Recent Drafts” Box

Here on the right is the “Recent Drafts” box. This shows a list of all your most recent draft posts. Clicking on the title will take you to the post where you can  edit or publish it.

The “Incoming Links” Box

Finally, we have the “Incoming Links” box. It’s probably one of the most useless boxes, but it’s supposed to show you all the incoming links to your site. In reality, it rarely works the way you think it would and the list is usually far from all-inclusive.

Using “Screen Options”

You can display other modules in your dashboard in addition to the default ones by using “Screen Options.” You can find Screen Options in the upper right hand side of your screen.

The first one is “Plugins.” Plugins displays a list of new and popular plugins available. There’s also “WordPress Blog,” “Other WordPress News,” and “Welcome.” These aren’t really necessary or required, but they’re available if you want them.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Next, Learn how to create your first WordPress.org blog post. Please use the comment box below if you have any questions about the WordPress dashboard.

With lots of creativity and success,
Nicole Orozco