There are a lot of instructions on this page- please read all the way through!
Creating an account
- Go to wordpress.com
- It will ask you what kind of blog this is for…select ‘Arts and Entertainment’ and then ‘Photography’
- Select the ‘A welcome page for my site’ option
- Select a theme (more info about this can be found in a section below)
- Type the name of your blog
- Select the ‘free’ option (it should be the first option)
- Select the free option again (it should be the last option)
- Type your email address and choose a password
- GO TO YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT AND VERIFY YOUR NEW WORDPRESS ACCOUNT!!!!! (super important you do this, you will not be able to pubish anything without it being verified)
Dashboard
- The dashboard in WordPress is the place where you can make a lot of your changes to your blog. The dashboard looks like the image below
- To get to your dashboard, you should type /wp-admin at the end of your sites url. For example, when I want to get to my dashboard, I type http://www.lanetechdiamond.org/wp-admin
- You will type something along the lines of: http://www.thisismywebsite/wp-admin
Selecting a theme
- Go to your dashboard
- The column on the left is where you can go to navigate through your site
- Hover the mouse over the Appearance tab on the left side
- Click on ‘Theme’
- Look through the free themes
- If you click on a theme, it will take you to another screen that describes what it is best used for
- ‘Twenty Eleven’ is a very easy theme to use and is great for beginners (so it ‘Twenty Twelve’ and ‘Twenty Thirteen’)
- Once you have your theme selected, you should be able to customize it
- My blog title is Lane Tech Diamond and the tagline for my blog is ‘Welcome Lane Tech Diamonds!’
- The tagline appears under the title on my blog
Adding pages (Please note, pages and posts are different)
- To add a new page, click on Pages—>Add New
- Title your page ‘Breadth’ (the titles on my website are Digital Photography, AP Design, Media Crew, Student Gallery)
- I always make sure the ‘Likes and Shares’ are not checked but you can leave them on
- Click the ‘Publish’ button located on the right side
- Click on ‘View Page’
- To go back to your Dashboard, put the mouse (without clicking it) over the name of your blog in the top left corner)
- Click on ‘Dashboard’
- You can add a new page by going back to Pages—>Add New
- Add an ‘About Me’ page as well. You will need to include a little bio about yourself. It would be great if you had a photo of yourself, but you are not required to.
Customizing your blog
- To change the colors of your blog, go to your Dashboard
- Go to Appearance—>Customize
- Your screen should look like this:
- You can change the header of the page (the large image)
- You can also change the colors
- When you are finished, press ‘Save’
- If your pages aren’t showing on your blog, go to the Dashboard
- Hover the mouse over Appearance and click on Widgets
- Find ‘Pages’ and drag it to the sidebar
- If the name of your pages still doesn’t show, go back to the Dashboard and hover the mouse over Appearance again
- Click on Menu
- Select the pages you want to appear
- Press ‘Save’
Make sure to add me as an administrator
- Go to your dashboard
- Users—>Invite new
- Enter my email address (amdiamond@cps.edu)
- Change the role to administrator
- You will not receive credit for your blog until I am added as an administrator
If your wordpress screen doesn’t look like the instructions above, try this:
- Log on to WordPress
- Add a new page
- Name it Breadth (you will need to add a page for Pinterest and Concentration as well)
Adjusting the Homepage
- Click ‘Customize’ located under Appearance
- Click on ‘Static Front Page’
- Select the ‘A static page’ option
- Change the front page to ‘About’
- Press ‘Save and Publish’ on the top left
