Introduction to WordPress

1. WordPress
2. CMS
3. WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
4. Step 1 - Installing WordPress
5. Step 2 – Navigating in WordPress Dashboard
6. Step 3 – Publishing Content
7. Step 4 – Installing WordPress Plugins
8. Step 5 – Installing WordPress Themes
9. Step 6 – Optimizing WordPress Performance
10. Step 7 – Keeping WordPress Secure

WordPress
WordPress is a simple blogging tool, however, it is much more than that. Due to the
fact that WordPress is free and an open source project, it allows anyone to improve and
edit its code according to one’s liking. It also features thousands of free plugins, themes,
widgets and other tools. All these features allow you to create any type of website,
starting from simple blogs, personal websites or portfolios, ranging to e-shops,
knowledge bases or job boards. Another factor is that WordPress is completely free and
supports all hosting platforms with PHP and MySQL. On top of that, this CMS is
constantly updated with new versions which improve security, include new features
and improve overall performance.

Content Management System (CMS)

A content management system or CMS for short is an application with the ability to
create, modify and publish digital content. In most cases, it also supports multiple users,
allowing them to work in collaboration. For example, in WordPress it is possible to
create several administrative users, each one having different privileges. Content
management systems also include text and formatting features, the ability to upload
videos, photos, audio, maps or even your own code.
• A content management system consists of two major components:
• A content management application (CMA). The CMA can be referred to as the
graphical user interface (GUI) that lets a user create, modify, remove and
publish content without ever needing to have knowledge of HTML or other
programming languages.
• A content delivery application (CDA). The CDA is responsible for the back-
end services that manage and deliver content after it is in the CMA.
• Other features worth mentioning are:
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Online support and communities
• User/group functions
• Various templates and designs
• Installation wizards and upgrades/updates
 • The three most popular content management systems in the world are
WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
This WordPress tutorial will focus on the self-hosted WordPress version.

Step 1 – Installing WordPress

One reason for WordPress popularity is the low system requirements needed to run this
CMS on a web server:
PHP version 5.2.4 or greater.
MySQL version 5.0.15 or greater or any version of MariaDB.
You would probably have to search for a hosting provider which lacks WordPress
support. Many hosts use various auto-installers to make the WordPress installation
process as simple as possible. By using auto-installers, users no longer have to deal
with database creation or file uploading.
In this part of our WordPress tutorial, you will learn two different ways to install
WordPress.
Before proceeding with WordPress installation, you need to decide on how you want
to access your website. Do you want WordPress on your domain name root
(example.com), subfolder (example.com/blog) or subdomain name
(blog.example.com)? Only if you want to setup WordPress on a subdomain name, you
will have to take an additional step and create a subdomain name. On Hostinger this
can be easily done in the Subdomains section.
Option 1.1 – Installing WordPress on Hostinger by Using Auto Installer
Let’s start with the simplest and fastest way to install WordPress – Hostinger auto
installer. The steps below show how to install WordPress on Hostinger control panel:
Access Hostinger control panel.
Locate Auto Installer and open it.
Enter WordPress in the search field and click on its icon.
Now fill in website details:
URL – The URL where WordPress should be installed. If you want to install it on root
domain name (example.com) then leave it empty.
Language – Choose WordPress language.
Administrator Username – Your WordPress admin username. You will use it to access
WordPress admin area.
Administrator Password – Your WordPress admin password. You will use it to access
WordPress admin area.
Administrator Email – Enter your email address.
Website Title – The title of your WordPress website.
Website Tagline – A short sentence or slogan explaining what your website is about.
Press Install button.
Option 1.2 – Installing WordPress Manually
If you want to understand the basics and learn how WordPress works, you can install it
manually. WordPress is famous for its 5-minute installer. The process is
straightforward and similar to any other software installation. So if you have ever
installed any computer program – it won’t be hard for you to complete the WordPress
installation.

Once the download is complete, you can start uploading WordPress files to your hosting
account. You can use either a File Manager provided by your hosting, or an FTP client.
There is no difference which tool you will use to upload WordPress files. The only
thing that you should take into account is the destination directory. For example, if you
want to have WordPress on a root domain name, files should be uploaded to
the public_html folder; if you want to serve WordPress from a subdomain name or a
subfolder, upload the files to the appropriate directory.
WordPress stores information in the database. Thus, it’s mandatory to create one. On
Hostinger, a new database can be created in the MySQL Databases section. Be sure to
write down the database details as you will need them later.

Now visit your domain name in order to start the installation process. You’ll be asked
to fill in the MySQL database information, administrator details and the site
information.
Step 2 – Navigating in WordPress Dashboard
Once the installation is complete, the first thing you would want to do is log in to the
WordPress administrator dashboard. Usually, there is a link to the login page on the
front end of WordPress blog. However, some themes don’t have this link. In this case,
the easiest way to log in to WordPress is by adding wp-admin at the end of your
website’s address like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
This URL will direct you to the login screen where you will be asked to enter the
administrator’s username and password. Remember, you have entered these details
during WordPress installation. If you have forgotten your password, click on the Lost
your password? link. More detailed instructions on how to login to WordPress can be
found here.

After logging in, you will see the administrator dashboard. It’s built to give you an
overview of your entire website and contains 3 main sections:
A toolbar at the top of the page. It contains links to the most commonly used
administrative functions and resources. For example, if you hover over your website’s
name, you will get a link to the public view of your site. It also displays simple
notifications like updates and new comments count.
The main navigation menu on the left-hand side. It contains links to all administrative
screens of WordPress. If you hover over a menu item, a submenu with additional items
will be displayed.
The main work area.
The first time you log in to the WordPress admin panel, you will see a welcome module
which contains some useful links to help you get started. Once you are comfortable
with the dashboard, press the Dismiss button in order to hide this module.
Other Modules:
At a Glance box will tell you how many posts, pages and comments you have. It also
shows WordPress version and theme you are running.
Activity box gives you a bit more information about your latest posts and comments. It
shows the status of all comments and a short list of the most recent comments.
Quick Draft box. Entering content into this box will start a new blog post. However,
you cannot publish one from here as this box is only for taking blog posts ideas for you
to come back to later.
WordPress News. This module displays the latest WordPress news.
Each of these windows has little arrows which you can use to quickly hide the box. You
can also drag and drop them to different positions.
Step 3 – Publishing Content
Creating a website with WordPress starts with publishing a new post or a new page.
You may wonder – what is the difference between posts and pages?
The answer is simple. WordPress posts can be categorized, tagged, archived.
WordPress posts are used to publish time-sensitive content. In contrast, pages are
mainly for static, dateless content. They don’t have categories or tags. Contact us or
About pages are good examples of pages.
Step 3.1 – Creating a New Post
To create a new WordPress post open the Add New section under Posts or
choose New -> Post option from the top toolbar.
You will be presented with an editing screen with an array of posting features. The first
thing you should do is enter a title for your post. Secondly, enter the actual content of
your post in the field below. If you want to format your text, use the toolbar options.
It’s similar to the one you can find in MS Word or any other popular text editor.
At the right-hand side of the screen, you can see the so-called meta-boxes. Each box
has a particular function.
Publish. Here you can change the status and visibility of your post, schedule it. By
clicking the Publish button your post will go live. If you decide to delete the post, press
the Move to Trash button.
Categories. On this box, you can assign your post to a specific category. You can even
create a new one by pressing the + Add New Category button.
Tags box allows to quickly add new tags.
Featured Image. Here you can assign a featured image to a post. It will be visible at the
very top of the post (image location can be different depending on theme).
Step 3.2 – Creating a New Page
In order to create a new WordPress page, open the Add New section under Pages menu
or click New -> Page button at the top toolbar.
Add New page section has identical WYSIWYG text editor just like the Posts section
has. Thus, the process of text input and formatting is the same.
You may also notice that Pages section does not have Tags and Categories meta-boxes.
Instead, it has a box called Page Attributes. In this section, you can change the order of
your pages and set parent pages. This is useful if you want to have several pages under
one parent page.
Step 4 – Installing WordPress Plugins
The primary purpose of WordPress plugins is to expand WordPress functionality. Just
by installing and activating a plugin you can add new features to WordPress site without
any coding. There are thousands of free and paid plugins built for different purposes:
from social media sharing to security. Thus, you will surely find a plugin that fits your
needs.
Installing WordPress plugins is an easy task even for a beginner. Free and freemium
plugins are available on WordPress.org plugin directory. Just like themes, these can be
installed by using the inbuilt WordPress installer. To install a WordPress plugin press
the Add New button under Plugins and enter the name of the plugin you want to install
in the search field. Hit Install and then Activate button.
There are thousands of premium (paid) WordPress plugins which cannot be installed
from the official WordPress plugin directory. If you purchased a premium plugin, you
would have to manually upload it to WordPress. The process is quite similar to themes
installation. To proceed, press the Add New button under Plugins and hit Upload
Plugin. Now select a plugin archive and upload it. Finally, install and activate the
plugin.
Essential WordPress Plugins
There are so many WordPress plugins – it could be hard to choose the right one. In fact,
many of the plugins serve the same purpose, for example, there are dozens of
WordPress caching plugins. That is why we decided to list the best WordPress plugins
that are essential for every WordPress blog.
Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will automatically generate XML site maps for
better search engine optimization. It’s easy to use and update it regularly.
Yoast SEO. Probably the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It will help you
improve the search engine optimization. From meta tags to writing suggestions – Yoast
SEO plugin has it all.
Wordfence Security. This plugin will keep your WordPress safe from hackers and
malware. It has firewall and malware scanner modules which are super useful.
Contact Form 7. Simple but very powerful WordPress contact form plugin. Create any
contact or even lead generation forms with this plugin.
It’s not recommended to clog Wordpress with dozens of plugins as it can decrease site’s
performance. Keep your WordPress clean by installing only essential plugins and delete
the ones you are not using.
Step 5 – Installing WordPress Themes
The look of WordPress site can be changed by applying themes. There are free and
premium WordPress themes. Some of them are universal and can be used on any
website. Others are built for a very specific purpose, for example, the e-commerce
themes.
WordPress made theme installation super easy. It literally takes just a few minutes to
install free WordPress themes. In order to proceed, access the Appearance section and
search for a nice looking theme. You can even filter themes by features or colors.
Theme preview feature lets you see how your website will look with a selected theme.
This is useful, as it will save your time – you will not have to install multiple themes
just to find the theme that fits your needs.
The above method is suitable for free and freemium themes only. What if you purchased
a nice looking premium theme? In this case, you will have to upload the theme files
manually. Access the same Appearance section, press the Upload Theme button and
select the theme’s .zip file. It can take up to a few minutes for the uploading process to
complete. Once it’s done, simply Activate the theme. Need exact steps? See a
comprehensive tutorial on how to install themes.

Step 6 – Optimizing WordPress Performance

In this WordPress tutorial, we have now learned how to install and use WordPress in
order to create and manage your very own website. As your WordPress site grows, so
does the amount of text, images, code and other media files. A bigger website means
that it will take longer to load. To avoid slow response time in WordPress, you should
also invest some time in optimization. It will ensure that your pages load quickly and
efficiently, thus, leaving your visitors happy and wanting to come back for more.
Everyone has encountered a slow website at least a few times and felt the frustration
that comes while waiting endlessly for it to load. Taking that into account, spending
some time to improve your WordPress speed is a really good idea. The best part about
WordPress is that it’s really easy to optimize due to the number of plugins and other
tools available. You can make your WordPress site lightning fast without even having
any coding knowledge at all. To get you on the right track, we will cover a few
WordPress optimization techniques that will provide a notable speed boost to your
website.
Step 6.1 – Using WordPress Caching Plugins
The first step in optimizing your WordPress site is setting up a WordPress caching
plugin. Is short, a cache is a temporary data storage. In most cases, active data is cached
which results in reduced loading times. For example, when you access a frequently
visited site, your browser will have a portion of the site’s static content located in its
cache. As a result, the browser needs to request fewer files and information from the
server which ultimately leads to quicker loading. WordPress caching plugins work by
creating a static version of your website and delivering it, instead of loading all PHP
scripts every time when someone refreshes or re-enters your site.
Step 6.2 – Optimizing WordPress Images
Image optimization is another crucial task that should be done in order to make your
WordPress site fast. Generally, there are 2 main issues that cause images to load slowly:
Using too large images. For example, you upload a 500 x 500 dimension picture but
your site resizes it to 100 x 100. As a result, the visitor’s browser will have to download
the larger file first, scale it down and only then display it. The proper way would be to
simply upload a 100 x 100 dimension picture so that the excessive task of scaling down
the image would be avoided. The image would also take up less space that way,
resulting in an overall boost of speed.
The more images your WordPress site has, the more beneficial this optimization task
will be.
Step 6.3 – Enabling gzip Compression for WordPress
Enabling gzip compression for a WordPress website is a great way to increase speed
and performance. In short, gzip compression works by finding similar strings in a text
file and replacing it temporarily, resulting in a smaller file size. HTML and CSS files
have a lot of repetitive text and spaces, making gzip compression very effective. On the
whole, it can reduce the size of a WordPress page by up to 50-70%.
There are a few ways to enable gzip compression:
One thing that you should keep in mind is that gzip compression may slightly increase
CPU usage. If CPU is not an issue, then gzip compression is a really great way to
optimize your WordPress site.
Step 6.4 – Deferring parsing of JavaScript in WordPress
Most themes, plugins and social media add-ons use a lot of JavaScript which is by
default loaded first when accessing a site. This will make the HTML and other visual
contents appear only after the JS is loaded. You can defer parsing of JavaScript so that
the visual elements appear faster, while various social media buttons and other content
that uses JavaScript would be loaded afterwards.
Step 6.5 – Using a Content Delivery Network
Implementing a content delivery network (CDN for short) will speed up WordPress by
caching content in multiple data centers around the world. After a visitor enters your
site, the content will be delivered by the nearest datacenter available resulting in a better
front-end experience. CDNs also work great with WordPress caching plugins and there
are free solutions to get you started. For example, CloudFlare has a free plan which
provides both benefits of a CDN while protecting your site from DDoS attacks. For
step-by-step instructions on how to implement it on WordPress
Step 6.6 – Removing Query Strings from Static Resources
GTMetrix and other optimization tools suggest removing query strings from CSS and
JS in order to improve caching of those elements.
Step 6.7 – Enabling Lazy Loading
Generally, when a web page is opened, all the content is loaded instantly, which is
called eager loading. Alternatively, it is possible to delay the initialization of some
objects (such as images) until they are needed, which is called lazy loading. The most
common practice is displaying images only when they are visible from the visitor’s
viewpoint or in the screen.
Step 7 – Keeping WordPress Secure
Last but not least, in order to have a successful WordPress site, you must harden its
security. Just as WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, it also turns out to
be the most hacked. However, there are a few things that you can do in order to protect
your site against hacking and other malicious activity.
Step 7.1 – Keeping WordPress Updated
One of the most important factors in having a safe environment is to always update and
use the latest version of WordPress, themes and plugins. Most updates include security
tweaks, vulnerability fixes and prevent them from being exploitable in the future
versions. A common practice among hackers is taking advantage of web pages that are
running an outdated version of WordPress with a known vulnerability. By default,
WordPress is updated automatically upon the release of a new version, however, it may
not always work or the feature may be disabled on some hosts. Generally, when a new
version of WordPress arrives, a notification will be shown at the top of your Dashboard.
You may also update your themes and plugins via Dashbard-> Updates section.
Step 7.2 – Using Unique Usernames and Passwords
Admin is the username set by default in all WordPress installations. It is highly
recommended to change it, as it will add an extra layer of security to your login
credentials. Imagine a situation where someone knows your password, however, they
are not aware of the username. The end result is that the person will still be unable to
access your dashboard because they do not know the username. Leaving the value
as admin can make the hacker’s job that much easier, therefore it should always be
changed.
When setting up a password, make sure to include numbers, capital letters and special
symbols. In case you are having difficulties keeping track of all the passwords, you can
store them using such tools as Last Pass. It will save the trouble of remembering all the
different passwords while allowing you to go wild on the password difficulty.
Step 7.3 – Backing up WordPress
Generating backups is a crucial task for any website. Not only will it increase your
security, but will also provide you with a reliable way of restoring your site in case of
unexpected errors or issues. You can perform a backup manually or use automation.
The manual process would involve downloading the files and the MySQL database of
a WordPress site. However, if you make lots of new posts, changes or manage several
different websites, downloading everything manually each time can be a real hassle. In
addition, nowadays, most hosting providers offer automated account backups. As an
extra security measure, you can use WordPress plugins to automate backups monthly,
weekly or even daily. They will save you lots of time and also give the option of storing
the backup WordPress files and database to a remote location such as DropBox.. You
can use such plugins as:
UpdraftPlus a plugin with the ability to backup WordPress to a remote location and
restore it.
BackUpWordPress is a light-weight backup plugin with automation. It allows you to
exclude certain folders, schedule the execution time and has support for several
different languages.