WordPress CMS

A beginners guide

Getting Started

We’ll walk you through the basics of using WordPress to get you started on how to use your website. This will give you some insight and valuable tips on helping you to keep things moving.


Logging In

Web address: https://[SITE ADDRESS]/wp/wp-admin

Username: USERNAME /  EMAIL ADDRESS
Password:  PASSWORD

To Change Password

Web address: https://[SITE ADDRESS]/wp/wp-admin/profile.php

Account Management > Set New Password

Key Areas

There are 7 key areas of any WordPress website built by Fishtank Agency:

  • Posts
  • Pages
  • Media
  • Users
  • Theme Settings (Globals)
  • Menus
  • Widgets

These areas are the building blocks of your website, however this also may contain custom areas for example:

  • Products
  • Case Studies
  • Projects
  • Team Members
  • Testimonials

These are common custom additions we sometimes add to the WordPress CMS when needed.


Posts

The posts area is a central location to store and organise your blog articles. For many, this is used to create news articles.

Creating a Post

 

Navigate to the Posts page on the left of your dashboard.

Click the Add New button.

Alternatively, you can also hover over Posts and select Add New from the sub menu.

Note: if you want to edit an existing Post, you can just click the title to be taken to the Edit Post page.

Depending on how Fishtank have built your website, your editor is likely to be using the Classic Editor


Classic Editor

 

Fill in the text boxes on the page, including the title and body content in the textarea.

On the right hand side, ensure that a category is set and a featured image is uploaded.

Note: Tags may also be required. This is dependent on your website build. 

Once you are done and are ready, click Publish.

Post Fields

Title/Headline 

This field should contain the title of your post. There are no character limitations, however, WordPress will clean it up to generate a user-friendly and URL-valid name for the post. This is called the slug and it is used to create the permalink for the Post.

Permalink

The permalink, short for ‘permanent link’, is automatically generated based on the title that is set in the Title field. The permalink refers to the unique page that the post will have on the website.

Permalinks can be edited, depending on the website’s Permalink settings. However, it is not advised unless you are sure on what this will do.

Content Editor

This is where you can enter your writing, links, images and any information you want to display on the page.

By default, the content editor uses a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.

The view can be changed to text to view the content as HTML.

Publish Box

This box contains the settings to control the state of your post. 

Status

There are two main states that your post can be set to, Draft and Published. The status of the post can be changed at freewill.

Draft means that the post can be saved and returned to but it will not be publicly visible on the site. This can be done by pressing the Save Draft button.

Published means that the post will be published and will be publicly visible on your website. This can be done by pressing the Publish button.

Preview

Pressing the Preview button will allow you to see how the post looks in its published/live state before making it publicly visible.

Visibility

This is used to determine how your post appears to the world.

Public posts are visible to all website visitors once it is published.

Password Protected posts are published to all however viewers must know the password to view its content.

Private posts are only visible to you, Editor and Admin users on your website.

Revisions

Navigating to the revisions of the post will allow you to the last 10 saved changes that have been made to the post. Here you can select a revision and revert to the post to the selected state.

Scheduling 

Posts can be scheduled for publication for a future date and/or time. Clicking Publish Immediately will allow you to set a date and/or time for the date to be published. You can also set the date to a previous date/time. 

Once set, ensure that you Publish the post.

Categories

Categories are used to separate the topics of the posts so that they can be filtered on the front end of the website. 

Categories can be manage by going to Posts > Categories

Tags

Tags are a form of micro-categories for posts. Posts with the same tags are linked together.

It is advised to ‘Choose from the most used tags’ if you site has other posts with tags so that they match.

Note: Tags may only be incorporated in certain builds. Please contact us if you are unsure.

Featured Image

This is used as the image for the post, this shows up on the blog/news archive and on the page header.


Pages

The pages area is where you can add new and edit pages on your website. Pages are similar to Posts however they may be built to a certain purpose with custom content layouts. We use a plugin called Advanced Custom Fields, which allows us to create unique and bespoke page content.

Depending on your sites needs, the pages may have different functionality, If so, you should have had website training. If you have had website training with a Fishtank team member, please refer to the recorded meeting. However, if something is still unclear, please contact the team.

Pages can have hierarchy, allowing you to next pages under other pages making ‘parent’ and ‘child’ pages.

Creating a Page

 

Navigate to the Pages page on the left of your dashboard.

Click the Add New button.

Alternatively, you can also hover over Pages and select Add New from the sub menu.

Note: if you want to edit an existing Page, you can just click the title to be taken to the Edit Page page.

By default, adding a new page will look exactly like adding a post.

With the addition of Page Attributes.

 

This allows you to assign a parent page, assign a template and change the order.

These normally wouldn’t need to be changed when adding a new page


Media

The media area is a library of files, including images, documents, audio and videos. This can be accessed in multiple areas of the site for you to insert media into your posts and pages.

Any media that has been uploaded while creating/editing a page or post, will be stored here.


Users

The users area allows you to manage the users of your website. There are 5 levels of permissions that a user can be assigned to:

Administrator 

This is the most powerful user role. It is reserved for site owners and gives you full control over your website. 

Administrator role allows users to:

  • Add, edit and delete posts, pages from any other users.
  • Install, edit and delete plugins and themes.
  • Add, delete and change information of existing users. Including passwords.

Editor

This role has full control over the content sections of your website.

Editor role allows users to:

  • Add, edit, publish and delete posts and pages from any other users.

Author

This role has control over content that is created by themselves.

Author role allows users to:

  • Add, edit, publish and delete their own posts.

Contributor

This role is similar to the Author role, however it has a few restrictions as users with this role are unable to publish posts (this includes being unable to upload images).

Contributor roles allows users to:

  • Add and edit their own posts (text only)

Subscriber

This role is the least powerful user role. This role has no permissions inside the WordPress admin area. It is useful for sites that have membership and online stores.

Subscriber role allows users to:

  • Login, update their profile and change their password.

For more information about user roles, please visit: https://wordpress.org/support/article/roles-and-capabilities/


Theme Settings

The theme settings area added to the CMS by Fishtank holds default settings usually related to the theme and information related to your company/business, including social media handles.

When handing over your new Website/CMS Fishtank will inform you of any pertinent information on 


Menus

WordPress menus are used to build the navigation within your site. Setting up menus is initiated as we build the site. Your site will always have at least one menu (Primary Navigation), however, depending on the size, you may have multiple menus.

Finding a Menu

Menus can be found by hovering over Appearance and clicking Menu. As we have created menu locations for the website, they are available from the drop down menu. Once selected, click Select and the page will load the menu.

 

On the left hand side, you will see all the pages/posts sections that can be added to the menu.

Check the box(es) of the pages you want to add and click add to menu. This will add them to the bottom of the menu list.

You can then drag and drop to arrange the pages to where you want them to be displayed on the front end of your website.
You can move the page underneath and existing page to create a nested menu.


Widgets

At Fishtank we believe widgets are a somewhat old fashion aspect to WordPress site editing and we very rarely include content in this section. For reference a WordPress widget is a modular element that enables you to add a specific feature to your website. Widgets can be added to different areas of a website, such as a website’s sidebars or footer areas. 


Plugins

Plugins are optional extra code that “plug in” to your website allowing it to have additional or extend the existing functionality of your site. A common example of additional functionality that a plugin could offer might be adding ecommerce to your website. A plugin that extends functionality might be one that allows you to add more detailed SEO content to your website pages.

From time to time plugins may need updating for multiple reasons and at Fishtank we like to make sure these updates are safe and secure for your website and so we kindly ask that you inform us of any updates required before actioning them yourself.


Tools, Settings & Others

You may find that when you are logged in to the CMS you also see additional menu items like Tolls, Setting, Custom fields or CPT UI. This might be because you have full admin access to the CMS but for the most part these can be left alone and are normally only needed to be accessed by developers or advanced WordPress users. Quite a lot of these settings have the potential to break your site if not managed correctly and so if anyone has that level of access, we live by Marvel’s Spiderman-Man quote:  

“With great power, comes great responsibility.”

 

Need help?

This guide is only a brief overview of the WordPress CMS but here at Fishtank we build our sites from the ground up and this can include how your CMS looks and works. So if you need help with your CMS, theme or website in general please contact us at made@fishtankagency.com

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