You log in to your own WordPress site for the first time and see a black menu with items, half of which you don’t recognize. The WordPress dashboard is your website’s control panel, where you can manage pages, posts, media, appearance, plugins, users, and settings using the menu on the left. For your day-to-day work, you’ll only need a few of those options, and the places where you can mess things up are easy to spot. I’ll walk you through the menu from top to bottom.
What do you see when you log in?
After logging in, you’ll be taken to the dashboard’s home screen, an overview page with blocks that you can move, collapse, or hide. For example, you’ll see the “At a Glance” block showing the number of pages and posts, an “Activity” block with recent publications and comments, and “Quick Draft” to jot down an idea for a post. There’s often also a Site Diagnosis notification indicating whether something needs attention. The first thing I always do is click in the top-right corner at Screen Options Click to disable the widgets I don't use. Most beginners can safely remove the WordPress news widget and the welcome panel.
At the top of every page is the black toolbar. Using your site name in the upper-left corner, you can switch between the front end of your site—what visitors see—and the back end—the admin panel. You’ll end up using that button more than anything else. In the upper-right corner, you’ll find your profile, where you can Users > Profile change your name, password, and the admin color scheme. You can read about how to get there—including the default login page—in Log in to your WordPress website.
The tools you need for your daily work
For most of the work on your site, you'll only use four menu items: Posts, Pages, Media, and Comments. Posts These are blog posts or news articles—content that appears on an overview page in chronological order, from newest to oldest. If you don't have a blog, you can skip this section. Pages These are the core sections of your site, such as your homepage, your services pages, and the contact page. This is where most site owners spend the majority of their time. When you click on a title, the block editor opens, where each paragraph, image, or button is its own block.
Media This is the library for all your images, PDFs, and videos. Everything you ever upload ends up here and can be reused on any page. My advice is not to upload photos directly from your phone or camera, but to resize them first. Large images are one of the most common causes of slow-loading pages that I come across. Be sure to fill in the alternative text as well, for screen readers and search engines. Comments Shows the comments on your posts, with spam in a separate tab. For specific instructions on how to edit text and photos on a page, see Editing Text and Photos in WordPress.
What confuses many beginners is that with a page builder like Elementor, you don't always work in the block editor. You'll see a button at the top to edit the page with Elementor. Both paths lead to the same page; only the editor is different.
Customize the appearance and add extensions
Under Display and Plugins You decide how your site looks and what it can do, and this is where most of the risk lies. The "Appearance" section includes your themes, your site’s design, and—depending on your theme—the Customizer, the Editor, widgets, and menus. With a classic theme like Astra, you set colors and fonts via Appearance > Customizer, with a block theme, you do that in the site editor. Changing themes on a live site is no small task, because your entire design changes immediately for every visitor. Read this first Installing, Activating, and Customizing a WordPress Theme Before you do that, you'll also build your site's main menu here.
Plugins are extensions that add features, ranging from a contact form to a full-fledged online store. This is where you install, activate, and deactivate them. Plugins are the power behind WordPress, but they’re also the biggest source of issues I come across—usually due to an outdated or poorly maintained plugin. Remove any plugins you no longer use. The procedure is described in Install, manage, and update plugins. Also keep in mind that plugins add their own menu items. If you see items not listed here—such as LiteSpeed Cache, Elementor, or an SEO plugin—they are associated with a plugin or theme on your site.
Users, Tools, and Settings
You rarely use the last three sections, but they do determine who can access your site and how it behaves. Under Users You'll see everyone with an account, each with a role such as Administrator, Editor, or Author. Don't just give people the administrator role, because an administrator can do anything, including installing plugins and deleting other users. I like to review this list every six months and delete the accounts of people who are no longer working on the site.
Under Tools You'll find, among other things, importing, exporting, and Tools > Site Diagnosis. The latter is worth checking out, because Site Diagnosis shows whether your PHP version is outdated, if there are any inactive plugins lying around, and which version of WordPress you're running.
Settings contains the basic configuration, from the site title and time zone to the homepage and the structure of your URLs. You set this up correctly once at the start, and then you’ll mostly leave it alone. You especially don’t want to change the permalink structure on an existing site without good reason, because that will change all your URLs. The settings you should configure correctly right after installation are listed in Configuring WordPress Settings.
Updates and places where you need to be careful
A small red number next to Dashboard > Updates or under "Plugins" means that new versions of WordPress, your theme, or your plugins are available. Updates are important for your site's security, but don't just click "Update" without thinking. First, make a backup, then update, and check to see if your site is still working properly. You can read about how to set up this routine in Updating WordPress Safely.
The one place I really warn beginners about is the file editor. You’ll find the theme file editor under “View” or “Tools,” and the plugin file editor under “Plugins.” These let you edit your site’s code in real time—without an “Undo” button. One missing semicolon and your site will display an error message instead of your homepage. If you still want to make changes to the code, read this first Editing WordPress Code Safely.
What we do as standard at Surver saves you some legwork right from the start. With a new package, we install WordPress via Installatron with LiteSpeed Cache, the Astra theme, and Elementor, so you’ll see those three right away in your menu. In addition, on shared hosting plans, we automatically create daily, weekly, and monthly backups, which you can restore yourself using JetBackup 5 in cPanel. With our Managed WordPress Hosting So you have a restore point, but you install the updates yourself. If you don't want to do that, we'll handle the monthly updates for you with WordPress maintenance. To learn more about what else WordPress can do, read What WordPress is and what it's used for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my dashboard look different from the one in this tour?
Themes and plugins add their own menu items, and your user role determines which items you see. For example, an Editor does not see Plugins or Settings. The basic menus I describe here are present on every WordPress site.
Can I set the dashboard to Dutch?
Yes, select from the options below Settings > General Select "Dutch" under "Site Language" and click "Save." If you want to use a different language for yourself, you can set that up on a per-user basis in your profile.
Can Surver set up my site if I don't want to work in the dashboard myself?
Yes. With the webmaster service Outsource your website development and updates to Surver. You can still log in yourself to do things like post a message.
