Basic WordPress training: Setting up your profile
One of the first steps when using WordPress is to create your profile. Your profile contains information about you that might be used on your website, depending on your theme. It’s a good idea to make sure all of the information is accurate and represents you in a way you feel comfortable with. Many themes will create Author pages by default that visitors to your site or blog might stumble upon.
[ezcol_1quarter]Editing your WordPress profile
In the upper right hand corner in the WordPress admin area, hover over where it says ‘Howdy’ and your name. Click on the ‘Edit profile’ link.
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[ezcol_1quarter]Now you’re at the ‘Your profile’ page (you can also navigate to this page by clicking Users>Your Profile).
The first section is really all to do with personal preferences for working within the admin area of WordPress and doesn’t affect information available to visitors.
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- Working our way from the top of the screen, you probably want to leave the box for ‘Disable the visual editor’ unchecked, unless you want to write all the pages and posts for your site using HTML code (which is unlikely – the beauty of WordPress is that you don’t need to!).
- Next you’ll see a few options for an ‘Admin Color Scheme’. This is a personal preference – it is only you that will ever see these colours in your personal admin area.
- If you want to learn more about ‘Keyboard shortcuts’ (easy ways of performing certain standard tasks in WordPress), click on ‘More information’. If, after you’ve reviewed the information, you decide you’d like to use the shortcuts, check the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ box.
- At the top of every screen in WordPress is your Toolbar. When you’re logged in, this toolbar will even appear on your live site (only to you – not to any other visitors). If you’d like the ability to view your live site without the toolbar, uncheck the ‘Show Toolbar when viewing site’ box.
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Below is where you fill in all of your personal information. Much of it is self-explanatory.
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[ezcol_1quarter]Your username is what you use to log-in to WordPress and can’t be changed.
In the dropdown next to ‘Display name publicly as’, choose the version of your name that you’d like to appear in the blog posts you create – this will be visible to visitors of your site.
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In the Contact Info section, an email address is required as this is how WordPress communicates with you. It is also the address connected to your Gravitar account.
Gravitars are globally recognised avatars. Gravitar.com is also run by WordPress and offers a way to associate a photo (an avatar) with an email address. To do this, create a free account at Gravatar.com using the same email address as you have registered at WordPress and upload a photo or image. That avatar will now appear next to any comment you make in WordPress (both on your own site and others).
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The rest of the contact info is optional, but I’d advise completing as much of it as possible so that visitors have multiple ways of connecting with you.
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In ‘About Yourself’ you should enter a short biography that tells visitors to your Author page the essential information about you and what you will be writing about on your blog.
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If you want to create a new or more memorable password for logging in to WordPress here is where you’ll do that. Type it into the ‘New Password’ field and then again into the ‘Repeat Password’ field.
Once you’ve completed all the relevant information, click ‘Update Profile’.
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