Daria Doering

Family, Friends, Students: Create your own website and link it to mine!  I like these WordPress sites because they have cool looking design options – that’s about it – so these instructions are for WordPress.

Instructions:

1) Go to http://www.wordpress.com and create your free account.

2) Go to your new website and write down your website address, username and password in a safe location!  Otherwise, if you’re like me, you’ll forget how to get to your own site and log on.

3) Create your site, as follows.

Remember

• Click on “Publish” on the right (or “Update”) to save, after everything you do!
• To view your site, after making  change, click on “visit site,” which is in very faint letters so you can barely see it, but it is there at the top, just to the right of your site’s name (in large white font, in the darkest gray ribbon at the top)

Logging in

• You can either put/leave the “meta” box (which has “admin sign in”) on your homepage
• OR click on “my dashboard” on the gray ribbon at the very top.
• If you find yourself logged out, go to www.wordpress.com and log in again.

Dashboard

• “Dashboard” is where you access all the functions for creating and editing your website.

Appearance of site

• Click on “appearance”
  • You can change themes (basic appearance)
  • Click on “themes” on the left
  • Go to “available themes”
  • You can “filter” to find themes that are one, two or three columns; find and then click on “filter”
  • You can add widgets (stuff that goes on your page)

• Click on “settings”
  • You can change the name of the site
• Click on “appearance,” ” themes,” and “manage settings”
  • Here you can upload a custom photo to replace your theme’s photo

Pages

• “Pages” refers to pages after your homepage.
• To add pages, go to “pages” (left menu pane), then “add new”
• To add subpages, add a new page, and under “parent” (on the right, under “attributes”) specify the page you want it to go under.  That’s it!
• To order your pages, “quick edit” each page and assign it a number in the “order” box in the right.  Your pages will not order themselves correctly if there are any conflicts.  In other words, double-check that you have assigned each page a consecutive number without any duplicate numbers or gaps.

Posts

• This means you’re adding a new “box” on your homepage; it will be above your last box
• To add to or edit it, just click on “edit” on the box
• You can only “post” more than one box on your homepage.  I get around this on other pages by creating a lot of subpages.

Widgets

• These are things that go on your homepage, on the right sidebar (at least with my theme)
• “Links” – blogroll
• “Text” is a text box with a title that will appear in the sidebar of all your pages.  It can’t be changed after you initially enter the title and text.  You can deactivate it, and then create a new one if you want.
• “Pages” – lists your website’s pages and subpages
• “Meta” – this contains an easy administrator login link, etc.

Linking to Other Sites

• Send me your website address and I will add you to my blogroll.