Now you have set up your WordPress website, it’s time to customize it to get most out of it. Log into your dashboard and click on the setting tab. From the drop down menu click on general tab. Once inside the admin area you can customize your site title, tagline, email address, time zone information and save your changes. Whatever, you do, DO NOT change the WordPress URL and site address URL or your website will not work. Then click on the tab reading and choose the option static page. You can choose what you want to be your front page or after your create coupe of pages you can come back and select your main (front) page and save your changes. Next click on the permalinks tab and select custom structure. In the box write this; /%postname% and save changes. If you want to change the look of your website you do that by changing the theme. There are lots of options available online where you can use free themes or for real professional look purchase a theme you like. Click on the appearance tab in your dashboard.
From the drop down menu choose theme option and click install themes. On the bottom of the page click on the option find themes. There are whole bunch of theme you can choose from. If you downloaded a theme on our computer then after selecting install theme click upload the browse where you saved the file and then select install now. Once installed then choose the option activate the theme. Now you have a new look to your website. If you are using a theme that has sidebar and you want to customize how it looks. In you dashboard click on appearance and then choose widget. Once side widget menu you can then drag and drop widgets into your sidebar and customize it.
Finally you can improve the functionality of your website by downloading plugins. Plugins are additional software you integrate into your website that gives your website additional features. There are thousands of plugins online, you just have to Google to find theme. To install them, click on the plugin tab on your dashboard and choose option add new. In the search term type in whatever plugin you are looking for. Once you find your plugin click install now and when it’s installed activate it. If you have downloaded it on your computer choose upload and browse where you saved it on your hard drive and upload it and activate it. Some of the must have plugins are as follows:
Smart YouTube by Vladimir Prelovac. It allows you to display YouTube videos in your post or page. Once you download the plugin and activate it, you have to customize it. From settings tab in your dashboard click on smart youtube, once inside choose the option to display video in your post. If you want you can play around with size of video display and so on. Make sure save your changes. Now all you have to do is copy the url of the video and paste it into your post. Remember if for example your URL is; http://, insert v in the URL for the video to display, so the URL will look like this; httpv://
Google Analytics Visits, follow the installation procedure mention above. This vital tool gives detail analysis of visitors to your website.
Google Sitemaps, is a way to tell Google about pages on your site that they might not otherwise know about.
