How To: Wordpress for Clients

I’ve written this blog post to help my clients get to grips with their new Wordpress installations, but it’s by no means exclusive to them; feel free to read on, even if we don’t work together!

Pages

A page is for mostly static content; text or information that will rarely change, like About or Contact pages.

Adding a new Page

New pages can be created by logging into your Wordpress dashboard (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin), hovering over the Pages menu item on the left-hand side, and then clicking Add New.

Editing a Page

Already existing pages can be listed, and then edited by you by clicking the Pages menu item. This brings up a list of your current pages, which you are now able to select and edit. Find the page you would like to change, and click on the title to bring up the page editor.

In the middle of your screen, there is now a large text editor where you can edit to your heart’s content.

Books

Adding a new Book

New books can be created by logging into your Wordpress dashboard (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin), hovering over the Books menu item on th left-hand side, and clicking Add Book.

Now, the New Book page should appear. This page allows you to enter the book title, a short summary, and any relevant metadata (expected release date, Amazon links).

Entering the book title and summary should be straightforward enough, but when it comes to adding metadata, there is a specific way that this must be entered, by using the custom fields underneath the summary box.

Release Date

To enter a book’s expected release date, the custom field name must be set to ‘releasedate’, and the custom field value must be the date as you wish it to be displayed on the site (preferably similar to Friday 30th August, 2013 for easy human and computer readability).

Amazon (hard copy)

To enter a book’s Amazon link (normal store, not Kindle store), the custom field name must be set to ‘amazon’, and the custom field value must be ‘http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/’. The Amazon ID can be found from the address of the product, and will be similar to B000EMGAOY or B000H80KOG

Amazon (Kindle)

To enter a book’s Amazon Kindle link, the custom field name must be set to ‘amazonkindle’, and the custom field value must be ‘http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/’.