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How To Login to WordPress Admin
There are 2 ways to login to your WordPress Admin dashboard.
- Through your website URL and adding /wp-admin to the end: yourdomain.com/wp-admin
- Through SiteGround. Click on WEBSITES on the navigation menu, and select WordPress Admin, which will take you directly to your WordPress dashboard.
In both ways, you’ll be asked to login. If you go through SiteGround, you’ll be taken to a WordPress Starter Wizard where you can choose to follow their steps or you can click EXIT and follow my instructions below.
WordPress General Settings
Once you’re in your WordPress dashboard, go to the left-hand side of your screen, and click on Settings. A dropdown menu will appear, giving you a few options.
Let’s start by going into General, and make the following changes:
- Change the Site Title to your domain name. As an example, I would put GradSimple.
- You can choose to keep the Tag Line blank or add one, it’s up to you.
- Remove www from your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL). This is best practice as users are not used to typing www these days when looking up a site.
- Add an “s” to http under your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL). For example, https://gradsimple.com.
Here’s what it should look like:
Once you’re done, make sure you scroll to the bottom and click Save Changes.
Now, you’ll be logged out of WordPress since you’ve just changed your website’s URL by removing www. Don’t worry, just login again.
WordPress Permalinks Settings
Go back under Settings, and click on Permalinks.
Under Common Settings, I recommend that you select Post name. This is the best way to ensure a simple URL that includes your post’s title and not a random series of words and numbers, which is not optimal for search engine optimization (SEO).
If it is already selected, great! If not, select it and scroll to the bottom and click Save changes.
WordPress Reading Settings
Page vs. Post
Before we edit Reading settings, be sure you understand the difference between a Page and a Post to avoid any confusion.
By default, your Reading settings will be set up for a blog. This means that your homepage will also be your blog page, and all of your Posts will automatically show up there, in order of your latest published articles.
If you’re looking to create a more practical website, like a storefront, you’ll need to create a homepage. For example, GradSimple’s homepage describes what we do, our offerings, and how we can help. It’s designed in a way that leads visitors to our core pages such as About and Join Us.
Creating A Page
Go to Pages and click on Add New on the upper left corner.
Because it’s your first time creating a page, you’ll be met with a WordPress Starter Wizard that walks you through how to use WordPress’s default website editor called the Gutenberg Block Editor. Feel free to follow the walkthrough, if not press x to exit. Don’t worry if it seems confusing, I will give you a tutorial on how to use it later.
When you’re on the page, click on Add Title, and type in Home. Now, hit Publish on the top right corner. A popup will appear asking you to confirm if you’re ready to publish. Click Publish again.
And you did it! This page will serve as a placeholder until we work on the actual homepage. We just needed a page so that you can adjust your WordPress Reading settings.
Now, leave the page and go back to your WordPress dashboard. Again, go to Settings, then click on Reading.
By default, Your latest posts will be selected. Instead, you want to select A static page (select below). Then, in the Homepage dropdown, select the page you just created called Home.
When you’re done, click on Save Changes.
What’s Next?
That’s it for now! You’ve done all of the basic WordPress set up you need to get started. Next up, I’ll walk you through how to install a WordPress theme and page builder.
