11. When you scroll down in the window there’s a lot of options you may want to learn on your own, but for getting started sake, we wont cover here. You can always visit the blog for posts on specific WordPress features. You will see “Users,” for the sake of posting a blog, the user you select is whose name will appear as the author.

a. To add users or change how your user name appears navigate to Dashboard>Users. When you click on users, your submenu options are: Add New and Your Profile. Add New is to add a new user for your blog and Your Profile is to adjust the main user’s (your) profile. To change how your name appears, select your profile.  Though your username cannot be changed, you can change your first and last name, and what name appears in your posts. You can also change your email and add some biographical info too.

12. You’ve selected tags, categories, and your author, checked for the best keywords and proofread your blog. You’re ready to publish. To do this, click “publish” in the right hand corner of the page. You can also change your publishing options by changing the default Publish: Immediately to a specific calendar date, marking the post as private or saving the post as a draft instead (drafts are saved, but not published until you choose to do so). Once your post is published, you can select “view post,” which will appear above your headline box. Your post will now appear in the list of posts that can be seen by selecting the main Post link from the left side navigation or selecting Posts>Posts. This post will always exist here and can be edited at any time.

13. You’ve got your posting mastered, now it is time to select a them to customize your blog. Before you start posting you may want to choose a theme. WordPress offers a huge number of themes and GDI now offers its own customizable theme. You can easily find the GDI theme by logging into your WordPress site and navigating to appearance>find themes. The GDI theme will be right at the bottom of the page. Just click apply and you’re ready to customize or just start posting.

To find other themes, you can easily search within WordPress or any search engine for free WordPress themes. You can search for themes in a number of ways including by color, features and columns. Many themes are totally customizable allowing you to create and add your own header and background. Themes also allow you to add widgets to make your page more functional and professional. You can also search outside of the WordPress database for free themes, simply by searching for “Free WordPress Themes,” just be sure you trust the author and site before you download.  When downloading a them from within WordPress all you need to do is activate it when the install is complete. For themes you found outside of WordPress, once your theme is downloaded, simply return to the themes area in WordPress and navigate to install themes>upload. Once your theme is uploaded, you will need to activate it before if will appear on your page and you can begin customizing.

14. Once you have a theme you can start adding widgets. Now that you have a theme, you can get creative with customizing your page and making it easy to use with the addition of widgets. The many different widgets that WordPress offers can be overwhelming. However, widgets are there to make setting up your site even easier and they really aren’t as complicated or tech savvy as they sound. On the GDI Affiliate blog you can see down the right hand side: “recent posts,” “archives,” etc. These are all widgets.

WordPress is very user friendly and gives you many widgets to choose from and all you need to do just drop them in and activate. I will use the “recent posts” widget as an example of how to add a widget:

People will want to see past posts they missed, so the recent posts widget is a great way to give people access to this. Simply go into widgets, find the “recent posts” widget and drag it to the right hand side where ever you want it to appear. Depending on the theme you have chosen, your options may be “sidebar” “bottom bar” or more. Simply drop it where you want it and customize it before you save. Repeat this process for any widgets you may want to add. Some widgets may require a bit more work and coding, so be sure always check your site to see how things show up.