- How to log into WordPress
- WordPress Editing Basics
- How To Create Pages
- How to Edit WordPress Home Page
- How To Edit Header in WordPress
- How To Edit Footer in WordPress
- How To Edit Permalink
- How To Edit Menu
- How To Change Site Title
- How To Edit Mobile Version of your Site
- Saving, Autosaving and Revisions
How to log into WordPress
- Go to your WordPress login page (usually at yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/)
- Use your username or email address and password to log in
- Sometimes you can also log in directly from your WordPress hosting dashboard without using login credentials
Once successfully logged in, you land in your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress dashboard is the place where WordPress editing happens if you are not using a front-end page builder.
Once you have successfully logged in to your Dashboard, you can start editing your WordPress website.
WordPress Editing Basics
In this section, we’ll discuss the basic WordPress elements that you will most likely deal with when editing your WordPress website.
These elements are:
- Posts & Pages
- Theme
- Editor
Posts & Pages
There are two forms of content on WordPress:
- Posts
- Pages
WordPress posts are for dynamic and time-sensitive content. These are usually blog articles. However, if you want you can use WordPress posts for other time-sensitive content too, like events.
The posts are displayed in reverse-chronological order – the newest ones are displayed first. Posts usually have RSS feed and comment section connected to them.
In contrast, WordPress pages are for static content.
Homepage, contact us, about us, privacy policy, and other types of static pages are usually uploaded as WordPress pages.
So, when you edit WordPress, you edit one of these two things – posts or pages.
You can also make edits in the WordPress dashboard, but those edits are usually of technical nature.
Theme
WordPress theme is a framework that controls the overall design of a WP website and in some cases adds additional functionality to the website.
This additional functionality may vary from none to impressively rich toolsets.
In a standard case, WordPress comes with default WP themes pre-installed.
These themes are usually given years instead of names, such as “Twenty-Twenty-Four”:
Editor
The current default WordPress editor is called Gutenberg (also known as WordPress Block Editor).
Gutenberg was introduced in 2018 with WordPress 5.0 version. It replaced the previous WordPress editor which is now called a “classic” WP editor (aka TinyMCE).
Generally, Gutenberg is quite intuitive. It’s based on blocks and every block is a piece of content.
Currently, there are the following Gutenberg blocks available:
| General Blocks | Formatting Blocks | Layout Blocks | Widget Blocks |
| Paragraph | Table | Separator | Archives |
| Heading | Code | Spacer | Calendar |
| List | Custom HTML | Page Break | Categories |
| Quote | Preformatted | Buttons | Custom HTML |
| Image | Verse | Columns | Latest comments |
| Gallery | Pullquote | More | Latest posts |
| Audio | Classic | Media and Text | Search |
| Video | Group | Shortcode | |
| File | Reusable block | Social icons | |
| Cover | Row | Tag cloud | |
| Stack | RSS | ||
| Page list |
This is how some of these blocks work:
- Paragraph block
- Buttons block
Everything is extremely user-friendly and highly intuitive.
You can also edit your site with any of the existing editors for WordPress. The most popular ones are:
- Elementor
- Beaver Builder
- Classic Editor
How To Create Pages
To create and start editing a new page on WordPress:
1. Go to pages (or posts, if you want to create a new post) in your WordPress Dashboard. You can also simply hover over it and options will show as below:
2. Click “Add New”
3. Gutenberg editor will load
4. Here you can start adding new content
5. Once you are done editing you can either save the page/post as a draft or publish it:
How to Edit WordPress Home Page
The homepage is the front page of the website. It’s the first page that opens up when someone visits the website URL.
By default, all the blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order on every WordPress site’s homepage.
But you can change this and set any custom page as the homepage to show the content you need.
How to set front page on WordPress:
- Go to Settings > Reading in the WordPress dashboard.
- Then click on “A static page” option and select the page that you want to set as your homepage from the drop-down list.
- Click on “Save Changes”, and you’re done!
Now to edit the homepage, navigate to Appearance > Customize.
In the Customizer, you can click on the pencil icon to edit any element you want, and all WordPress home page edits will be in the live preview, in this case, so you can see how everything looks before publishing the page.
Once the homepage is final, click on Publish in the sidebar, and the new homepage will be live.
How To Edit Header in WordPress
Editing WordPress header will predominantly depend on what customization options your theme (or page builder) provides.
Premium themes usually provide a user-friendly way to make your heading look exactly the way you want it.
So, the first option would be to check if your current theme has an in-built way of editing the WordPress header.
For example Elementor offers a theme builder capable of customizing WordPress headers
How To Edit Footer in WordPress
Editing WordPress footer is a little easier than editing the header. This is mostly because the footer is a standard widgets place on WordPress websites and there are some easy-to-use built-in instruments to edit the footer in WordPress.
Here is how to customize WordPress footer:
- By going to Appearance > Customize > Widgets:
- By going directly to Widgets:
- Using Theme Builder (Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder)
- Editing footer.php file (requires coding)
How To Edit Permalink in WordPress
Permalinks are simply the permanent URLs of your WordPress posts and pages.
Example: https://siteefy.com/how-to-edit-wordpress-site/
This is the permalink of this page.
Default WordPress permalink structure is based on the page/post name and date when the page/post was published.
But this can be easily altered.
Here is how to change the default permalink structure on WordPress:
- Go to Setting > Permalinks:
- Choose the permalink structure you want and click Save Changes
To change a permalink of an individual post/page look at the right sidebar options on Gutenberg:
In WordPress Classic Editor, this option is right under the page/post title
How To Edit Menu
Editing menu in WordPress is easy:
- Go to Appearance > Menus:
- Make all the changes you want and click Save Changes:
How To Change WordPress Site Title
You can change your WordPress site title in two places:
- Customizer
- Settings
Let’s look at each option.
How to change your WordPress site title in Customizer:
- Go to Appearance > Customize
- Next click Site Identity
How to change your WordPress site title in Settings:
- Go to Settings > General
- Change your site title and click Save Changes.
How To Edit Mobile Version of a WordPress Site
There are two beginner-friendly ways of editing the mobile version of your WordPress website:
- In WordPress Customizer
- With a page builder
Let’s look at both options.
How to edit the mobile version of your WordPress website with Customizer:
- Go to Appearance > Customize
- Look at the options at the bottom of the sidebar:
- Switch between Desktop, Tablet and and Smartphone options to see how your website looks on different devices and make edits.
How to edit the mobile version of your WordPress website with a Elementor page builder:
Saving, Autosaving and Revisions on WordPress
When you’re editing a WordPress website, it’s important to know how your changes will be saved. WordPress has three different ways of saving your changes: autosaving, saving, and revisions.
Autosaving is the most basic way of saving your changes. WordPress will automatically save a copy of your changes every 60 seconds by default. This means that if you accidentally close your browser or lose your internet connection, you won’t lose all of your work.
Saving is a bit more manual, but it’s still pretty easy. To save your changes, simply click the “Save draft” button in the WordPress editor.
This will save your changes but won’t publish them to your website until you hit the “Publish” button.
Revisions are a bit more advanced, but they can be really handy if you need to go back and forth between different versions of your content. Automatic revisions are also enabled by default on WordPress.
To access your revisions, simply click the “Revisions” button in the WordPress editor.
Keep in mind that autosaving and saving are two different things. Autosaving will save your changes automatically, but saving will only save your changes if you manually click the “Save draft” button.
If you’re not sure which method of saving is right for you, just remember that autosaving is the most basic way to save your changes. If you want more control over your changes, then saving and revisions might be a better option.