Welcome to WordPress.com! Whether you want to start a blog, build a website for your small business, or something in between, a few basics apply to every site you’re looking to create.
You can use this guide to learn:
- How to add content, like posts and pages, to your site.
- How to use the Block Editor.
- How to use the Site Editor to make site-wide changes like adding a menu.
In this guide
There are two parts to every WordPress.com site:
Content – the content on your site is made up of pages, posts, and media. You can add or edit pages and posts by going to Pages or Posts in the left sidebar of your site dashboard. You will make changes using the Block editor.
Structure – site-wide changes, such as editing menus, adjusting colors, creating a footer, and more, are done from the Site Editor. From your dashboard, go to Appearance → Site Editor.
Video Transcript
My name is Kate, and I’m a WordPress.com happiness engineer.
The goal of this video is to give you an overview of the WordPress.com dashboard, help you pick out a theme, show you how to customize your site, edit existing and add new content, as well as work with our block editor. By the time you’re done watching, you’ll know everything you need to know to launch your website on WordPress.com.
First, we’ll begin by taking a look at the dashboard. The WordPress.com dashboard is the first thing you’ll see when you log into your account at WordPress.com. The dashboard is where you administer your site, edit content, and manage your website’s features like custom domains and plans.
Next, we’ll cover the most commonly used items in your dashboard.
You’ll find tips for what you can work on next and links to support guides to help you make the most of different features on My Home.
Stats let you see information about visits to your site, including your top-performing posts and pages, as well as your traffic sources.
The upgrades section shows your current plan. From here, you can upgrade to a different plan and manage your purchases.
You can also manage your domains and set up a personalized email address.
Not everyone uses posts, and that’s okay. However, if you’d like to have a blog page on your website, publish articles regularly, or you’re sharing the latest news about your company, you’ll add that content here.
Think of pages as the overall framework of your site. For example, you might have a home page to welcome visitors and highlight the various aspects of your site. You might also want to have a blog page to display your blog posts or articles. You can also have an about page to tell your visitors a little about yourself and a contact page so your visitors can reach you.
Media is where you’ll upload any content you’d like to use on your website, like images, documents, videos, or audio. You can also search for free photos to use on your site.
Jetpack is where you’ll find an activity log of all the changes that you’ve made to your site. With the Business or Commerce plans, you can also restore backups from a previous point in time.
Appearance is where you’ll be able to find themes and the customizer. We’ll talk more about this in a minute.
Plugins are apps that extend the functionality of your website. You can install plugins with our business or e-commerce plans.
In the Users section, you can invite and manage multiple administrators, editors, authors, and contributors, contributors, so you don’t have to manage your site on your own. You can also view and manage your site followers.
In the Tools menu, you’ll find options for marketing and monetizing your site as well as importing and exporting your site’s content.
Finally, Settings is where you will manage your site’s general settings, such as your site title and language preference. You can also launch your new site or change your site’s privacy settings.
Now that we’ve looked around the dashboard, let’s take a closer look at themes. To get there, click Appearance and then Themes. Think of themes as the overall look of your website. They define the general color scheme, where menus and widgets appear on your site, as well as other design features. You’ll design the rest of the content on each page through the block editor. More on that later.
If you want to check out other themes, hover over the theme you’re interested in and click Info to see the theme’s setup guide. Each theme has a setup guide that shows you how to set the theme up just like the demo. Then, if you like the theme, click Activate this design to make the theme live on your site. When you switch themes, you will keep all of your content, but you may need to adjust some theme settings through the customizer.
Now that we’ve selected a theme, let’s try editing some of the settings in the Customizer. To get there, click Appearance, and then Customize. The Customizer is where you make changes that apply to your whole site, like your site identity, menus, widgets, and homepage settings.
We’re going to cover the most common theme settings. However, many themes will offer additional options, so be sure to explore the options in the customizer for the theme you’ve chosen.
Site Identity is where you’ll add a logo to your site and you’ll set up the site title and tagline. Here you can also opt to hide the site title and tagline. In Site Identity, you can also add a site icon and change the WordPress.com footer credit style.
Colors and backgrounds is where you’ll see the default color scheme for the theme. The color scheme defines your background, text, and link colors. First, click on a color to see which site elements this color is assigned to. Then, change the color to one of the palette options or click Pick Your Own Color to select a custom color. You can also reset the colors to default by clicking the Default button.
Menus are collections of links that help your visitors navigate to other pages on your site. For example, you might want to add a menu to the top of your site with links to pages you created so your visitors know how to learn more about you, contact you, or view your blog. In this section, you create a menu, add links to the menu, and assign it to a location in your site’s theme. You can reorder how the menu items appear by dragging them into place or clicking the reorder link. You can also order your menu items into subcategories by arranging them like so.
Widgets is a fancy word for an app or piece of content that you can add, arrange, and remove from the sidebars and footer of your website or blog. Each theme uses widgets differently, and some themes don’t use widgets at all. Suppose your chosen theme has multiple widget areas, such as a sidebar and a footer or multiple footers. In that case, you’ll see them listed here.
Homepage settings is where you’ll go to set the page your visitors will see when they first go to your website. It can be your latest posts, or it can be a static page. To set a static homepage, you first need to publish at least one page that will become the homepage for your site. Click Save Changes to apply the changes you made to your website’s overall look and feel.
The block editor is how you add content to your site’s pages and posts. Each design element, like a paragraph, image, or a contact form, is a unique block of content. Some blocks are functional for collecting payments, sharing on social channels, or even collecting information from visitors.
Before we get into the block editor, let’s talk about the difference between pages and posts. Site pages are your static page content, like Home, Contact Us, or a page designed to show all of your posts. Posts are your individual blog entries. Each new update, story, or article that you want to write, you’ll create a new post for it. Both pages and posts use the same block editor. The difference is in what happens when a page or post is published. More on that later.
For now, we’ll start with creating a new page for your website. When you click Add New under Pages, you’ll have an option to select a page layout. A page layout is a collection of blocks with starter content. You can browse through the featured layouts or pick a page type like Home or Contact to see the layouts best suited for that type of page. Once you select a page layout, you’ll be able to change the text and images in the Block Editor. You can also set a blank layout if you want to start with a blank canvas and add your own blocks.
Now we’re in the Block Editor.
The toolbar at the top of the Block Editor has your Block Inserter, Undo, Redo, List View, Publish Options, Settings, and Global Styles. Global Styles include the ability to change the font used for your headings and text across your whole site.
Below the top toolbar is the Content area, where you’ll give the new page a name as well as add and edit the page content.
First, let’s browse the different kinds of blocks we can add to the page. Here, you can hover over different blocks to see a preview of how the block will look.
Block patterns are collections of blocks that you can insert into an existing page.
To add a block, click the blocks icon in the block inserter. You can also add a new block in the content area anywhere you see the block insert or icon.
Each block has unique settings options. Above the block is the block toolbar, where you can change the block type, alignment, and location of the block. There is also an options menu in the toolbar that lets you copy or delete the block or insert a new block above or below the current block.
Once you’ve customized a block and want to be able to use it on more than one page, you can add that block to the reusable blocks list through the options menu in the blocks toolbar. Reusable blocks will appear in the block inserter with the name you gave the block. Changing the content in a reusable block changes it on every page the block exists on.
Blocks have additional options in a settings menu on the right that include color options, styles, and other customization options. If you don’t see the settings menu, click the Settings cog to activate the menu.
Since we started with a page layout, we might want to change the settings in one of these background blocks, like this cover block here. Using the List view in the toolbar, we can see a list of all the blocks used on the page and click on the one we want to edit. There is also a breadcrumb navigation option at the bottom of the editor. This option lets you go from a child block, like this text inside a cover block, to the parent block by clicking on the parent block’s name.
Finally, you can move a block to another location on your page by using this icon in the Block toolbar to drag it to a new location or the up/down arrows next to it to move it one position up or down.
When you’re happy with the page that you’ve created, you can click Publish. Remember, you can come back to edit this page at any time.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of the Block Editor, we’ll spend a couple of minutes looking at editing posts.
To recap, pages are your static content, like a static homepage or a contact us page. Think of posts as your individual blog entries, articles, or newsletters. When a post is published, your subscribers receive a notification that a new post has been published. Likewise, if you’ve set up your site to publicize to your social networks, a new post will automatically post to those networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Now let’s add a post. You can add a new post by clicking Posts, then Add New. You’ll notice two things when you add a new post. First, you are not prompted to select a page layout like you were when you created a page. And second, you’re in the same block editor.
The block patterns are available through the block inserter if you’re looking for some design inspiration. Or you can start typing without selecting a block to create a new paragraph.
In Post Settings, you have the option to set the post’s visibility, status, and publish date. You can schedule a post by specifying a date in the future. Or set a date in the past to backdate a post.
In this section, you can also add categories, tags, and a featured image. The featured image will appear on your blog page with each published post.
Once the post is published, it will show up on the blog, and notifications will go out to your followers and the social networks you set up and publicize.
Here is an example of a page with the blog posts block on it, showing our latest post and its featured image. Any time you publish a new post, the page that has the posts list or blog post block will automatically update with that new post.
When you’re ready for the world to see your site, you can visit the Settings section of your dashboard. In Settings, you can launch your site or change your visibility settings from private to public.
In this video, we covered how to select a theme, customize the overall look and feel of your site, how to add content through the block editor for both pages and posts, and how to launch your website. All of the features discussed in this video are covered in greater detail in our support documentation. Search wordpress.com/support for the specific feature you’d like to learn more about.
We also offer daily webinars, one-on-one quick start sessions, and live chat and email support. So wherever you see the question mark icon in your WordPress.com dashboard or the editor, you can access your support options. Or visit WordPress.com/help for more information.
Questions can come up along the way, so please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help. Thank you so much for watching, and have a great day!
The first thing we’ll look at is how to add content. To do this, go to Pages or Posts. This is where you’ll add the main content of your site.
What’s the difference between a page and a post?
A page is best used for content that isn’t going to change very often. Good examples of pages would be a home page, an about page, a contact page, or even a page that lists your products or services.
Posts, or blog posts, are more like news articles. Good examples of posts include updates about your industry, a personal journal, movie reviews and other similar specific pieces of writing. Every site built on WordPress.com has the ability to add a blog, but you don’t have to use it!
We have more information on the difference between the two here.
For now, let’s just add a few pages to your site.
First, go to Pages and click Add New Page.
This will open the Block editor.
You may see an option to select a pre-designed layout upon creating a new page. You can choose a layout and edit it further, or start with a blank page.
On the right side of the editor are the page settings. You can see the page’s status from here, add categories and tags to posts, set a featured image, and much more.
- Your Page or Post’s title.
- The content area, where you’ll add your blocks of content.
- The +Block inserter for adding new blocks.
- Preview, publish, help, Jetpack Social settings, page settings, and options.
- Page and Block Settings sidebar.
- Back to Pages, the +Block inserter, Tools, undo/redo, and List View.
Let’s take a deeper look at the editor itself!
You will create your pages and posts using the Block editor — think of it as the building blocks of your website! You can add content to the page by inserting various blocks. You can do so by clicking the block inserter + icon, which is found in various places within the editor.
There are multiple ways to add a block and choose the block type you need:
- Click + at the left of any empty block.
- Click + at the top left of the editor.
- Hit the Enter/Return key from a selected block to create a new block below it.
- Click + at the top center of an existing block to add one above it.
- Click on the three dots just above a selected block and choose to add a block above or below the current block.
There are all sorts of blocks that you can add – paragraphs, images, galleries, columns, and tables – the list is quite exhaustive!
Some common blocks you might want to make use of are:
- Paragraph block: the default block that you can use to add regular text to a post or page.
- Image block: for adding individual images inside the post or page.
- Cover block: for adding text on top of an image.
- Columns block: this lets you place blocks side by side easily.
- Heading block: adds header text inside the post or page.
When you click on the + block inserter icon, you can search for different types of blocks or scroll down and expand each list to see what’s available. Once a block is added, you can reorder them using the left and right arrows or by clicking and dragging.
Whenever you add a block and select it, you’ll notice there are two areas of settings:
- The Block toolbar, which appears just above the block.
- The Block sidebar settings, in the right side of the editor.
If you do not see the sidebar on the right, you may need to click on the Settings icon in the top right corner to bring up the settings. This icon looks like a square with two uneven columns.
Remove a Block
You can remove a block by selecting it, clicking on the ellipses (three dots) menu in the toolbar, and choosing Remove Block.
Once you’re happy with how your page looks, go ahead and click Publish in the top right corner. Have some more pages you want to add? Go ahead and publish them, then head onto the next step. If you want to add a blog page, create and publish a page called “Blog” (or whatever you’d like!) and leave it blank. We’ll add the blog posts in the next step.
Worried about people viewing your site before it’s done? Your site will be in a private “Coming Soon” mode until you launch it. Go to Settings → General and scroll down to Privacy to launch the site! There’s more info on that here.
Now you should have a few pages of content to work with. Let’s make sure people can view them! We’ll want to open the Site Editor to make these changes. To do so, go to Appearance → Site Editor:
You’ll see the beginnings of a navigation menu at the top of your site:
This Navigation block will display a list of links to the various pages of your site. You can click the block to add pages to the menu, create drop-down menus, and more. Remember, your pages must be published before adding them to your navigation menu.
This guide should help you get up and running, but maybe there are some more features you’re looking to implement! Here’s a list of common questions and features:
These are called category pages! To set these up, create a few blog posts and assign categories to them when editing the post. Then, you can add those categories to your navigation menu – you’ll see a section for Categories. From there, you can select a category to add to your menu. Only blog posts given that category will appear on that page.
Alternatively, you can use the Blog Posts block to display a list of blog posts with a specific category on any page.
All sites on WordPress.com come with a large number of built-in features that should cover what you need. If you wish to install a plugin, upgrade to a plugin-enabled plan.
Any site with a WordPress.com plan can connect to a custom domain. You can use one you already own or register a new one with us.
You can change themes by going to Appearance → Themes. Feel free to change themes as many times as you like! Changing your theme affects the look and feel of your site but won’t delete your content.
Keep in mind that some themes may require additional steps to customize them. These steps will be detailed on the theme setup page.
Yes! If you’d like to have your site built for you, and then all you’re responsible for is maintaining it, our team is happy to build your site for you.
