Introducing Wordpress Admin Panel

After you install wordpress you will have an admin panel from where you have can manage wordpress. For example if your domain name is example.com and you install wordpress in the root directory then your wordpress admin panel url will be http://example.com/wp-admin/. After you login as admin you will have Dashboard.

In this post I will discuss several wordpress sections that will make you flexible to work with wordpress.

In my wordpress 2.8 version following is the image from wordpress dashboard i.e after logging to wordpress admin panel.

We see, within wordpress-2.8 dashboard we have several sections of,
1) Posts
2) Media
3) Links
4) Pages
5) Comments
6) Appearance
7) Plugins
8) Users
9) Tools
10)Settings.

If we expand each of the sections it will look like following image.

The rest part of screenshot,

Now let's briefly familiarize with the each section.
1) Posts: From Posts section you can add your new blog posts, edit posts, add post tags, add categories etc. In order to manage main contents of your website you have to deal with Posts section.

2) Media: Media indicates the images, video, recordings files etc. From Media section inside wordpress, you can these upload these documents inside your blog. Media is typically uploaded and inserted into the content when writing a Post or Page. The Media Library SubPanel allows you edit, delete or view Media previously uploaded to your blog.

3) Links: From the Links section of your wordpress you can add interesting links to your site so that people can navigate those links from your blog. The Links Edit SubPanel allows you to select the Links to edit or delete. The Links Add New SubPanel handles the creation of new links. The Links Link Categories SubPanel allows you to add, edit, and delete Link Categories, as well as organize your Link Categories hierarchically.

4) Pages: The Pages section in wordpress is for adding static content to wordpress site. This is like "About Us", "Contact Us", "Company Info" information that merely changes. The Pages Edit SubPanel provides the necessary tools to edit, delete, and view existing Pages. The "Add New" Page SubPanel allows you to create new Pages.

5) Comments: In a blog comments allow users to respond to a post. Through wordpress Comments section you edit, delete and mark comments as spam. Comments that are awaiting moderation can be marked as approved or previously approved comments can be unapproved.

6) Appearance: From Appearance section in wordpress you can control how the contents of your site will be displayed. You can change the style of your site by installing, editing, activating themes. A Theme is the overall design of a site and encompasses color, graphics, and text.
From Themes subpanel you can check your current theme and available theme installed in our wordpress.

From Add New Themes subpanel you can check for themes by keyword, author, or tag. Through Feature Filter you can filter and check variable themes. You can Install and Preview themes through this subpanel and then activate themes for your wordpress.

Widgets are gadgets which allow you to add various pieces of information to your Theme's sidebar content. Just like as I add various piece of information like Recent Post, Recent Comments, Add Categories, Archives, Blogroll, to my sidebar. Through Widgets just drag widgets from widgets left pane to a sidebar on the right to activate them. If you want to deactivate them just Drag widgets back to left side from the right side.

From the Editor subpanel of the Appearance section you can edit the various files that comprise your Themes. In the Appearance section Editor SubPanel allows you to designate which theme you want to edit then displays the files in that theme. Each file (Template and CSS) in the theme can be editted in the large text box.

7)Plugins: Plugins allow users add new features to the WordPress site that don't come with the default installation.
The Plugins Installed SubPanel allows you to manage plugins that is to view the plugins you've downloaded and choose which plugins you activated on your site.
The Plugins Add New SubPanel allows you to add new plugins.
The Plugins Editor SubPanel, you can modify the source code of all your plugins.

8)Users: Whenever you install wordpress you have by default admin user.
Via "Users and Authors" you can change a assign a user to the Roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, or Subscriber.
Via Users Add New SubPanel you can manually create user and then assign them to various roles.
From Users Your profile SubPanel name, contact info and other information can be changed.

9)Tools: Tools sections in wordpress provide you the ability to speed up WordPress for your local machine, import content from other sources, backup your content, or to upgrade your WordPress software to a new release.
The Turbo ability, adds new features to your web browser and speeds up WordPress for the local computer user.
The Press This function allows quick posting and publishing through the use of a special web browser favourite.
With Tools Import posts, comments, pages, categories, tags, and users, can be imported.

With WordPress Tools "Export" SubTool you can create an XML file to your computer. The format, which is called a WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR file, will contain your posts, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. This Export SubTool Take note that the Exporting is a useful method to backup your WordPress data.

The Tools Upgrade SubPanel give you a easy method to upgrade.

10) Settings: The Settings section determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site.
The Settings General SubPanel allow you to change Title, tagline, blog address, admin email address, who can register to site, date and time format etc.

With the Settings Writing SubPanel, you can control the interface with which you write new posts.

With the Settings Reading SubPanel, you can decide if you want posts, or a "static" Page, displayed as your blog's front (main) page. You can also adjust how many posts are displayed on that main page.

With the Settings Discussion SubPanel allows you to control settings concerning incoming and outgoing comments, pingbacks and trackbacks.

With the Settings Media SubPanel you can determine where images, documents, and other media files will be linked to when inserted into the body of a post, specify dimension of the image.

With the Settings Privacy SubPanel you can determine whether your blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (Google, Technorati etc).

With the Settings Permalinks SubPanel controls how that custom URL structure is defined.

With the Settings Miscellaneous SubPanel you can control the location of file uploads, uploads into month and year based folders, link tracking.