Welcome to the heart of your website, above is a screenshot of the sites “Dashboard”. This screen is only visible to users of admin level or above, because you are the creator of the site, Karen the level of superadmin is automatically granted to you.
From the dashboard screen you have access to everything that is running on your site and the settings that control everything. From your dashboard you can speak to the world via posts. Create shiny new pages, customise the entire site or just monitor the traffic to your site.
The main area of the dashboard screen is customisable and as you add and grow your site, more features will appear in this customisable space and you will be able to drag the different featured boxes around to suit yourself.
On the top of the dashboard screen you will see the black admin bar, this is visible throughout the site as long as you are logged into the site and gives you easy access to your dashboard at any time. Across the bar from left to right you will see “site name” By clicking this at the front end of the site you will be given a list of options of places within the dashboard to navigate too. As well as navigating straight to the dashboard home screen.
Next is a speech bubble with a 0 next to it, as visitors to the site leave comments this 0 will change to a number, this signifies that you have X amount of comments waiting for your approval, this stops idiots leaving random troll like messages on your site.
The + New option allows you to quickly add posts, pages, media and other things to your site and by clicking one of these options you will be able to navigate directly to the screen you wish to add.
View page is self explanatory – it opens up a preview of the page you are currently editing or writing so that you can then see how the page will look to visitors of the site.
Maintenance – a feature you may never use, but it is there to enable you to put up a splash screen like the one that was visible when I was building the site. This can be useful if you are making large changes and you don’t want the public to see them before they are completed.
WP Edit – Stands for WordPress Editor and is a feature I added that makes writing pages easier, it adds a toolbar to the editing pages enabling you to set certain parameters such as font type, heading type etc
Far right of the screen it says Howdy, your name – from here you can drop down the menu and edit your profile page and such things, on a site such as yours this isn’t important as only you will ever see your profile page, it is more useful to sites like Patricks which runs a membership scheme.
So that in brief is your dashboard screen, a lot to take in isn’t there! Wait until you read the next how to guide where I will explain all the things in the right hand vertical menu! See you there!