WordPress 24-Hour Trainer. Plumley George

You will also be able to download resources for this lesson from the website.

      Lesson 4

      Admin Area Overview

      One of WordPress's greatest strengths is the user-friendliness of its administration interface. From both an organizational and a design standpoint, it's laid out in a way that's intuitive. As with any system, of course, you need to take some time and learn how it works, where things are, and so on, and that's what this lesson is about: helping you become familiar with the WordPress administration area.

      Logging In

At the end of the installation process, you're either sent automatically to the default login page, as shown in Figure 4.1 A, or there will be a link to take you there.

Figure 4.1

      It's a good idea to bookmark this page in your browser. Some themes include a login link – often in the footer area – but even without a bookmark or a link, you always have this fallback: add /wp-admin to the end of your site URL, like this:

      http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin

      This takes you to your login screen. Of course if you installed WordPress in a subdirectory, you'll add /wp-admin at the end of that subdirectory URL.

      WARNING If you can't login, double-check that you're not at WordPress.com. A common mistake – and not just for newbies – is to think that because you have a WordPress site, you have to log in at WordPress.com. If you installed WordPress on a hosting account, the login will be through the domain name for that account.

      Logging in is a matter of entering the username and password you chose during the installation process. If you forget or can't find your password, there's a link on the login page for setting a new password, as shown in Figure 4.1 B. You can use either your e-mail address (the one given during installation) or your username to set a new password. In either case, the instructions for setting the new password are sent to that e-mail address, so always make sure it's a functioning address. In Lesson 5, “Basic Admin Settings,” you learn how to keep your e-mail address up to date through your Profile.