The most basic knowledge of WordPress

We’ve already talked about what is WordPress and what can be done with it. We’re going to go a little further now explaining the most basic concepts about WordPress, so you can keep on learning with a solid knowledge of the basis.

Assuming you’ve already installed WordPress on a server and linked your domain correctly, there are few things you must know at first. Before you start blogging and customizing your website.

So let’s start from the beginning:

Making it look like you want:

One of the first issues you face when starting a website is the theme choice.

It’s a very important decision since it’s about the theme your website is going to use until you decide to change it. And that’s not going to happen in a long time, or maybe never if you make the right choice.

There are plenty of themes out there to use, all kind of themes with many different objectives and recommendations of use.

A theme is like the clothing of your WP, it applies its design to every page of WP and adds some useful utilities.

So pick up the theme that satisfies your objectives. Write down a list of what you want of a theme before you start the exhaustive mission of finding the right theme.

Each theme has its own features with its own customization options. Some are more customizable than other, but that doesn't means that they are worst.

There are free and paid themes. If you can buy one, don’t even doubt it. It will be a good investment. Paid themes are much better than free ones in most of the cases.

Just be sure it’s been updated regularly and that it’s a quality theme.

Adding plugins:

Plugins are like tools for WordPress, without plugins WP couldn't be what it is. A fully customizable CMS.

With plugins, you can add any functionality imaginable. There are more than 55.000 plugins available in official WP repository, so imagine.

All those plugins were made for a distinctive purpose.

There is a plugin for doing almost anything.

But of course, there are also some plugins that doesn't works anymore since they are abandoned by their creators and not updated. And some plugins are made without following any standard coding practices, or simply are badly done.

When installing a plugin you should ask yourself if it’s really necessary. If answer is yes then pick a plugin that is updated recently and that has the mayor number of downloads. It’s a good idea to read the reviews also so you can deduce if it’s a good plugin or not.

Never forget that plugins adds functionality but also adds codes to your WordPress. So as more plugins you have, more extensive (and slow) will get your website. Many plugins can slow down your page load speed a lot, so you have to use them wisely.

Also you have to know that many things can be done without using plugins. If you explore in Google about what you want maybe you can get to the solution without using plugins.

Posts and pages

There are two way to publish your content in WordPress, same as in any other website. You can publish a post or a page. Pages are used for more static and relevant content such as a help page, about us, contact info or something that must be always visible.

And posts are pieces of content that you deliver to your followers, like articles on a newspaper. Your posts will be organized in archive by date, by categories and will be shown in search results when somebody performs a search in your website.

There's a big difference between posts and pages and you should understand it before starting to build your WP Website.

These is just part of the most basic knowledge of WordPress. There are more things you must know to start with a WP website, but here you have something to start learning.

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If you are more experienced WordPress user, please comment about this. ¿What do you think? ¿Did I miss something that you think must be here in this list? Please share your thoughts.