WordPress is the world’s most common tool for creating websites. WordPress is proficient of creating any style of website, from a simple blog to a full-featured business website. You can even use WordPress to create an online store Dissimilar to other “free” website tools, WordPress does not lock you into some proprietary service like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace. You can host your website anywhere. Or move your site to another hosting service anytime you like.Unlike other “free” website tools, WordPress does not lock you into some proprietary service like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace. You can host your website anywhere. Or move your site to another hosting service anytime you like.

WordPress Dashboard Overview

Primary Navigation Panel (Left Panel)
This is where a majority of your options are located to customize and populate your website with content. Clicking on any item inside of the primary navigation panel will show additional items and options. Some plugins may add items to your primary navigation panel (either as their own item, or under ‘Tools’).

Administrative Navigation Bar (Top Bar)
Here you can customize or WordPress login settings (top right). Various quick-links are also provided to make it easier for you to jump to commonly used tasks (top left). While you are logged into the WordPress Dashboard, the Administrative Navigation Bar will still show at the top of your website, allowing you to easily switch between viewing your website and editing from inside of the Dashboard.

Screen Options Tab (Top Right Tab)
Each screen within the Dashboard has various viewing options and you can choose to display or hide certain editing options for that screen. These have no affect on your website, and are primarily used to simplify your website editing experience.

Help Tab (Top Right Tab)
This tab offers instructions based on the screen currently being viewed. Various links are also provided to direct you to WordPress.org in case you need additional assistance with an item on the page

General Settings in WordPress:

WordPress general setting is used to set the basic configuration settings for your site. In the setting administration screen, it is a default setting screen.

Following are the steps to access the general settings −

Step 1 − Click on Settings → General option in WordPress.

WordPress General Setting
Step 2 − The General Setting page is displayed as shown in the following snapshot.

WordPress General Setting
Following are the details of the fields on general settings page.

Site Title − It displays the name of the site in the template header.

Tagline − Displays a short sentence about your site.

WordPress Address (URL) − It is the URL of WordPress directory where your all core application files are present.

Site Address(URL) − Enter the site URL which you want your site to display on the browser.

E-mail Address − Enter your e-mail address which helps to recover your password or any update.

Membership − Anyone can register an account on your site after you check this checkbox.

New User Default Role − The default role is set for the newly registered user or members.

Timezone − Sets the time zone based on the particular city.

Date Format − Sets the date format as you need to display on the site.

Time Format − Sets the time format as you need to display on the site.

Week Starts On − Select the week day which you prefer to start for WordPress calendar. By default it is set as Monday.

Site Language − Sets the language for the WordPress dashboard.

After filling all the information about general settings, click on Save Changes button. It saves all your general setting information.

How to Add Posts in WordPress:

Posts are also known as articles and sometimes referred as blogs or blog posts. These are used to popularize your blogs.Following are the simple steps to Add Posts in WordPress.

Step (1) − Click on Posts → Add New in WordPress.

Step (2) − You will get the editor page of the Post as shown in the following screen. You can use the WordPress WYSIWYG editor to add the actual content of your post. We will study in detail about WYSIWYG editor in the chapter WordPress – Add Pages.

Following are the fields on the editor page of the Add Posts Page.

Post Title − Enter the title of the post, i.e., Post1.

Post Content − Enter the content of your post.

Step (3) − Click on Publish button to publish your respective post.

Following are the few other options present in the Publish section.

Save Draft − It saves the post as a draft.

Preview − You can preview your post before publishing.

Move to Trash − Deletes the post.

Status − Change the status of your post to Published, Pending, or Reviewer Draft.

Visibility − Change the visibility of the post to Public, Private or Password protected.

Published − Change the published post date and time.

 

How to Edit post on WordPress:

Secured WordPress with Aurora on Linux Server

WordPress With its popularity does not need the introduction.But Mysql Management has been a pain point which is being removed using this Instance by using 100% Mysql Compliant Aurora
Wordpress Users have always had the problem of maintaing Mysql inclduing backup, scaling up and administering. AWS has removed this problem by providing a 100% mysql compliant Aurora. Aurora takes out the overhead of maintaining a RDBMS system.Cognosys presents this specially pre-configured WordPress image with inbuilt Mysql Backup. Enterprise Customers who are looking for WordPress can use this Image for instantaneous deployments. WordPress combines simplicity for users and publishers with under-the-hood complexity for developers. This makes it flexible while still being easy-to-use. Everything from simple websites, to blogs, to complex portals and enterprise websites, and even applications, are built with WordPress. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies.

Due to the initial setup of this image, it may take up to 20 minutes to launch.

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine.

WordPress Plugins Manual Install

Essential WordPress Plugins
There are so many WordPress plugins – it could be hard to choose the right one. In fact, many of the plugins serve the same purpose, for example, there are dozens of WordPress caching plugins. That is why we decided to list the best WordPress plugins that are essential for every WordPress blog.

Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will automatically generate XML site maps for better search engine optimization. It’s easy to use and update it regularly.
Yoast SEO. Probably the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It will help you improve the search engine optimization. From meta tags to writing suggestions – Yoast SEO plugin has it all.
Wordfence Security. This plugin will keep your WordPress safe from hackers and malware. It has firewall and malware scanner modules which are super useful.
Contact Form 7. Simple but very powerful WordPress contact form plugin. Create any contact or even lead generation forms with this plugin.
It’s not recommended to clog WordPress with dozens of plugins as it can decrease site’s performance. Keep your WordPress clean by installing only essential plugins and delete the ones you are not using.

Step 5 – Installing WordPress Themes
The look of WordPress site can be changed by applying themes. There are free and premium WordPress themes. Some of them are universal and can be used on any website. Others are built for a very specific purpose, for example, the e-commerce themes.

WordPress made theme installation super easy. It literally takes just a few minutes to install free WordPress themes. In order to proceed, access the Appearance section and search for a nice looking theme. You can even filter themes by features or colors.

Theme preview feature lets you see how your website will look with a selected theme. This is useful, as it will save your time – you will not have to install multiple themes just to find the theme that fits your needs.

The above method is suitable for free and freemium themes only. What if you purchased a nice looking premium theme? In this case, you will have to upload the theme files manually. Access the same Appearance section, press the Upload Theme button and select the theme’s .zip file. It can take up to a few minutes for the uploading process to complete. Once it’s done, simply Activate the theme. Need exact steps? See a comprehensive tutorial on how to install themes.

WordPress Upload Theme

Step 6 – Optimizing WordPress Performance
In this WordPress tutorial, we have now learned how to install and use WordPress in order to create and manage your very own website. As your WordPress site grows, so does the amount of text, images, code and other media files. A bigger website means that it will take longer to load. To avoid slow response time in WordPress, you should also invest some time in optimization. It will ensure that your pages load quickly and efficiently, thus, leaving your visitors happy and wanting to come back for more. Everyone has encountered a slow website at least a few times and felt the frustration that comes while waiting endlessly for it to load. Taking that into account, spending some time to improve your WordPress speed is a really good idea. The best part about WordPress is that it’s really easy to optimize due to the number of plugins and other tools available. You can make your WordPress site lightning fast without even having any coding knowledge at all. To get you on the right track, we will cover a few WordPress optimization techniques that will provide a notable speed boost to your website.

Step 6.1 – Using WordPress Caching Plugins
The first step in optimizing your WordPress site is setting up a WordPress caching plugin. Is short, a cache is a temporary data storage. In most cases, active data is cached which results in reduced loading times. For example, when you access a frequently visited site, your browser will have a portion of the site’s static content located in its cache. As a result, the browser needs to request fewer files and information from the server which ultimately leads to quicker loading. WordPress caching plugins work by creating a static version of your website and delivering it, instead of loading all PHP scripts every time when someone refreshes or re-enters your site.

Most popular WordPress caching plugins are:

WP Super Cache
W3 Total Cache
WP Fastest Cache
You may find a detailed guide on how to implement WP Super Cache plugin for your WordPress site here.

Step 6.2 – Optimizing WordPress Images
Image optimization is another crucial task that should be done in order to make your WordPress site fast. Generally, there are 2 main issues that cause images to load slowly:

Using too large images. For example, you upload a 500 x 500 dimension picture but your site resizes it to 100 x 100. As a result, the visitor’s browser will have to download the larger file first, scale it down and only then display it. The proper way would be to simply upload a 100 x 100 dimension picture so that the excessive task of scaling down the image would be avoided. The image would also take up less space that way, resulting in an overall boost of speed. A detailed guide on how to locate such images and scale them down can be found here.
Images are not fully compressed. You can save lots of space and bandwidth by properly compressing your images. Luckily, WordPress has a really great plugin that can help you with that, it’s called WP Smush. You can find a detailed guide on how to implement this plugin and optimize your WordPress images here.
The more images your WordPress site has, the more beneficial this optimization task will be.

Step 6.3 – Enabling gzip Compression for WordPress
Enabling gzip compression for a WordPress website is a great way to increase speed and performance. In short, gzip compression works by finding similar strings in a text file and replacing it temporarily, resulting in a smaller file size. HTML and CSS files have a lot of repetitive text and spaces, making gzip compression very effective. On the whole, it can reduce the size of a WordPress page by up to 50-70%.

There are a few ways to enable gzip compression:

Enabling gzip compression via .htaccess file (recommended). A more detailed WordPress tutorial can be found here.
Enabling gzip compression via WordPress plugins, such as GZip Ninja Speed.
One thing that you should keep in mind is that gzip compression may slightly increase CPU usage. If CPU is not an issue, then gzip compression is a really great way to optimize your WordPress site.

Deferring parsing of JavaScript in WordPress
Most themes, plugins and social media add-ons use a lot of JavaScript which is by default loaded first when accessing a site. This will make the HTML and other visual contents appear only after the JS is loaded. You can defer parsing of JavaScript so that the visual elements appear faster, while various social media buttons and other content that uses JavaScript would be loaded afterwards. This is one of the techniques recommended by Google Developers that is often overlooked. In WordPress, you can easily do that by using plugins such as WP Deferred JavaScripts or Speed Booster Pack. A more detailed tutorial on how to implement these tools on your WP site can be found here.

Using a Content Delivery Network
Implementing a content delivery network (CDN for short) will speed up WordPress by caching content in multiple data centers around the world. After a visitor enters your site, the content will be delivered by the nearest datacenter available resulting in a better front-end experience. CDNs also work great with WordPress caching plugins and there are free solutions to get you started. For example, CloudFlare has a free plan which provides both benefits of a CDN while protecting your site from DDoS attacks. For step-by-step instructions on how to implement it on WordPress you can check this WP tutorial.

Removing Query Strings from Static Resources
GTMetrix and other optimization tools suggest removing query strings from CSS and JS in order to improve caching of those elements. The previously mentioned WordPress plugin Speed Booster Pack is among a few others that can help you with this task. For more specific information you may refer to this guide for WordPress.

Enabling Lazy Loading
Generally, when a web page is opened, all the content is loaded instantly, which is called eager loading. Alternatively, it is possible to delay the initialization of some objects (such as images) until they are needed, which is called lazy loading. The most common practice is displaying images only when they are visible from the visitor’s viewpoint or in the screen. All you need to do in order to take advantage of this technique is install and enable a plugin such as Lazy Load or Rocket Lazy Load.

Keeping WordPress Secure
Last but not least, in order to have a successful WordPress site, you must harden its security. Just as WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, it also turns out to be the most hacked. However, there are a few things that you can do in order to protect your site against hacking and other malicious activity.

Keeping WordPress Updated
One of the most important factors in having a safe environment is to always update and use the latest version of WordPress, themes and plugins. Most updates include security tweaks, vulnerability fixes and prevent them from being exploitable in the future versions. A common practice among hackers is taking advantage of web pages that are running an outdated version of WordPress with a known vulnerability. By default, WordPress is updated automatically upon the release of a new version, however, it may not always work or the feature may be disabled on some hosts. Generally, when a new version of WordPress arrives, a notification will be shown at the top of your Dashboard. You may also update your themes and plugins via Dashbard-> Updates section.

WordPress Updates in Dashboard

Using Unique Usernames and Passwords
Admin is the username set by default in all WordPress installations. It is highly recommended to change it, as it will add an extra layer of security to your login credentials. Imagine a situation where someone knows your password, however, they are not aware of the username. The end result is that the person will still be unable to access your dashboard because they do not know the username. Leaving the value as admin can make the hacker’s job that much easier, therefore it should always be changed.

When setting up a password, make sure to include numbers, capital letters and special symbols. In case you are having difficulties keeping track of all the passwords, you can store them using such tools as Last Pass. It will save the trouble of remembering all the different passwords while allowing you to go wild on the password difficulty.

Backing up WordPress
Generating backups is a crucial task for any website. Not only will it increase your security, but will also provide you with a reliable way of restoring your site in case of unexpected errors or issues. You can perform a backup manually or use automation. The manual process would involve downloading the files and the MySQL database of a WordPress site. However, if you make lots of new posts, changes or manage several different websites, downloading everything manually each time can be a real hassle. In addition, nowadays, most hosting providers offer automated account backups. As an extra security measure, you can use WordPress plugins to automate backups monthly, weekly or even daily. They will save you lots of time and also give the option of storing the backup WordPress files and database to a remote location such as DropBox.. You can use such plugins as:

UpdraftPlus a plugin with the capability to backup WordPress to a remote location and restore it. Backup WordPress is a light-weight backup plugin with automation. It permits you to eliminate certain folders, schedule the execution time and has support for numerous different languages.