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For WordPress 2.8+
How WordPress Works
WordPress is a very popular blogging program. It’s also a powerful content-management system (CMS) that can be utilized for almost any website. Out of all the CMS programs available out there, WordPress is widely supported, continuously developed, and one of the easiest to use (in my opinion).
WordPress divides it’s content by categories, posts, pages, media, and archives.
Pages – are static web pages that stand by themselves and do not get categorized or archived.
Ex: About Us, Contact Us, Testimonials, etc.Posts – are dynamic web pages which get organized by category and are also archived by date and
are usually displayed in reversed chronological order.Media – are images, audio, video, PDFs or other files that you upload to your website.
Categories – are a way to help organize your posts, especially if you blog about many topics.
Ex: A health blog might have the following categories: Cancer, Health Tips, Doctors, etc.Archive – is a method of organizing older posts by date.
There are several different ways to create a website using WordPress.
The most common form is a blog website (ex: www.sparkplugpeople.com). A blog website is usually organized into several categories of posts with the most recent posts being displayed on the website’s home page.
WordPress can also be used to add a blog to an existing website (ex: www.tenten71.com/blog/). In this case a button/link is added to the website that takes you to a blog which is designed to look like the rest of the website.
Another scenario would be to use WordPress Pages in place of HTML pages with or without blog functionality on the website (ex: www.lisaengelken.com). This is how WordPress becomes a CMS website that a non-techy client can update themselves.
Website Structure
If your website is setup as a blog or with a blog, then the home page of your website (or the blog’s home page) usually shows only snippets of the most recent posts. When you click on a category link, you get another page with snippets of the most recent posts for just that category. If you click on a month’s link, you get a page with snippets of the most recent posts for that month. In all those scenarios, you’ll have “Older Entries” links at the bottom of the page to view additional related posts. To read a complete post, you either click on its title or on the link labeled “Read more >>“.
Other Navigational items (that might be included)
- Additional category links are provided beneath the posts labeled as “Posted in…“
- You can click on the comments link beneath the posts to go straight to those comments.
- The search box is a built-in search tool for your website or blog.
If your website is designed primarily with Pages, then it will most likely look like a normal website with buttons/links along the top or left. In this case each button/link is pointing to a WordPress Page that you can easily edit.
If your website is a hybrid of both these scenarios, then you could have all the functions listed above and more.
Functions
You can click the “Edit This Entry” under (or above) any post or page to edit it (if you’re logged in). You can also click the “Edit” button near each comment if you wish to change something someone said or posted. Web visitors will not see these “edit” links.
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