The New To WordPress - Where to Start article accompanies this section, though it contains duplicate information and should be merged with this section.
Advantages of Self-Hosted WordPress Blogs
A self-hosted WordPress blog has a number of advantages over freely hosted blogs. With a self-hosted WordPress blog, you have complete control over your code, so you can implement any theme, modify it entirely, or create your own. You can add any plugin you want, and then hack the code. The application's code is completely open, allowing you total access to modify, tweak, or explore what you want.
There's much in store for the non-professional and non-technical blogger also, whose writing will revolve around casual and professional blogging without bothering about details how the website functions.
WordPress has a large community of enthusiastic bloggers who help each other in forums, create and share themes and plugins, and help move the software forward with new features and better design. With such freedom, what you can do with a WordPress blog can be a bit overwhelming. The WordPress Codex (the wiki manual for WordPress) has hundreds of pages and can be daunting in scope.
The intent of this WordPress Quick Start Guide is to get you up and running with WordPress and give you a brief overview of the most important concepts and techniques. It covers the most common setup tasks you need to technically launch, configure, and manage your blog. It then lays down some concepts for more advanced theme modification.
Note: WordPress.org differs from WordPress.com in a fundamental way. WordPress.org provides WordPress software that you can download and install on the server space you rent from a web host. In contrast, WordPress.com provides free hosting for your WordPress blog, but restricts the themes and plugins you can implement. With WordPress.com, you have to pay extra to modify your stylesheet, and you can't display ads or manipulate any of the code. All the media you store on a WordPress.com blog by uploading is saved on WordPress's servers, so you're not in full control here either. (For more information on the difference, see WordPress.com Versus WordPress.org.) Everything in this guide relates to self-hosted WordPress blogs.
Become Familiar with FTP
One tool you'll need to manage your WordPress files is an FTP program, such as FileZilla. Recent WordPress functional enhancements reduced the chance of FTP program using but if your web host doesn't provide any auto-installers, you'll need an FTP program to install your blog.
FileZilla is a simple program. All it requires is your web address, username, and password to connect to your web host. When you connect, the remote host's files appear in the right column, while your local files appear in the left column. You transfer files or folder from your local host to the remote host by dragging the files to the remote host column. After you enter your FTP details once, use drop-down arrow next to the Quick Connect button to connect immediately.
FTP programs like FileZilla can support you further. Through them, you can upload files in bulk. To show them up in your media library though, you'll need plugins, like the plugin called Add From Server.
You need a web host that has PHP and MySQL/MariaDB. To make the installation of WordPress as simple as possible, make sure your web host has cPanel (or something similar). In my experience, BlueHost probably has the best support of any web host, and it has the easiest auto-installer: Simple Scripts. After you sign up with a web host, navigate to the cPanel (or the equivalent) and look for Simple Scripts, Fantastico, or some other auto-installer for WordPress. If there isn't an auto-installer, you have to install WordPress manually following the "famous 5 minute installation" instructions, which are fairly simple. See the resources below for instructions on the different installation methods.
To install WordPress on a Web host:
Sign up for a web host plan (for example, at BlueHost.com).
Log into your cPanel by going to http://yourdomain.com/cpanel.
Click the Simple Scripts feature (or, alternatively, the Fantastico feature).
The WordPress installation arranges files in three main folders (wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes). It also installs loose files in the root folder. Most of the time, when you work with your WordPress files through FTP, you'll be uploading content to the wp-content folder.
Note:When you connect to your remote host, you may have to go into the public_html or www folder to see the WordPress files. Both folders open the door to your WordPress content. The folders simply mirror each other to deliver the same results when users go to either http://www.yourdomain.com or http://yourdomain.com.
The wp-content folder has two important subfolders: plugins and themes. When you install a plugin or theme from Administration Screens, all required files are stored in these folders. Also, any images or medias you upload when writing a post in WordPress are stored in the wp-content/uploads folder.
Once you have WordPress installed, you should spend some time exploring it. To log in to your newly installed blog, go to http://yourblogdomain.com/wp-admin and enter the username and password you used when you set up the site.
After logging in, you'll see the Administration Screens that you use to write posts and pages, upload images and manage WordPress. Explore left side menu to see the different functions they perform.
You need to configure some basic settings in your blog, such as the title, tagline, time zone, and your name. Click the Settings on the left side menu, and then browse through the available submenus -- General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media and Permalinks. Select the options you want.
As you're configuring your settings, be sure to enable permalinks and allow comments without moderation if you wish. Permalinks make your URLs intelligible names that reflect the title of your post, rather than something like ?p=123. You may configure Comments. By default, Comment author must have a previously approved comment.
To configure your settings, at the very least do the following:
Enable permalinks by going to Settings > Permalinks. Select the Day and Name option (if you select another option, it's more difficult to set your page URLs).
If you need, enable comments to appear immediately by going to Settings > Discussion. In the "Before a comment appears" section, turn off all check boxes.
Set the blog title and tagline by going to Settings > General. Usually the blog title and tagline automatically appear in your blog's header.
Set the correct time zone by going to Settings > General and selecting the appropriate city or UTC number in the Timezone section.
If you're transitioning to WordPress from another blog platform, you can import your old content. Go to Tools > Import and select the specific software you're importing from. Almost all blogs can be imported into WordPress.
Posts are the regular blog entries you write that appear on your home page. You write posts by selecting New from Toolbar or Posts > Add New from left side menu. Complete the fields and information, select or create a category, and then click the Publish button. Writing posts is the most common activity you'll do in the Administration Screens. When you write blog posts, keep your paragraphs short, use subheadings, include images, and avoid a stuffy tone. To insert a "Read more ..." tag, click the Read More button on the toolbar.
Pages are for content such as "About Me," "Contact Me," etc. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, aren't included in your RSS feed. They're often used to present information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless -- information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage any amount of content. Other examples of common pages include Copyright, Legal Information, Reprint Permissions, Company Information, and Accessibility Statement. (By the way, it's a good idea to always have an About page and a Contact page -- see this advice from Lorelle.)
Categories help make sense of the hundreds of posts you'll be writing. By assigning the posts into different categories, you can allow readers to browse archives of only that category. To create a category, click the +Add New Category link in the Categories section in the right side menu. You can select multiple categories for the same posts. To manage your categories, go to Posts > Categories.
Additionally, through categories, you can manipulate your posts in advanced ways, such as excluding certain categories from your home page, or specifying where certain categories should appear. This is a common technique for magazine-style layouts, where you have different sections on the home page and you want posts from those categories to always appear in those sections.
You can also give each category its own unique layout and design. For example, when you have category 'Latest News' whose slug is 'news', you copy the content of your archive.php file, rename it to category-news.php, and then modify the file (such as removing the sidebar, or changing the header), the archives for that category 'Latest News' will use the category-news.php file rather than archive.php file.
Tags are like micro-categories or index keywords for your posts. Your site should probably only have 7-12 categories, but you can have hundreds of tags. Clicking a tag name below your post will show all posts with the same tag, helping readers find similar content (most readers arrive at your site through searches for a specific topic). You add tags to your posts by typing the tag names in the Tags section in the right side menu. You can also manage your tags by going to Posts > Tags.
If tags are enabled in your theme, you will usually see them below the published post. If not, you can add a php tag to make it appear. Prepar Child Theme of current theme and copy single.php from parent theme. You'll see the code that generates your posts. Add <?php the_tags(); ?> to this file where you want the tags to appear (usually after the <?php the_content ?> tag, which generates your post content).
One of the neat things about WordPress is that you can edit any post or page by clicking the Edit link that usually appears at the bottom or top of each page. You can also edit your posts and pages from the Posts menu or Pages menu of Administration Screens, but sometimes it's easier to just navigate to the content you want to edit and click Edit.
Click the Visit Site link under the site name at the top of the page to return to your site.
Navigate to the page or post you want to edit.
Click the Edit link that appears on the page or post.
Make your changes, and then click Update.
If the Edit link doesn't appear, it's because your theme designer has omitted it from the code. You can add it by creating Child Theme and placing the single.php file. Add the following code after the <?php the_content(); ?>:
