Common Admin Panel Elemets

Listed below are some of the basic functions and elements that you can find in the admin panel:

Site Title – this is located on the upper most left hand site of the admin panel. This is the title of your site and clicking on this will take you to your home page. This is displayed all the time when you are inside the admin panel.

Admin Panel Options – opposite the site title located in the upper right hand are various admin panel options. The username entered as well as Help, Screen Options and Log Out options are located here.

Admin Panel tabs – are group of admin functions that group on the left side of the admin panel page. The basic tabs include dashboard, posts, media, links, pages, comments, appearances, plug-ins, tools and settings tab.

Let us now look deeper into each admin panel tab

Dashboard tab

This is the default page that will show after logging in the admin panel. This will give the user some quick updates about the site. You can see recent comments, QuickPress, recent drafts as well as total number of posts, pages categories and comments.

Posts tab

This page contains links to add new posts, edit existing posts, manage tags, and create new categories for a thematic grouping of your posts. A list of the latest articles posted or drafts are shown here. You can add new posts or search posts and other post related functionalities in this tab.

Media tab

The page that contains links to the media library which contains your uploaded pictures, movies, audio and other multimedia files. Just like articles you can add new pictures and other media files, search for a specific media in this page.

Links tab

You can add a new link, edit existing links or create link categories in this page. Links that are added hear will appear in the Blogroll section of your blog. You can add links that will link you to other posts or pages within your site/blog or links to valuable resources located in another site.

Pages tab

This tab is where you can add a new page or edit existing pages. Posts are articles that are written inside a page while a page contains many posts.

Comments section

This tab allows the administrator comments that have been added by registered user or visitors. Again, depending on the settings, you can set an option where the administrator need not approve comments that have been added. The administrator also can monitor SPAM comments in this tab.

Appearance tab

The appearance tab is the tab where you control what theme to use, add or remove widgets, modify menus depending on the theme, and modify the codes for the theme that you are currently using.

Plug-ins Tab

This page will show the current plug-ins that is installed in your site. Administrators can add, edit or install new plug-ins that is useful to the site.

Users Tab

This tab will list all the registered users that have access to the admin panel. Only the administrator can view this page. He is the only one allowed to edit, add or delete users for the website.

Tools Tab

This tab gives you access to the array tools provided by WordPress. This includes tools, import and export tools that you can use for WordPress administration.

Settings Tab

This tab contains the settings for your website. Administrator accounts can modify the settings such as site title, tagline, date format and other configurable settings. Depending on the allowed privileges, registers will not be able to see this tab because this is only for administrator accounts.

The admin panel is not after all a hard tool for users and registered. Depending on the account that you used to log-in, there are some tabs that might not be available for use. Only administrator accounts can access the full features of the admin panel while users can only view posts, comments, profiles, and tools tabs. With this tutorial in hand, you are now on your way to becoming a full-time WordPress administrator to your site.

Step 1:-

Our first for creating a post in wordpress is going to be Login to your wordpress.

Step 2:-

Once you are in your dashboard. You can see there are lots of options available. Don’t be confused. And have a look at the left side. And find the “Post” tab on the left side. When you click on it. You get more options like edit, add new etc. As we want to add a new post we will click on “Add New”.

Step 3:-

When you click on the post “Add New”  a post box will appear. With blank space for title, and post body. And there will be some options on the right side. Which we’ll discuss in the following steps.

Now as we want to create a post. Simple add your post title in the “Enter title here” blank space. And post whatever you want to publish. If you want you can write it directly on wordpress or simply copy-paste it from a notepad its all up to you.

Step 4:-

Now let’s discuss the right side options I was talking about earlier.  On the right side, there are 4 options. “Save Draft” It does exactly what it sounds like. Meaning it save your post if you want to complete it later as it is unfinished or not ready to be published yet.  So by click this you can save your post if you want to change something later on.

Then our next option is “Preview”. If you click this it will show you how your post going to look when you publish it. This is a really nice option as if something doesn’t look nice you can change if before publishing.

Our third option of the right side is “Move to trash”. This is an important one as if you mess up something you can easily get rid of it by clicking this and your post will be move to trash. So keep in mind you can click this one if you don’t like your post and want to delete it.

And last but not the least “Publish”. Do need to say much as when you click it your post will be publish. So Just write your post check the preview if everything looks good then click the “publish button” and your very first post on wordpress will be publish.

Now you have successfully published your first post. Want to see how it looks. Simply visit your site and there will be your post. Published just the way you want it using wordpress.

Step1:-

Of course the first thing we need to do is Login to your wordpress. So we can access the dashboard. Simply add your user name and password and then click login.

Step 2:-

Once we reach our dashboard. We see lots of options have a look at the left side.  There are some tabs like “posts”, ” media”, ” profile”, “Tool” and “comments” etc. So just look at the left side options and click on “comments”.

Step 3:-

When you click on the comments you will see a list of all the comments you receive. Now you need to select the comment you want to edit. Simply click on it and some options will appear below it. Like unapproved, reply, quick edit, edit, spam, trash. You need to Click on “edit”.

Step 4:-

When you click on edit it leads you to an edit box. Now you can change almost everything you want. You can change the name, address, website and the comment message. So simply change the text or whatever you want to edit.

Step 5:-

After making the changes look on the right side. There are some options like Approved, Pending, and Spam. Click on Approved of you want to publish the comment. If you want to make the changes later you can click on pending. And if you think its a spam comment then simply click on spam and then click “Update Comment”.

And now you know how to edit a comment in wordpress. So when next time you receive the comment notice simply go to your dashboard and follow the step mentioned above and you are done.

This tutorial is intended to guide you through the installation processes of WordPress.

Steps in Nutshell

1.    Download the WordPress Installation package to your PC. Latest wordpress package is 3.04 which can be downloaded from official site – WordPress.org.

2.    Create a database and user using cpanel.

3.    Edit wp-config.php with database user and password information.

4.    Upload wordpress folder and its content to the host.

5.    Run the install script through web browser.

Installation in Detail

Step 1: Download WordPress

Download the wordpress installation package from WordPress.org from this link.

A zip file will be downloaded which contains all the required files to be uploaded to the host server.

Before uploading the file and its content to the server, follow the steps mentioned below to run the script.

Step 2: Create Database and User

Before wordpress can be installed, a database has be created and attached to our installation package. You can use Cpanel that is provided by most hosting providers to create MySQL database and user.

Assign the user to the database and set privileges for the user.

(While setting privileges for the user, do not forget to assign All Privileges).

Step 3: Configure wp-config.php

Extract the contents of zip file downloaded in step 1.

Find a file named “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it to “wp-config.php”.

Open the file in your favourite text editor and find the following lines –

Modify the file with database name, database user and password with the database information from step 2.

In this example we have used -

DB_NAME — “wordpress”

DB_USER — “username”

DB_PASSWORD — “password”

Please do not use the above mentioned user name and password. We have used them only for illustration purposes.

Step 4: Upload Contents to the Server

Upload the contents of the WordPress folder with modified wp-config file using a FTP client like FileZilla.

Enter server IP address in the Hostname field and user name and password provided by the hosting provider. (This is the username and password of FTP and may be different from the Cpanel log-in)

Click on Quickconnect and find public_html folder under “/”.Upload the contents of the wordpress folder excluding the folder itself to the public_html folder.

This will install wordpress in the root directory of your domain. The wordpress site will then reside at http://www.yoursite.com/.

If you wish to install wordpress on a sub-directory like http://www.yoursite.com/blog’ rename the wordpress folder to blog(name of your sub-directory) and upload the whole folder instead.

Step 5: Run the Installation Script

Open your favorite web browser like IE or Mozilla Firefox and visit http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/install.php.

Enter the Blog name and email in the required fields. After installation, your username and password for the Admin panel will be sent to the email address provided.

The user name and password could be seen in the next screen as well. The user name and password could be changed after logging in to the admin panel.

Admin panel in wordpress is called WordPress Dashboard and can be accessed by visiting “http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin”

Great! The WordPress site is completely set up and ready.

If you are to face any issues during installation, feel free to comment.

You can always choose to use our Professional Services for faster and better results.

For instance,  as I was writing this post in my WordPress text editor I decided instead of typing the HTML myself, being a developer comes in handy there; I would install a Plugin I use frequently: TinyMCE Advanced and see if I could add the ability to use an acronym tag to the TinyMCE editor in WordPress.

Since I have used this Plugin in the past I had an edge here but search and you will find a solution for many problems you’ll face when building a new website or blog. There is such a large community around WordPress often someone has thought of your problem before you ran into it. Often time’s even complex requests can be accomplished with a quick search through the Plugin directory and a short installation process all from the backend of your WordPress blog!

When it comes time for customization this is where WordPress Now can help you. If you have found a great Plugin but need it customized to suit your site we can help. Our developers follow strict coding standards and can create custom WordPress Plugins for your every need. Whether you have found a Plugin but need a little extra or are looking for someone who understands you don’t want another blog; this is what we do. We have quick turn around service; for a premium but can often fix, upgrade, backup or even restore your blog or website in less time than most developers out there.

If you know HTML or PHP you can likely customize Themes very easily on your own, and might even eventually task yourself with creating and managing your own Plugins but before you do, you should understand the coding standards and follow them. Make sure to ensure users, including yourself, can update Plugins and Themes as new versions are released without breaking your custom code.

As for Themes there are some great frameworks out there; my personal preference is Thematic; if you haven’t used it, try it! As with any theme, you can create child Themes and this will help you keep your custom design changes organized while still allowing your main Theme t be updated when needed.

Obviously this get’s tricky so if you have any problems feel free to call us or email us; anytime.

My first experience went fairly smoothly, I upgraded php4 to php5 on Godaddy server and added mcrypt and mhash using yum installer. Everything was super easy except that the server never actually started using mcrypt and I also realized afterwards that mcrypt requires mhash.

The fix was pretty straightforward, I added mhash as well and simply went into my httpd.conf file and added extension=mcrypt.so and tada! it was runnning with my newly added mcrypt install.

Media Temple on the other hand was quite impossible until I came across a posting in the user forums about Installing mcrypt for Magento on a dv server at Media Temple.

I had already successfully used yum to add mcrypt and mhash extension to my php installation however, they were not being loaded when I checked the phpinfo printout. After going back and forth with support I decided to dig a little deeper and I figured out that the API versions were not matching my php 5.2.5 installation.

I was pretty worried I had to recomile php all over again with mcrypt to get this working and my main concern was that I would still have the wrong version of mcrypt anyways.  After reading the post above I decided to try it since it was a few steps and did not require me to re-comile php on my server.

What is actually does require is for you to compile an entire php 5.2.5 (has to match your current running version) in your user directory but not to actually install it. I ran the configure command adding mcrypt and mhash to it and basically it compiled an exact replica of my server with only the mcrypt and mhash extensions.

Then you just copy them into your current installs lib directory and BOOM! mcrypt up and running.

Feel free to comment or provide me with any experiences you had adding mcrypt to php without re-compiling.

I was just doing some geeky Friday night research when I noticed a website was using what looked to be a Google chat account as the live chat on their website. So I searched and sure enough, in 2008 Google Talkabout’s Bruce Leban, wrote an article about the new Chatback feature that allows you to place a “provided HTML snippet to your web site” and anyone visiting your website can chat with you live if you are logged into your Google chat.

For me this means any time, quite literally. Between my Palm Pre Plus, my iPod Touch or any one of my work computers I am pretty much logged into google chat all the time. The only caveat I noticed was that my Palm Pre didn’t seem to respond to a “guest” chat initiated on the site. While both Adium and Gmail did let me know a guest was trying to chat with me and I was able to instantly begin chatting with myself on my website.

What am amazing free feature for any website out there trying to get more contact with their users, this would work great for e-commerce sites as well as blogs. From now on I will be mentioning this one when discussing live chat features for our clients projects.

I have added the Chatback widget to my contact page, try it out but until the Palm Pre works it may show me as online but not notify me of the chat. I guess I should let them know and see if I can help with a fix.

While in many environments this may have caused tension; where I work this was just followed by laughter. Bryce immediately responded using BaseCamp to state: “Mike says it isn’t valid” which, in all fairness, is 100% accurate.

Like many of my colleagues, I always use the XHTML Strict DOCTYPE. There are numerous reasons for declaring a Strict DOCTYPE, but in order to keep my post short I won’t give you reasons why we choose to do so. I certainly am a snob about coding valid website’s from start to finish and will only say that if you are coding templates as a career please be a professional! Loose DOCTYPE’s are for learning or transitioning site’s only!

I wasn’t surprised at our response.. “Whatever!”, knowing that the leader of our pack loves his tabs and new windows. While my personal preference’s aren’t valid when discussing a client’s website, I feel that the control should be left to user, I don’t appreciate someone forcibly opening another tab without my permission, and I wouldn’t want to do that to anyone else. So without mentioning the chance that the user may be confused by us opening a new window and in the process, disabling their ability to use the back button, let’s consider accessibility!

There are many reasons to avoid using the target attribute, some may not be very important for your site please understand that some obscure browsers, screen readers, as well as mobile browsers do not support opening new windows. If you want to know all the reasons, Robert Nyman touches just about all the reasons between his post “How evil is the target attribute?” and the comments that follow. But for the reason of simply staying out of people’s way let’s see if we can find a better way.

I know there are always situations where you are either going to have to add them just by request or because you don’t make the end decision.. so let’s do it without switching DOCTYPE shall we?

$("a[rel*='external']").click(function(){
    this.target = "_blank";
});

That’s it! If you are not familiar with jQuery or the attribute selectors, here’s what we did. I am telling jQuery to find all the anchor tags in the document that have an attribute “rel” containing the value “external”. Assign a click event to fire with the target attribute set to “_blank” which.. you guessed it.. opens the link in a new window or tab! So now all you do is inside your valid strict DOCTYPE you use:

Go read Mike's blog

Suddenly we are still adhering to the Strict DOCTYPE and not losing any face with our fellow coders and yet the client is tickled pink because even though you disagreed with her/his decision you apparently integrated the request.

Got a problem with what I wrote, agree or disagree? Let’s debate it!

“of course PHP is the most gangster language. Why do you think they make you prefix your variables with dollar signs?”

Jim Danko said this: http://twitter.com/jimdanko