WordPress How-To #4 - Configuring

Configuring WordPress is not hard but it is monotonous. There’s a lot of fields to fill out in order to personalize the software with your desired settings. I can’t cover all the settings in one article but I can give you an informative overview of what you’ll find once you’ve logged into your WordPress, online admin panel.

The login URL for your WordPress account will always end with:

/wp-login.php

If you installed WordPress to your root host directory, then the URL will be:

www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

If you installed WP to a sub directory that you named "blog:, your login link would read:

www.yourdomain.com/blog/wp-login.php

Whichever you chose, open that page now.

As you recall, when you installed the software on your server, WordPress assigned you a default Username and an auto-generated Password. The default Username is "admin". (You should have saved the Password you were assigned during the installation procedure I wrote about in part 3. When you open your WordPress login page, those are the fields ­ admin and password ­ that you’ll have to enter. So, go for it. Log in to WordPress.

After you’ve logged in, WordPress opens to your "Profile" page. You can see there are other menu tabs at the top of the page but it’s a good idea to configure your profile first.

On your Profile page, you can assign yourself a nickname, change your password and add a mini-bio. (Remember that WordPress gave you an auto-generated password when you initially installed it.) If you would like to change it to something more memorable, this is the page. Also note the Update Profile button(s). You’ll always need to click such verification-type buttons when you make changes to WordPress settings and pages.

Now, take a look at all the menus on the page. There is a top menu that contains your blog name and a link to your public site on the left, plus links to your Profile and Logout on the right. Underneath that is a second menu. Here, you will find links to: "Dashboard", "Write", "Manage", "Comments", "Blogroll", "Presentation", "Plugins", "Users" and "Options". If you click any of those links on the second menu (except for Dashboard) a third menu opens, giving you settings options for each of the links from the second menu. For the moment, go ahead and click the "Dashboard" link in the second menu.

Go ahead and click the "Manage" link from the second menu. See how that third menu opens just below the second? Take note of the links in that third menu: "Posts", "Pages", "Uploads", "Categories", "Files", "Import" and "Export". Click the "Categories" menu. From the "Categories" page you can rename your default category as well as add new categories for your future posts. WordPress categories aid readers, searching your blog. Go back up to the second menu and click on the "Presentation" link.

The Presentation menu opens a sub-menu with three links: "Themes", "Widgets" and "Theme Editor". WordPress comes with one default theme called Kubrick and another theme, WordPress Classic. When you install other WP themes, they appear on this page. If you’re using a theme that is not "widget aware", you won’t find much here. If however, you are using a widget aware theme, you’ll see a sort of drag/drop editor, where you can manipulate default WP widgets plus the ones you have installed yourself. The last link, "Theme Editor", takes you to a page where you can configure the hard code of your blog. From the main stylesheet to your 404 page, this is where you fiddle with layout, colors, fonts and sidebars.

The best thing about configuring WordPress from your account panel is that there’s plenty of hints and help links within the interface. Also, you can preview your changes before you set them in stone. As I told you at the start of this article, configuring WordPress is not hard but it is relatively time consuming. The coolest bit is that once you get everything set up, all you’ll have to worry about is posting. WordPress takes care of itself. Once you click "Update", "Save" or "Publish", WP compiles the files, pings the RSS feeds and auto-archives all your posts, uploads and pages.

Explore your WordPress account. Familiarize yourself with each menu and sub-menu. Get to know this killer server-side software. I'll be back with other articles on WordPress soon.