Antigua Web Solutions Blog

How To: Build a Professional Looking Website using WordPress - Part 1

Step 2: Setting up WordPress options and adding categories

Once logged in to your site you will see the ‘Dashboard’. From here you can make all the changes needed. So let’s start to set up your site!

1. General options
2. Make a new user
3. Make a new page
4. Make the ‘introduction’ page a static page
5. Make post and link categories
6. Make ‘news’ and ‘links’ your default category
7. Write a new post
8. Add a new link

1. General Options: Go to ‘options’ and in ‘general’ set up some of the options. Add a tagline and set up the date and time etc.2. Make a new user: It doesn’t look very professional for your news to be posted as ‘admin’! Go to users and add a new user. Make sure the publicly displayed name is suitable to be added to your posts.

3. Make a new pag: Let’s make a new page that will be the front page of your site. Go to ‘manage’ ‘pages’ and ‘create a new page’. Let’s call it ‘introduction’ for now. Add some text, tick publish’ in the sidebar. For the front page you don’t want a comment box so untick the ‘allow comments’ box under ‘discussions’ in the sidebar. Click on ‘publish’

4. Make the ‘introduction’ page a static page: In order for the front page of your site to be a static page (i.e. not a list of posts if this is a web site - not a blog) go to ‘options’ ‘reading’ and tick ‘front page displays’ a static page. Choose ‘introduction’ in the drop down menu

5. Make post and link categorie: Go to ‘manage’ ‘categories’ and make a new category for your posts. Let’s call it ‘news’. Make a new category for your links. Let’s call it ‘links’

6. Make ‘news’ and ‘links’ your default categories

Go to ‘options’ ‘writing’ and choose ‘news’ as your default post category and ‘links’ as your default link category

7. Write a new post

Go to ‘write’ ‘post’ and write a new post. Tick the appropriate category in the sidebar (or add a new one). While you’re here it’s a good idea to bookmark the page. Click on ‘press it’ at the bottom of the page. Click ‘publish’

8. Add a new link

Go to ‘blogroll’. There will be a list of links supplied by WordPress on installation. Delete them all, then ‘add links’. add your link and tick the ‘links’ category you made earlier (or create a new one with the add button). While you’re here it’s a good idea to bookmark the ‘add link’ page. Click on ‘link this’ at the bottom of the page. Click ‘publish’

Ok So now your site is on it’s way to being a suitable website for your needs. It won’t look very pretty yet as we still have the default theme, but ‘view site’ from the top bar and look at your site. In the next tutorial we will look at themes suitable for a professional web site and how to adapt them to your needs.