WordPress back end tour: Admin menu | WordPress for beginners

Key Takeaways

hi welcome back in the previous video we saw the options that are in the administrator toolbar and in the dashboard in your WordPress back-end in this video we will explore the admin menu well first things first where can you find the admin menu well at the far left of your screen you can either hover over the menu item to see the tabs and then click on the one you need or you can click on the menu item itself and then click the tab you want to go to let's now go into the menu items one by one and see the options they have at the top of the admin menu is the dashboard which we already discussed by clicking the dashboard menu item you can also see the updates tab the update step gives you access to the update screen from where you can get information on which version of WordPress you are using and if your plug-ins and themes are all up to date you can also take actions and manually check for updates as well as reinstall updates now let's move on to one of the most important menu items of the admin menu posts this is the command center for writing and managing your posts you will probably spend a lot of time here working on your content and perfecting your posts and of course we will tell you all about how to write a post in a later video now let's preview what exactly you can do here click on the posts menu item and you will see the post screen open under the old post tap the most important is the add new button and the add new tab both give you access to the same screen where you can add brilliant texts beautiful images and other media if you go back you will see the other options that you have the post screen shows you all the posts you have created so far you can see who created them the categories in text that they were assigned the number of comments and the date of publishing you can hover over the title of opposed to review a more editing and managing options once you have a lot of posts it will be difficult to navigate all of them from a list that's why you can filter your posts by or by category when searching for them you can also take actions such as deleting and editing more posts at once and you can also search your posts via the search post button as you can see the post menu item also contains the tabs categories and tags let's keep it simple for now because there's a whole video about categories and tags waiting for you in a later module for now it's enough to know that categories allow you to classify your posts into groups or subgroups and this makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site if you click on the categories tab in the admin menu you will see a screen where you can add edit assign and the lead categories besides categories you can also add tags to your texts as you can see this screen is very similar just like categories tags can help your visitors navigate your site now let's explore the media menu item which allows you to manage your media media can be anything photos videos audio usually you add your media when preparing your post and while working in the post screen will show you this in a later video as well but here you can view edit and delete media that you have already uploaded to navigate library with maurice you can search for media items in the search box and you can also search or sort based on the type of item or the date you can upload new media files by clicking the button add new or by clicking the tab over here now let's see what's below the media menu item this item is called pages what's the difference between a post and a page do you know it's vital information so we'll explain the difference in a separate video later on however the old pages tab which takes you to the overview of all your pages is very similar to the old posts tab and the same goes for the add new tab or you can create new pages moving on next admin menu is the Commons menu item that takes you to the common screen here you can see and access the comments that your readers leave on your posts from here you can also approve comments or unapprove provide replies edit Marcus spam or simply delete you may have noticed by now that the menu items and their respective tabs and screens we went over are similar and they all allow you to control what you post what your posts contain will come and Sapir on your site and so on and so forth the site's controlling the content of your website you also have a lot of options to edit its appearance through the appearance menu item first there is the themes tab that lets you control what your website looks like you can see the default installed themes here only this one is activated it's important to know that your theme influences the options you have in your appearance menu item another theme could provide more tabs here you can find yourself a new theme by clicking the add new button you can further customize your website via the customize menu item here you can change the active theme and you can customize the site identity colors how the menus and widgets appear on your site and what is shown on the home page again the options you have here are influenced by the theme that is active on your site if you're able to code you can also insert your code if I add the additional CSS option going back to the admin menu under the appearance tab we have the widgets witches are simple pre-built blocks that you can add to your site like a search bar or a map to locate your store you can manage them through the widgets screen on the left you'll see the available widgets and on the right you'll find the areas on your site where you can place them which widgets and widget areas you see here again depends on your theme and on the plugins you're using next the menus tab here you can create and edit the menus that appear on your website and finally when it comes to parents you can edit the themes in the theme editor but for this you need to know how to code if you are unfamiliar with coding it's best not to touch this part the next menu item is called plugins plugins make it possible for you to add some extra features to your website you can add a new plug-in with this button over here or by clicking the tab add new in the overview you can manage the plugins that you have installed for us the screen is empty because we haven't installed any plugins yet for the advanced user there's also the plug-in editor where you can make changes to the code of the plug-in you need coding skills for this so for now we will not go into that let's move on and see what the users menu item is about I know it's a long video but we're almost there the all users tab shows you all the users of the website here you can add users and edit in a role of each user on your website what's the user well it really depends on the type of size you have there are user roles like admin subscriber author and much more depending on the roles you assign the rights of what a user can do will differ you can edit your own profile by clicking the your profile tab here you can add information change your name add a profile picture in the admin menu there's also the Tools menu item you can see the available tools here if you migrate it from a different platform or system you can import your posts and comments via the import tab for example if you want to import posts comments and uses from a blogger blog you can do it here you can also import content from another WordPress site and you can import but you can also export content as you can see you can download your post pages and media in an exportable file besides the content of your page you can also export or delete your personal data and let's not forget the site health check a really cool feature of WordPress 5.2 if you click it you see two tabs status and info and the percentage over here which is an indication of how healthy your site is in our case that's 81% and we have three recommendations to improve this if you click the arrow you'll get some background information about the issue and an actionable advice if you click past tests you can see the other items that were checked the other tab info shows you a lot of information about the configuration of your WordPress site all in one place could be really handy if for example the support engineer or developer wants to know some technical details about your site and you don't know what he or she means and why you can find it you can now easily export this info and create a list for them with this button really helpful finally we have arrived at the last menu item in the admin menu the settings by the way is very well possible that more admin menu items will appear in your backend plugins for example can add more items okay back to the settings yes well since this video is already quite long I'll not discuss them here we've created a separate lesson about the settings in module 3 we'll also dive a little bit deeper into things widgets plugins and other ways to customize your site so don't worry if this is all a bit overwhelming we will take you through all the different options step by step in the following modules it's going to be fun