WordPress is great for so many reasons; the built in SEO, the millions of plugins (literally, millions), and the plentiful choices of pre-built, customizable themes. By far though, one of the greatest gifts that WordPress has given to the world is the ease of use of it’s interface. WP has created the perfect process and seamless workflow between fancy web developers like myself and my typically-not-so-computer-savvy clients. Once the project is completed and the client is over the moon happy with the end result, I arm them a username and password with backend access to the site. I do this so that they can be autonomous with changes and updates to their site. It is, after all, their baby. I’m just the visual messenger, mannn. This blog posts explains how to make changes on your WordPress website after it’s in your hands.

STEP BY STEP

Let’s get to it. All WP sites have the same easy login process. It just adds ‘wp-admin’ to the end of your domain. For example, if your website is www.TheCoolestDentalPracticeEver.com

you would type that into your url web browser and then add ‘wp-admin’. To get into the backend of this fictional website, this would be the complete URL: ‘http://www.TheCoolestDentalPracticeEver.com/wp-admin’

WHICH BRINGS YOU TO THE LOG IN SCREEN. PERFECT, YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK.

As a real example, let’s use one of my awesome clients, Dr. John Siegal, a super successful practice in the West Village in NYC. Let’s pretend we’re someone one from Dr. Siegal’s office and we’re charged with making a small text change.

I should take this time to say that you should only make changes that you are 100% comfortable with. If it’s anything more than simple text changes, I would leave it to the pro’s, (like me).

At this point, we would put in the log in credentials that I have supplied when the project wrapped up. It’s pretty self explanatory; username goes in the first field and password goes…in the password field. Kazzagazzooo, you’re in!

DON’T FEEL OVERWHELMED

Yowzer, if you’re not a seasoned pro like moi this screen can feel like ‘whoa’, but take a breathe, a sip of tea, pull up your socks, and stretch. This is your Dashboard. It’s the start point for all things great (on your website.) The left column is where all of your important options live.

Let’s say that your boss, Dr. Siegal, has decided that he doesn’t like photography anymore. He wants it removed from his bio section on the staff page. Simple; right, you just need to know where the page is and what it’s called.

Since we know that the ‘photographer’ text is in his bio, and the bios are in the Our Staff page, that’s where we need to look. See that little option on the left called Pages? That’s where you can access any of the pages that appear throughout your site. Hover on the word ‘Pages’ and click All Pages.

CHECK IT OUT, ALL OF YOUR PAGES

There they are, in all their glory. And look, there’s ‘Our Staff’ page! Hover over it and choose EDIT.

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE EDIT PAGE

This is just one theme’s layout. All themes have different layouts for their backend, but operate similarly in many ways. Some themes just have a large text box with content jammed in them, and others like our example, have beautifully functioning content boxes, making it better for developers like me to create some sleek and modern sites. So, in this case, once you’ve located the edits in question, ‘photographer’ in this example, click on the content box that holds it.

NOW EDIT YOUR CONTENT

This editor works like any other text editor. In this example, we’re just getting rid of the word ‘photography’. So go ahead and delete it out.

THAT’S IT!

But wait a tick. Probably the most important step of all is such an easily over looked one. I get emails/calls like this often from clients saying that the changes aren’t catching. There’s a blue button names Publish on the top right of the screen that is basically like your save button. Hit that guy and you’re a website editing magician!

👏 Pretty 👏 Damn 👏 Cool 👏 Huh 👏