Using WordPress

One of the many reasons to use WordPress for your website is because it makes it easy to update your site and publish fresh new content.

This page contains articles from my Using WordPress tutorial series. This series covers topics for beginners showing visual examples of how to use WordPress to manage and update the content on your website.

Verify Your WordPress Website in Google Webmaster Tools

February 3, 2010

Google Webmaster Tools is one of the most powerful free toolkits at your disposal for making sure Google can crawl your website properly.

In order to use Google Webmaster tools for your website, you need to verify it with Google to prove that you own the website.
There are two ways to do this:

Uploading [...]

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How to Add an Image to Your WordPress Sidebar

January 21, 2010

Here is something I get asked a lot – how can I add an image to my WordPress sidebar?
This video shows you how:

In the video, I’ll show you how to upload the widget using the WordPress Media Library, grab the URL for the uploaded image, and then use a WordPress Text Widget to display your [...]

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What I Learned Upgrading to WordPress 2.9

December 22, 2009

WordPress 2.9 was released a couple of days ago. I read about all the cool new features and said to myself – “hey, I need that version!” so I used my favorite WordPress Automatic Upgrade plug-in to upgrade my primary blog to WP 2.9.
I got almost all the way to the end of [...]

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Backing Up Your WordPress Database with the WP-DB-Backup Plugin

October 8, 2009

One of the most essential functions in keeping a smoothly-running website is to make sure you always have a current backup. In a perfect world, disaster recovery would never be necessary, but in reality, server crashes do sometimes happen. Particularly for small businesses, it’s vital to make sure that you always have a way to restore [...]

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What Is A WordPress Theme?

October 4, 2009

If you’re new to WordPress, one of your first questions might be to ask, “What exactly is a theme, and do I need to use one?” The short answer is that a theme is the background, or “skin,” of your website. And yes, you will most definitely want to use a theme to make your [...]

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Pages widget – adding or excluding a directory of your static content

September 26, 2009

Pages are the key to displaying static content on your WordPress website or blog. Many themes allow you to display your pages as menus across the top of the page. You can also create a quick-reference list of the static pages on your blog using the pages widget. You can even choose to leave some [...]

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Creating a PollDaddy Poll on Your WordPress Website or Blog

September 24, 2009

If you want to quiz or poll your readers with a customizable, embeddable poll, the PollDaddy feature baked into the WordPress editor makes it really easy. (Requires the PollDaddy Plugin.) This short video talks you through the process of putting a poll together and checking up on the results.

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Adding a new link to your WordPress-sidebar

July 26, 2009

Links are the way you can tell your visitors about other sites you recommend. These can be your sites – your photos page on Flickr, another blog or website you maintain, your page on LinkedIn or any link. Since you can promote any link, these can also be links to other sites that you would [...]

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How To Change the Order of Your Nav Bar Items in WordPress

July 24, 2009

By default, WordPress tries to order the Pages in your Navigation bar alphabetically by title. But what if you want to re-order them?
Well, don’t worry, it is possible. It’s a bit quirky, but you have total control over which order your navigation items appear in most WP Themes. The key is setting the Order [...]

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