What You Need to Know about WordPress BEFORE you Start

You don’t need to know anything about websites or WordPress when you start.  But even “experts” will get frustrated if you take off in a wrong direction from the beginning  Save yourself frustration by heeding these three simple things:

You will get TWO simultaneous emails when your site is first set up

The system shoots out two emails to the initial admin of a newly created site.  IGNORE AND DELETE the email:

subject “[site] Your username and password info

We can’t prevent it from going out, sent by WordPress core files.

SAVE the other email:

subject: “[network] New USNA Alumni Sites Test Network Site: YourSite”

This message contains your username, password, log in link and links and provides instruction on how to get your site official once you are good to go public.

Know that you will need to toggle the toolbar to expose all the tools

By default, the toolbar in the page editor is collapsed, you can’t see all of the tool.

Know the difference between a PAGE and a POST

PAGES are typically permanent/long term info that only needs periodic changes to stay up to date, like mission, organization officers, bylaws, etc.

POSTS are typically information of a temporary nature, which is displayed in a blog roll, and if assigned, a sidebar widget.

The summary of the POSTS are displayed on a page as determined in the settings.

Know you can ignore the warning about Contact Form 7 setup on the dashboard

Unless you want to use Contact Form 7 for sending your chapter leadership messages from visitors to your website.