Dashboard

The Dashboard link brings you back to the main administrative screen.

What appears there varies. WordPress itself provides basic site information and activity, while plugins may add their own notices, reports and widgets.

You may also see update notices here. Pay attention to them, but don’t assume that every update button needs to be hammered immediately on a live business website.

Posts

Posts are generally used for articles, news, updates and other date-based content.

This is where you’ll find the blog posts on a typical WordPress website. From here you can create a new post, edit an existing one, manage categories and work with other post-related organization.

If you’re trying to change one of the permanent pieces of your website, however, you probably want Pages instead.

Media

The Media Library contains images, PDFs and other files uploaded to WordPress.

You can upload media while editing content, so you won’t necessarily spend much time here. The Media Library is useful when you need to find an existing file, inspect its details or manage something independently of a page or post.

Before uploading giant photographs straight from your phone or camera, remember that website images should be appropriately sized and optimized.

WordPress Basics: Adding Images →

Pages

Pages are generally used for the more permanent content on the website: About, Services, Contact and similar material.

This is one of the places most business owners will actually use.

The editing interface may look different depending on how the website was built. A site might use the WordPress Block Editor, Enfold’s Advanced Layout Builder or another system entirely.

Before editing, make sure you know which system you’re looking at.

WordPress Basics: Working With Posts and Pages →

Comments

If comments are enabled, this is where you can review, approve, reply to, mark as spam or remove them.

Many business websites don’t use public comments at all, so this section may be largely irrelevant on your site.

Appearance

This is where things begin to have consequences.

Depending on the theme and WordPress configuration, Appearance can contain controls for themes, menus, widgets and other site-wide presentation settings.

Changing a sentence on a page is routine. Changing a theme or global site setting is not the same thing.

If you aren’t sure what a control does, leave it alone until you know.

Plugins

Plugins add functionality to WordPress.

Forms, ecommerce, SEO tools, security systems, backups and thousands of other features can be provided by plugins.

That does not mean you should install one every time you discover an interesting button on the internet.

Plugins affect the machinery underneath the website. Adding, deleting, activating or updating them can have site-wide consequences. On a business website, make sure you have a current backup before doing anything adventurous.

Users

The Users area controls who can log into WordPress and what they’re allowed to do.

WordPress has different user roles with different levels of access. An Administrator has considerable control over the website, while other roles can be much more limited.

Don’t give everyone Administrator access simply because it’s convenient. Give people the level of access they actually need.

Tools

Tools contains various utilities, including WordPress import and export features. Plugins may add additional tools here as well.

Most website owners won’t need this section very often.

That’s fine. Not every drawer in the workshop needs to be opened every Tuesday.

Settings

Settings controls important site-wide behavior.

This can include the site title, reading settings, discussion settings, media behavior, permalinks and other fundamental configuration.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to work in here. There are also settings that can change URLs or affect the entire website.

This is another area where knowing what a control does before changing it is a particularly good policy.

Your Dashboard May Look Different

WordPress is extensible, so no two Dashboards are necessarily identical.

Your theme can add menu items. Plugins can add menu items. Ecommerce systems can add entire administrative sections. Custom websites may include content types and controls built specifically for that business.

So if your Dashboard doesn’t perfectly match a tutorial or screenshot, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong.

The basic logic remains the same: WordPress gives you a central administrative area, and the left-hand menu gets you to the different parts of the site.

The Controls You Actually Need

For routine content work, most business owners can concentrate on a surprisingly small part of the Dashboard:

• Posts for articles and news
• Media for images and files
• Pages for permanent website content
• Users when access needs to change

The rest isn’t forbidden territory. It simply deserves more care because some of those controls affect considerably more than the page in front of you.

Learn the useful controls first. The giant mysterious machine can wait.

Need More WordPress Help?

We’ve built a larger collection of practical WordPress instructions for business owners who need to operate their websites without becoming WordPress developers.

Visit WordPress Help →

And if you’d rather have somebody else keep the machinery running:

Website Maintenance →