How to Easily Set Up Your New WordPress Admin Website

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, and for good reason; it’s flexible, open-source, and has a huge community. But sometimes, all that openness can feel daunting. You want to run your own blog, but you don’t know where to start. Maybe you’re intimidated by the large number of features or unsure of how to use them. Maybe you just want something simpler. Whatever your reason, this article is for you.

Why Should You Care About Setting Up a WordPress Admin Site?

If you’re already using WordPress, you may be asking yourself, “Why should I care about setting up a WordPress admin site? My blogs are already hosted on WordPress.com, and anything I need to do to make them more accessible could also be done on my own.”

While there’s no denying that WordPress is the perfect content-aggregating suite for bloggers, developers, and marketers, it’s also important to remember that not everything you need for your blog can be found within the WordPress ecosystem. As previously stated, WordPress is an open-source platform, which means it’s constantly evolving and changing. This ensures that new features are constantly being added and that older features are being maintained, but it also makes sure that some features are more difficult to find or use than others.

Features Of A WordPress Admin Site That You Will Use

To help you get a better idea of what a WordPress admin site is and what it can do, let’s take a look at some of the most useful features. Even if you’re not planning on using all of them, you’ll probably find a few features useful, so it’s worth taking a look.

1. Multi-site

With WordPress multi-site, you can have a single WordPress installation that’s accessible from multiple domains. This means that instead of creating a separate blog for each of your clients or companies, you could have one WordPress installation that handles all of their blogs, even if they’re on different domains. From a single dashboard, you can simultaneously administer all sites and access all content, regardless of where they’re located.

While this sounds like a fantastic way to save time and ensure consistency, it also means that any errors or problems could potentially be spread across multiple blogs. For this reason, it’s essential that you have the proper multi-site setup and testing in advance.

2. Content Disclaimer

In times of political or social turmoil, it’s important to have faith in the integrity of the facts you’re presenting. With WordPress content disclaimer, you can provide readers with the necessary context and information regarding the content of a blog post, news story, or any other type of content you publish. Essentially, you’re giving the reader information that may not be entirely objective or impartial (i.e., not authored by a known, accredited news source).

This could be something as simple as a note at the bottom of a post that briefly explains the author’s bias, opinion, or agenda, or it could be something more substantial, such as an entire blog post or news story written from a unique perspective, which briefly summarizes the key findings of a research study.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so that it appears high in search engine results when someone searches for your product or service. If you want your blog to become a success, you’ll need to learn how to do SEO correctly. To that end, you can use WordPress SEO by Yoast to create structured, human-readable metadata for your content. Using that data, you can build keyword-rich blog posts that will attract search engines and website visitors.

By having a clear understanding of how search engines work and by using the right keywords throughout your content, you can increase the likelihood of your blog post appearing in a search engine result.

4. Permalink Structure

Understanding and using blog permalink structures can help you create meaningful URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers, or the “little clicks” that take you to your blog posts) for your readers. There are multiple structures you can use, and you should experiment to see which one works best for your blog.

For example, if you have a blog about fashion, you may want to use “/fashion” as your permalink structure. This will create URIs like this: http://example.com/fashion or http://example.com/fashion/ when accessed via a browser. The second one is a shorter and more direct version of the first one. In both cases, the URIs will take you to a blog post with the same title as the one you’re linking to.

You can also create relative and custom permalink structures through the use of custom fields. For example, you can make a custom field that stores the category (e.g., fitness, style, food, etc.) of a blog post and then use that field in the blog post’s permalink structure.

Relative permalink structures allow you to create shortcuts to your content, so if you have a blog post about fashion, you could have a permalink structure of /fashion/ that leads to a page that looks like this:

http://example.com/fashion/

The advantage of using permalink structures is that you can always return to a specific post at any time through its corresponding URI. So, if you forget the name of a celebrity you interviewed, you can use their name or initials in your search to find their work. Not only will this blog post pop up, but so will all the other content you published regarding that person.

5. Commenting And Rating

One of the core elements of any blog is comments and ratings, and WordPress offers a few ways to enhance those features. First, you can enable comments for any post, story, or gallery. Second, you can rate posts and stories, as well as give them a quick comment. Third, you can use the built-in “like” and “love” buttons to quickly share content with your followers.

While these features are useful, keep in mind that comments are a double-edged sword. You can either use them to enhance your blog’s interactivity or leave them on the site as a sign of unrestrained, unfiltered discourse. Regardless, unless you’re looking to turn your blog into a soapbox, leave the comments on your site.

6. Gravatar

A gravatar is a generic nickname or avatar that’s associated with an email address, a username, or a gravatar profile. In other words, it’s a way to quickly identify somebody online. WordPress offers a few ways to enhance your blog’s aesthetic with an avatar, and you can choose from dozens of pre-made options or use your own photograph in a customized manner.

For example, if you have a blog about fashion, you might want to use a stylish gravatar for your site, and you can find dozens of trendy and attractive options to choose from. If you have a business blog, you may want to choose an image that’s less personal and more professional, like a plain dot or a silhouette of a person.

You can link to your gravatar profile through your blog’s meta information, and people with whom you’ve exchanged words in the past will be able to find you on social media if they check your blog’s links.

How To Set Up Your New WordPress Admin Site

Now that you have an idea of the types of features you might use on your blog, it’s time to take a look at how to set up a WordPress admin site.

First off, you’ll want to create a new WordPress user with a unique username and password. It’s also a good idea to use a strong password that’s at least eight characters in length and contains at least three of the following four components: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

Once you’ve created a new user, you can log in to the WordPress dashboard and click on the “Tools” tab, then click on the “Users” icon in the upper right-hand corner.

From here, you can opt to have WordPress manage your user accounts (the “Full Profile” option) or setup your accounts manually (the “Import CSV” option). If you select the former, you’ll need to upload a sample user profile with your newly created accounts (for example, a JSON file or a simple CSV file).

If you’ve opted to have WordPress handle your accounts, you can click on the “+” sign followed by the “Get Free Plugin” to find and install the WordPress User Management Plugin.