Unit 2 .

Overview Of WordPress

● WordPress Dashboard
Clicking the dashboard takes users to the Home Feed. The Dashboard menu helps users
return to the primary screen.
How to use WordPress Dashboard?
The WordPress login page is accessible at “website-address/wp-admin/. “Once you’ve
browsed the URL, you can see the WordPress login screen. If the login information is
successful, entering the site credentials will take you to the WordPress dashboard.
WordPress dashboard overview:
The WordPress dashboard features an introductory overview With three elements – a top bar,
a left panel of WordPress menus, and the screen body section. The screen you see on login
also refers to the Home Feed.
Dashboard Top Bar
The WordPress Top Bar features basic options to handle repetitive tasks, including:
● It helps you visit the site’s Home page, which is accessible on the left side.
● The comment icon takes users to the Comment screen – where changing, removing,
or accepting comments is possible.
● The top bar has a New button that helps users add new pages, posts, and media.
● The rightmost corner shows your site’s name and a short menu where users can edit
their profiles, see email addresses, and sign out.

WordPress Menus :
I. Home
The Home menu, right below the Dashboard menu, takes users to the same screen as the
dashboard. Below, users can go to the Updates page, where upgrading existing assets is a
click away. The updates page under Home helps users update the WordPress core, Themes,
and Plugins.
 II. Posts
The Posts menu includes two sub-menus – one for creating new posts and the other for
seeing all posts made to date. The posts menu helps users manage WordPress content. Once
you land on the posts page, you can see WordPress content’s published dates, categories,
drafts, and trash section. You can quickly change specific post details, such as title, slug, and
categories.
The Add New Post screen loads the WordPress editor to create content. The editor page is
sensitive for content publishers. An input field asks for the content Title, followed by the
Body Text section. A formatting bar is also present, helping users quickly format textual
content, insert media, and create in-text links with point-and-click options.
Let’s address categories and tags in more detail.
Under Posts, you can also see sub-menus for Categories and Tags. In WordPress, categories
help users group related content, while Tags differentiate content based on flavors, such as
colors, size, or location in online stores.
Tags and Categories could be more helpful, especially for SEO purposes. Using categories
causes content duplication in WordPress. However, eCommerce stores do use categories for
product pages.
III. Media
The media menu helps users manage the uploaded media files, such as images, PDF files,
documents, and random files – possibly.
You can upload new files, remove or change SEO data for uploaded image files, bulk delete,
or search for required information. The media screen also helps you obtain media permalinks.
Moreover, the images you upload to WordPress content appear in Media. You can also upload
media directly to Media and get the permalinks to include in WordPress content.

IV. Pages
Like Posts, the Pages menu helps users create new pages. The menu includes two options –
one to create a new page and the other to see all pages created to date.
Difference between WordPress Pages and Posts
You create Posts to address explanatory information, such as a detailed explanation of a topic,
case study, or event. WordPress pages are different.
WordPress pages help users address rarely-changing information, such as company
information, career opportunities, team information, or contact channels.
 V. Comments
The Comments page shows users’ conversations in one place. Here, you can see the approved
comments, new pending ones, spam entries, and a trash corner for deleted comments.

If your site is attracting users, the comments page holds recent comments. Admin users need
to see the comments page, let’s say – every week to see if something needs attention. The
comments page is more important if you’re running a discussion forum, an eCommerce store,
or a site with user-generated content.
VI. Appearance
One of the most essential menus in the WordPress dashboard – is the Appearance menu,
where users can change the site’s Appearance. Remember, the Appearance menu holds
several sub-menus, including widgets, menus, themes, customization, background, and theme
file editor.
Widgets are small sidebar areas to show relevant content. If you feature sidebar widgets on
posts, you can set relevant widgets to show related content.
In simple words, the Appearance menu helps users:
● Change WordPress themes
● Customize theme options with a live customizer
● Create menus and widgets
.
Moreover, you can upload multiple themes on the Themes page; however, only the chosen
active theme is in use. Keep in mind that keeping a backup theme in WordPress is ideal.
WordPress can automatically activate a backup Theme in case of corruption.
VII. Plugins
As its name suggests, the Plugins page helps users manage WordPress Plugins. Here,
installing, activating, deactivating, or removing WordPress plugins is a matter of clicks.
Like the Appearance menu, the Plugin menu can change plugin files. Other options include
an Add New Plugin button and another to see all plugins. Plugin management is available on
the Installed Plugins page. Here, you can see the active plugins and the ones requiring an
update. You can set plugins to auto-update here.

VIII. Users
The WordPress Users page helps admins manage users on a WordPress website. Here,
creating new users is a click away.
Users can also change information for existing users, such as user role, display options, and
email address. Adding new users, changing users’ data, or managing users require admin
privileges. In WordPress, users with low privileges, such as authors, can’t manage WordPress
users’ data in WordPress Dashboard. Once a user logs into the dashboard, the Edit User
screen provides options for changing colors.

IX. Tools
The tools menu helps you explore WordPress native Import and Export options, which allow
users to backup, import, or export WordPress data across various platforms, such as other
CMS like Tumblr.
Under the Tools menu, you can experience your site’s health status. As shown in the
screenshot below, the Health Status page lets users see the necessary options for WordPress
performance.

X. Settings
Settings are the most crucial menu in the WordPress dashboard. As its name implies, the
Settings page helps users control the WordPress website.
The Settings menu contains eight sub-pages. Let’s describe each in more detail.
The General page provides access to basic WordPress settings, including site titles, emails,
date settings, and taglines. Once you’ve installed WordPress, the General page helps users
quickly set basic settings.
On the other hand, the Writing and Reading pages help users configure WordPress editors
and control the number of posts on Home, respectively. Different options on the Writing and
Reading pages include “Posting content by Email.” On the Reading page, the option That
says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is sensitive. If checked, it instructs
search engines not to index your site content. However, as mentioned on the page, search
engines can ignore indexing, de-indexing, or crawling requests from users.
The Discussion page under (Settings) provides access to various Comments settings. Here,
you can set the default avatar, new comments on posts, pingbacks, manual approval of new
comment entries, and email notifications for new comments.

● Working with pages

What Pages are
● Pages are for content that isn’t time-dependent, or which is not part of the blog
content.
● Pages can be organized into parent pages and subpages.
● Pages can use different page templates, including template files, and Template Tags.
● Some themes may provide different display options for individual Pages.
● You can have a WordPress website with only Pages.
You can use Pages to organize and manage the structure of your website content. You
can add as many pages to your site as you would like, and you can update your pages
as many times as you want.
After you create a page, you can add it to your site’s navigation menu so your visitors
can find it.
Pages screen
To view all the Pages in your site:
● Log in to your WordPress admin screen.
 ● Click Pages in the left sidebar. This will show the Pages screen with a list of all the
pages you have in your site.

1. You can easily search for a Page based on the Page Title.
2. You can get a list of all the Published Pages or Draft Pages.
3. You can filter Pages based on dates.
4. You can perform Bulk actions > Edit or Move to Trash by selecting
multiple Pages from the list.
5. You can sort the Pages list based on Title, Date, Author etc by clicking the Header
columns.
Creating a new Page
To create a new Page:
1. Log in to your WordPress admin screen.
2. Click the Pages > Add New in the left sidebar.
3. Alternatively, you can also click the Add New button in the Pages screen.
4. Add a title for the page.
5. Add body content for the page. If you are using the WordPress block editor, you can
use the different blocks available in the WordPress block editor to design the Page.
6. Customize the sidebar settings for the page.
7. When the page is completed, click Publish.
List of User Roles
Here’s a quick summary of each role, with detailed descriptions further down this page:
● Administrator: The highest level of permission. Admins have the power to access
almost everything.
● Editor: Has access to all posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags, and can upload
media.
● Author: Can write, upload media, edit, and publish their own posts.
● Contributor: Has no publishing or uploading capability but can write and edit their
own posts until they are published.
● Viewer: Viewers can read and comment on posts and pages on private sites.
● Subscriber: People who subscribe to your site’s updates.
Each user role is capable of everything that a less powerful role is capable of. In other words,
Editors can do everything Authors can do, Authors can do everything Contributors can do,
and so on.
Administrator
An Administrator (or Admin for short) has full power over the site and can do everything
related to site administration*.
Administrators can create more Administrators, invite new users, remove users, and change
user roles. They have complete control over posts, pages, uploaded files, comments, settings,
themes, plugins, imports, and exports. They are the only role that can see WordAds
revenue and manage ad settings.
Nothing related to site administration is off-limits for Administrators, including deleting the
entire site*.
* Some Limits on Administrators
● Only the Site Owner (the user that created the site) can transfer the site ownership to
another administrator.
● While Administrators can purchase a WordPress.com plan and register a domain
name, they cannot access the purchases and stored payment details added by you (the
site owner) or other administrators.
● Administrators cannot delete domains unless they are the domain’s owner.
● Sites with an active WordPress.com plan cannot be deleted without the plan being
canceled first. Therefore, if the administrator does not own the plan on the site, they
will not be able to delete the site.
Editor
An Editor can create, edit, publish, and delete any post or page (not just their own), as well as
moderate comments, upload to the media library, and manage categories, tags, and links.
Author
An Author can create, edit, publish, and delete only their own posts only, as well as upload
files and images. Authors do not have access to create, modify, or delete pages, nor can they
modify posts by other users. Authors can edit comments made on their posts.
Contributor
A Contributor can create and edit only their own posts but cannot publish them. When one of
their posts is ready to be published or has been revised, the site owner or another
administrator can review it. Contributors cannot upload files or images.
Once a Contributor’s post is approved and published by an Administrator, it can no longer be
edited by the Contributor. However, the post author will still be the Contributor instead of the
Administrator who publishes the post.
Viewer
Viewers can view private sites. Viewers do not have any editing privileges. All they can do is
read the private site they were invited to and leave comments on it (if the site has enabled
comments).
If someone is a Subscriber of your public site, and then you set that site to private, they do
not automatically become a Viewer. Viewers must always be specifically invited.
Subscriber
Subscribers (formerly referred to as followers) stay up to date with the website’s posts via
their email inbox or the Reader app. Subscribers do not have editing privileges on the site.
They can post comments if comments are enabled.
If the site is private, nobody will be able to subscribe it unless you specifically invite them, at
which point they become a Viewer.

Modifying Settings :
the first steps in setting up the basic structure of your WordPress website. These settings will
determine the page and post structure, users, commenting, and media settings to ensure that
your website functions globally the way you intend it to.
From the WordPress Dashboard, locate the Settings menu. You will see the following options
when you hover over this item: General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Permalinks.
Step one: General Settings

Site Title and Tagline: If you did not set these up when you installed WordPress, or if you
would like to change or redefine these items, change them here. By default, WordPress
includes “just another WordPress site” as your site’s tagline. Use descriptive language for
your website here, as search engines will display this information prominently. The theme
you select may or may not display the Tagline.
URL Settings: The URL settings for your website, WordPress Address and Site address,
should be set up automatically with your WordPress install and are rarely changed in this
Settings area. Changing the URL settings can make your site inaccessible from the front or
the back end and would require access to the database to recover/repair these settings. With
that said, there are cases where you may need to change these settings, such as if you
implement SSL and need to change the protocol to https://; just be careful! It might be strange
to have two different URL settings, but they have different purposes. The WordPress Codex
describes them like this:
● The “Site Address (URL)” setting is the address you want people to type in their
browser to reach your WordPress blog.
● The “WordPress Address (URL)” setting is the address where your WordPress core
files reside.
Most of the time the two URL settings will be the same, but there are times when they maybe
different, such as when WordPress is installed in a subdirectory. In that case, the Site Address
will include the path.
E-mail Address: This should be filled out from your WordPress install; however you should
check it and/or change it here to reflect the email address to which administrative emails
should be sent regarding activity on your site, as well as lost password reset emails.
Membership: With WordPress, you have the option to allow anyone to register for your site
or not. If you select this option, the New User Default Role default is set to subscriber, so that
new users have limited access to your WordPress Dashboard. You can change this; however
the subscriber level is recommended. You can always change a user’s role after they have
registered to give them more access/capabilities.
Timezone, Weekday Start, and Language: Select the city for your preferred timezone and
then select your preferred date format. This is the format which will show on the front end of
your website when the post meta (author, date, time) is published with new blog posts. Next
select which day you want the calendar week to start on. The default is Monday. (WordPress
has a calendar widget, which will refer to this setting if you use that widget on your website.)
Finally, select your preferred language from the dropdown list. Once you’ve updated or
changed these settings, click Save changes.
Step two: Writing Settings
The Writing Settings refer to blog posts.
Default New Post Settings: Once you have created some Post Categories, select the
category here that you want to be the default. If you have not created any categories yet,
“Uncategorized” is the default. Whenever you create a new post, this category will
automatically be assigned.
Post Formats: You can change the default format for new posts by choosing a Post Format
from this dropdown list. Depending on the theme you have installed, there may be various
formats available for your posts.
Post via e-mail is an advanced feature which usually requires setting up a special email
account to which you would send your blog post to be published. This is an optional method,
which is much less common and more complicated than creating/posting your blog posts via
the Add New Post screen.
Update Services: This referes to blogrolling services like ping-o-matic, which let other
people know you’ve updated your blog. This allows browsing sites like Technorati or Sphere
to find your most recent posts. You must have the Search Engine Visibility setting turned on
in Reading Settings (see below) to enable the Update Services setting. Once you’ve updated
or change these settings, click Save Changes.
Step three: Reading Settings
These settings control how posts and pages appear on your site.
Front Page and Blog Page Options: WordPress gives you the option of using the default
setting for the Home page (front page) of your website, which can show the most recent blog
posts or a static page, or selecting specific pages for the Home page and Blog page of your
website. If you would like to set specific pages for these, first create and save these pages
then come back to this Settings page to select them from the dropdown menu.
Blog Post Feed Content Options: You can limit the number of blog posts which will show
on your Blog page, as well as limit the number that will feed into the RSS feed of your blog.
The default for each is 10. You can also specify whether the feed will include a summary or
the full content of these posts. This summary is the Post Excerpt metabox on the Create or
Edit Post pages, which you can create in the post editor.
Search Engine Visibility: If your website is in the development phase, you can choose to
check this box to minimize the chances it will be picked up by search engines. When your
site goes into production and is ready to be searchable, be sure to uncheck this box.
Once you’ve updated or changed these settings, click Save Changes.
Step four: Discussion Settings
The Discussion Settings control commenting and linking on your website.
Default article settings can be set globally here, as well as individually on each blog post. If
you would like to prevent comments on all or most posts, you can set that here, as well as
allowing or disallowing trackbacks and pingbacks (when other blogs link to your post). The
first setting in this list, which asks if you want WordPress to attempt to notify linked
articles/websites when you link to them, is turned off by default.
Other comment settings determine how WordPress will handle comments when they are
posted. These are further defined in Comments in WordPress.
Email me whenever allows you to be notified when someone posts a comment. If you select
the moderation setting in the next option field (Before a comment appears), you can select
the setting here to be notified when a comment is awaiting your approval. This will use the
email address you set on the General Settings page.
Before a comment appears: If you would like to moderate/approve comments before they
appear on your website, select this option. You can also choose to automatically approve
comments from those who have previously had approved comments on your website.
Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist allow you to target specific words, terms
and links in comments. When these targeted items are found in a comment you can set the
comment to force moderation or to be blacklisted. This can help identify and control spam.
Avatars: You can select whether or not to show a commenter’s avatar when they comment on
a post. If you choose to display avatars, you can also control what type of avatar is displayed.
Once you’ve updated or change these settings, click Save Changes.
Step five: Media Settings
WordPress has default image sizes already set on new websites. You can change these global
defaults on this setting screen. You can also choose to use the WordPress image file system,
which organizes images into folders based on the month and year when they were uploaded
to the site.
Once you’ve updated or change these settings, click Save Changes.
Step six: Permalink Settings
Permalinks determine the URL of each page and post on your website, as well as your
category and tag archives. The recommended permalink structure in most cases is the “Post
name,” sometimes referred to as “Pretty Permalinks.” This can improve the aesthetics,
usability, and forward-compatibility of your links, as well as improve the ranking of your site
in search engines. Once set, these should not be changed to avoid broken links. You also have
the option to set a custom URL structure here. Once you’ve updated or change these settings,
click Save Changes.
The WordPress Database Structure

WordPress and nearly all plugins store their settings in a special location on your server
named the database.
List of WordPress Core Tables
● wp_options
● wp_users,
● wp_usermeta
● wp_posts
● wp_postmeta
● wp_terms
 ● wp_term_relationships
● wp_term_taxonomy
● wp_comments
● wp_commentmeta
● wp_links

wp_options

● The table wp_options is one of the most important WordPress database

tables and stores all the settings of a WordPress site, like the URL, the
title, installed plugins, etc! Most of the plugins store settings in this table
as well.
● All the settings in the WordPress dashboard are stored in this table.

wp_users Stores all the registered users on a WordPress site. It contains basic
information about a user, like a username and encrypted password, email,
time of registration, display name, status, and a few more fields.

wp_usermeta Stores the metadata (‘additional data‘) of the users. It extends

the table wp_users with more data. For example, a user’s first name is stored
in the table wp_usermeta instead of the table wp_users.

There are two important fields in this table. Plugins can store custom data
in wp_usermeta by just adding new meta_key values.

wp_posts Table stores all content-related data of a WordPress website. All

posts, pages, and their revisions are available in the wp_posts table. It might
be unclear, but WordPress stores much more into that table.

This table also contains navigation menu items, media files, and attachments
like images and content data used by plugins.

The table wp_terms stores Categories and tags for posts, pages, and links.

One of the columns in this table is ‘slug. ‘ A slug is a term that reflects a tag of
a particular post. In WordPress, you can use tags to connect posts, pages, and
links.

wp_term_relationship is the conjunction and connects these tags to posts,

pages, and links. It’s like a map between the terms objects and the terms.
wp_term_taxonomy Extends the table wp_terms with more data. It’s like
metadata for the table wp_terms with the difference that plugins cannot add
custom data here. This table also contains a relationship between menus and
menu items.

wp_comments stores comments on posts and pages. This table also

contains unapproved comments and author information, together with the
hierarchy of comments. The table wp_commentmeta contains further
metadata about the comments.

wp_links

This table contains information about custom links added to your site. It has
been deprecated and is not used any longer. There are a few older plugins
that still make use of it, but usually, it is an empty table.

Graphical Structure of WordPress Database

This diagram shows how the WordPress tables are connected:

Overview of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a markup language that controls
the appearance of HTML elements on a web page. WordPress includes a CSS
editor to add your own CSS styles to override the default styles of your theme.

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.

2. Navigate to Appearance → Editor.
3. Click Styles in the Design menu on the left.
o If your theme includes Style Variations, you must then click the
pencil icon to open the Styles options:

4. Click the three dots to the right of the “Styles” heading and choose
“Additional CSS“:

5. Type or paste your CSS into the text box provided.

6. Click the “Save” button at the top right of the screen to save the CSS to
your site.
You can preview the impact of your CSS changes on any block type by
loading the Style Book. Click on the eye icon to open the style book.
 Add CSS to Specific Block Types :
1. Visit your site’s dashboard.

2. Navigate to Appearance → Editor.

3. Click Styles in the Design menu on the left.

o If your theme includes Style Variations, you must then click the
pencil icon to open the Styles options.

4. This time, select the “Blocks” section to access settings to customize the
appearance of specific blocks for the whole site.

5. Click the name of the block you want to add CSS to. You can also locate
your desired block type using the search box.

6. Scroll down to the bottom and click on “Advanced“.

7. In the box labeled “Additional CSS“, type CSS that will apply to all
instances of that block type. When adding per-block CSS, you do not
need to include a CSS selector — just add the property and value. An
example is included in the video above.

8. Click the “Save” button at the top right of the screen to save the CSS to
your site.

How to install a theme?

There are three ways in which you can install a theme. The easiest is to choose and
install one from within the dashboard. Let’s take a look at it.
● Install from the dashboard: Head over to Appearance -> Themes -> Add New.
Themes will be displayed here. You can also install the theme directly from this page,
or, click on details and preview, and install. Once installed, you’ll see the Activate
button – click that too. This will bring you back to your Themes dashboard, where
you can see the current theme activated.
● Install from a ZIP file: If you have a theme in the form of a zip file, you can install it
manually. One way is to upload the zip file from the dashboard. To do that, go to
Appearance -> Themes -> Add New. At the top, you should see a button to Upload.
Click that and choose your zip file, then Install Now. Make sure to activate it as well.