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After you “login” you will be brought to what is known as the “Dashboard”. This is your backend administration section. It may seem a little overwhelming at first, but it is quite organized and easy to get to grips with compared to other software packages.
Along the top you have a link to the “frontend” of your website site at the top left. At the top right you have a drop-down button for quick links to common tasks, your username is displayed, a link to the Turbo tool (not necessary for everyone), and a log out link. For security purposes always log out when you are finished for the day. Someone who has access to your computer could easily access your protected website settings. Also, you don’t want to leave any open doors for potential hackers.
Customizing the WordPress Dashboard
Below the “Log Out” link at the top right is a button labeled “Screen Options“. Click this and a row of check boxes appears. Each check box corresponds to a box in the Dashboard. Uncheck any of the boxes you feel that you don’t need. You can always bring them back at a later time if you wish by checking them off again. Beneath the check boxes is the Screen Layout option. This allows you to choose between having a 1, 2, 3 or 4 column layout for your Dashboard page. This seems to only control the layout of this main page, therefore it’s not very useful. Click the “Screen Options” button again to make the options box disappear.
Another way to organize the WordPress Dashboard is to grab one of the “boxes” by its top gray bar and drag it to where you want it. Maybe you’d rather have the “QuickPress” section on the right. Simply click-and-drag its gray header bar over to the right. Your cursor will turn into a crossbar (or a hand for MACs) when you’re over a header bar. As you drag the box, a dotted line will show up where the box was. Then the other boxes will move out of the way once you drag over them. Then release the mouse button.
Top of the header bar when hovered over
Top of the header bar in normal mode
If you don’t wish to move them or delete them, you can move your cursor over to the top right of a header bar where you’ll see a down arrow appear. Click this button to make the box collapse, making more room for other boxes to fit on your screen.
WordPress Help
Next to the “Screen Options” button is a “Help” button which pulls down some helpful links to the WordPress website and forum. The WordPress community is growing everyday and chances are good that there are a few people out there with the same problem/question you have. So it is a great resource. There are also a couple of links at the bottom of your Dashboard screen.
Left-side Navigation
The buttons on the left hand side of the Dashboard take you to different sections of the Administrative backend of your website. Click on the down arrow at the right of each main link to reveal a drop-down of quick links for each section.
Right Now
Right Now gives you a break down of how many posts, pages, categories, and tags you have in your entire blog. It also tells you how many comments you have as well as how many need to be approved before being published or are pending and how many have been identified as spam.
Click on the “Spam” link and it will bring up a page that lists all comments that have been flagged as spam. Chances are that most of them are spam but there might be one or two legit comments in there that you might want to save.
Click the “Approved” link to view the latest comments that are awaiting your approval. Here is where you use your own discretion in deciding whether or not a comment is legit, spam, or just annoying junk that doesn’t take your website seriously (welcome to the world wide web).
Click “Comments” to view posted comments. Here is where you can edit a comment if necessary.
At the bottom of this section you’ll see the name of your Theme (the name of your blog’s design), the number of widgets you are using, the version of WordPress you are currently running, and a button to change your theme.
Recent Comments & Recent Drafts
These are rather self explanatory. If you have new comments, they will show up under Recent Comments and you can click on them to read or edit or delete them if they’re spam. If you have drafts of posts you haven’t published yet, they will be listed under Recent Drafts.
QuickPress
QuickPress is a quick way to add a new post. I don’t find this feature very useful because it lacks the ability to choose which category the post will appear in. Unless you have a plug-in to fix this, all your posts will wind up in a default category (usually the Uncategorized category unless you change this in Settings).
Incoming Links
This is useful for search engine optimization. It lets you know if another blog is linking to your site.
Plug-ins, WordPress Development Blog, and Other WordPress News
These are more geared towards bloggers who handle their own plug-ins and web development. Since I’m targeting this manual towards the less techy bloggers, I’m skipping over these.
Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Dashboard_SubPanel
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