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Guide to Using WordPress

  • Introduction
    • About WordPress
    • Logging In
    • The WordPress Dashboard
    • Pages, Posts and Media
  • Editing
    • Classic Editor
    • The Media Library
    • Galleries and Photos
    • Menus and Links
    • Using Tables
    • Contact Forms
  • Advanced
    • Undoing Changes
    • Embedding Documents
    • Sign-up Sheets
    • Create a News Page
    • Create an Event
    • Members-Only Content
    • Shortcodes

About WordPress

WordPress started out as a simple blogging platform but has grown into a hugely popular platform for constructing websites of all sorts, and is currently used for over 30% of the world’s websites.

No software required

In days gone by you would need to buy specialist web design software and install it on your computer, then design your site from scratch, find hosting for it and finally upload all the required files from your computer to the hosting server. Although many sites are still built that way, the current trend is to use online platforms to build your website. No software is required and all you need do is login using your web browser and add or edit your content.

Separating style from content

When you edit a printable document you define the exact layout on screen and it comes out the same way on paper. At one time this was the case with website design, but the proliferation of screen sizes from high definition widescreen computer monitors down to mobile phone screens has meant that a different approach is needed. What we have now are responsive designs which adapt to fit the screen they are displayed on, so where you might have a picture and text side-by-side on a monitor, when viewed on a phone the picture is above the text, which is now wrapped differently to fit the display width without shrinking the text size down.

In order to do this, WordPress uses a theme to define the overall styling, and a content editor to edit text and insert pictures. You have a certain degree of control over the look in terms of using heading styles, bold or italic text, and paragraph alignment, but the colours, font styles and sizes, menu layout, etc. are all defined by the theme. That may sound restricting, but it also makes the job of editing easier because you don’t have to worry about readability or consistency of style.

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