Installation
This article is written for WordPress beginners, here I will discus about the basic method of install & setup WordPress (WordPress Quick Start Guide). Installing WordPress is the first step to getting your new site up and running. Most hosting providers offer a quick and simple method for installing the latest version, and we recommend you use that method if it is available to you. Many providers offer something called Fantastico for software installation, others will provide some other service. If your provider does not offer you an install method for WordPress, you will need to follow the manual instructions.
Manual Installation: this method if your hosting provider does not offer a quick-install method for WordPress, or if you want to use a version other than the one provided by your hosting provider. Download the latest version of WordPress from www.wordpress.org
First Time Setup
Now that you have WordPress installed, you will need to take a few moments and set up the software to your liking. Most of the settings in WordPress can be changed through the Settings pages, but we will go through the basic stuff here first.
The Dashboard
Once you log in you will be taken to the dashboard (see the image to the right). The Dashboard provides you with some basic information about your site. Of particular interest is the Right Now box that tells you the number of posts, pages, categories, tags, and comments on your site. Of course, right now there are only a few, but that will change as you build your site.
Screen Options
On nearly every page of your administration system you will see a small tab at the top right that says screen options. This will allow you to manage what appears on the screen. When you click on this tab a drop down options pane will appear allowing you to turn off certain parts of the dashboard. The options will change depending on the screen you are on.
We recommend that you uncheck the “Plugins”, “WordPress Blog”, and “Other WordPress News” options so that your dashboard will load faster. You can always get this information from the WordPress.org web site.
It is also important to note that certain plugins may add boxes to your dashboard, and you will be able to turn these on or off using the Screen options tab.
Users
WordPress allows your site visitors to register on your site for a variety of reasons. One such reason will be to leave comments on your posts and possibly your pages. You can promote users to different levels, even granting specific users the ability to write posts or manage content on your site. This section will go through all of the screen associated with Users, and give you some simple guidelines on how to secure your web site against fraudulent uses.
Adding an Index Page to WordPress
If you manage a large web site using WordPress, you may find it difficult to get people where they want to go. A good book will have an Index of where certain keywords appear throughout the book. Managing this manually would be a logistics nightmare, even if your site had only a few pages.
How does it work?
Index Press looks through all of the post types selected on your site, counts the words and how often they are used, then stores that information in the database. By adding a short code to any of your pages, the index similar what you find on the index page on this site appears. Every word that is counted will appear with links to every page that word appears. You control on the back-end what words are ignored, the shortest word to index, and how many times that word has to appear on the site before it shows in the index.
Won’t this slow down the page with the Index?
No. The page with your index simply reads the data from the database and displays the results. The index is updated in two ways:
- Every time a post or page is saved.
- Any time you look at the plugin settings page.
Your index page will appear quickly, and can be in any number of columns you desire. An index like this is also great for SEO – the search engines will have a hey-day with all these links!
