WordPress Tutorial For Beginners with step by step video

I have created this WordPress tutorial PDF to download for beginners
It is completely intended for those who know nothing about WordPress
Although from my past experience on using WordPress since 2008
Learning WordPress without any coding skills can be very easy

There are few affiliate links, if you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you

There is no WordPress tutorial for beginners or advanced users
I consider the below guide a tutorial on how to use WordPress

What is WordPress

WordPress is a Content Management System I know you hear this a lot
In very simple words, it is a web builder tool that let’s you build add your pages
And your posts (if you decide to do blogging) also create your menu,
Select your template (as known as WordPress themes)
It is an Open source, in simple words, it is completely free to use

How does WordPress work

WordPress uses 2 essential components on the Web Server
PHP and MySQL, PHP is the language WordPress is written with
It is a server side language which means it runs on the web server
It translates WordPress code to HTML for your browser to render your page
While MySQL is the relational database which stores all your contents

This gives you a grasp of how WordPress functions few things like
1) Easy access to interface known as Dashboard
2) Ability to store historical versions of all your contents (Pages and Posts)
3) Ability to preview any theme/widget on the fly without activating them

Is It easy to learn WordPress

Yes and No, I will explain it below
Yes it is easy to learn WordPress in less than a day
If your plan is to build your personal blog or website
You just follow every step in this WordPress tutorial
You will get more than what you expected

With this WordPress tutorial, I will teach you how to use WordPress as a professional user
Where I consider pouring all my WordPress experience
I hope I don’t miss any tips or tricks here
In this WordPress tutorial I will present my knowledge in non technical way

I have to admit, I am not a WordPress developer
Nor I plan to be, I am Java/.NET developer
This gave me the courage to dig into few details inside WordPress code
You don’t need to know it as everything can be done from WordPress backend

What is the best way to learn WordPress

After reading and download my WordPress tutorial PDF
I don’t think you will need to buy courses or books
Again I am not certified to teach WordPress
I am just a professional user with long experience in building WordPress sites

If you feel that I did not do a good job
I recommend you go to the following sources
1) Udemy : Very cheap courses and of very high quality offered by individuals (teachers)
2) WP101 : Only courses on WordPress with professional look and feel
3) Lynda.com : Similar to Udemy in quality but it is an organization

How to install WordPress

Many times in my blog here I covered how to install WordPress
I don’t see any point for repeating myself, just visit How to setup WordPress for my website

Logging to WordPress

After you complete your WordPress installation
You will be presented with an administrator account (highest privileges)
You can do everything with this account from
Installing your required plugins to changing your WordPress theme

Just take a note of the username and password as shown below
You still can change both your username and password to something you really remember

To logon just add /wp-admin to the domain name e.g. http://your-domain-name/wp-admin

Getting Familiar with WordPress Dashboard

As per the screen shot below, these are the most components
All WordPress training and tutorials are based upon
Make sure to watch the video below as I will describe everything there

1) Top WordPress Toolbar: Showing your blog title to the top left and logged on user to the top right
2) Dashboard: Showing you notifications and updates if required
3) Posts: Showing all posts and adding new post
4) Media: Showing all your media library or add a new image, audio, video or document
5) Pages: Showing all pages and adding new page
6) Comments: showing all your comments approved and pending ones
7) Appearance: Showing all your themes and widgets
8) Plugins: Showing all your installed plugins and add a new plugin
9) Users: Showing all users and add new user
10) Tools: Import and export your WordPress data
11) Settings: Couple of things I will discuss in my video below

Difference between Pages and Posts

Because Pages and Posts possess same features
Posts are shown up in chronological order (latest post on top, earlier at the bottom)
If you set your homepage to display your latest posts like in a typical blog
While pages are meant to be static content as when building regular website

This means that WordPress is a multi purpose Web building tool
You can create a website with menu linked to your pages or
A typical blog with posts, while menu can link to both posts and pages
I don’t see any point of linking menu to posts

Getting Familiar with Categories and Tags

Categories are only used in posts, same thing for tags
Most of the times when you are blogging
You need to associate your post to 1 or 2 words
That really represents what your post is about

If you are building a blog about Parenting
You would write posts about
Feeding, Breastfeeding, Sleeping and Entertaining kids
These words above are categories

Tags are word(s) you add to your posts to identify
The main points of what your post is about

So Categories is very broad while
Tags are specific points in your post

What is Gutenberg

WordPress released a new WordPress updates version 5.0 on December 2018
They changed the interface for your editor
Which you use to create your pages and posts
They called it Gutenberg

If you are new to WordPress
You may have not seen the old Editor
You may like Gutenberg but for those
Who used to work with the old Editor

They will find a way around it
I found a plugin called Classic Editor
To revert me back to the old one

Adding a new Page/Post

The process is exactly the same between Page and Post
Hover your mouse to either Posts or Pages from the left menu
There will be a fly-out menu, select Add New as shown below

Creating contents for Pages/Posts using Visual Editor

As you can see below under your editor,
You have 2 modes Visual and Text
With Visual mode, you can change font to Bold,
Italic, strike-through or even change font color

Also you can have different headings from H1 to H6
Make sure you watch the video below

Setting a featured Image

WordPress lets you upload an image
Which can be used beside each post on the homepage (blog page)
or if your theme allows a carousel (rotating images)
Feature image enhance the representation of your website

Switching to text editor under Pages/Posts

I had some HTML background but what made me
More efficient with displaying formatted contents
It was because I switch back and forth between Visual and Text editors
It helps you understand how things look like in Text mode

Inserting or Editing HTML Links

Very easy from inside your post or page
Click on the chain icon as shown below
An HTML Input field will show up as shown below

Just click on the gear icon
The Insert Edit screen will show up

You can select any link from the list below
And you can add any text to it

Removing an HTML Links

Removing is also easy
Just click anywhere on the created HTML link
And you can either edit or remove the HTML link as shown below

Saving or Publishing your contents

Save draft or Publish your contents
If you did not finish your post or page
You can save it as a draft meaning
Nobody will be able to view it online
It becomes available only when you publish it

Editing existing Page/Post

Publishing your post or page is not final
You still can edit it anytime

Hover your mouse to either Posts or Pages from the left menu
There will be a fly-out menu,
Select “All Posts” or “All Pages”

A list of all posts or pages will
Show up on the right hand side
Just select the action to take
Under your desired post/page

As shown above, only when you hover your mouse
Over any post or page you will see the list of options

Deleting a Page/Post

Deleting a post or page is not final
It will still be recoverable in the Trash Bin

To delete a post or page
Click on Trash under the post or page as per screenshot above

Going back in time by using Past Revisions

WordPress stores up to 25 past revisions
For all your posts and pages

I can not express how this feature is very useful
All I can say I used it a lot and it saved me from critical mistakes
I will explain it in the video below

Inserting an image and other media in WordPress

Without images and other media
All pages will be completely dull

Beside images In WordPress you can add
Video, documents or Acrobat PDF files

WordPress made it super easy to add images or other multimedia
You can upload single image or multiple images
Even you can drag and drop from your computer

To upload single/multiple images
Hover your mouse to Media from the left menu
There will be a fly-out menu, select Add New as shown below

Editing or deleting an image in WordPress

Similar to Editing or deleting a post or page
You can still Edit or delete an image

Hover your mouse to Media from the left menu
There will be a fly-out menu, select Library

You only have View, Edit and Delete permanently
Remember you cannot recover a deleted image
Also Edit will not let you change the image
Edit will let you update text values
Linked to your image like Caption, Alternative text and description

Inserting an Image gallery

WordPress offers a simple and nice feature from
Inside both your posts and pages
You can create and insert a new Image gallery that looks like below

You have to do the following
From inside your post or page
Click on Add Media button

From the Media Library
Select multiple images
Then click on create new gallery

An Edit Gallery screen will show up
If you are OK with your selection
Click on the Insert Gallery button as shown below

Editing or deleting an image gallery

Just go to the post or page
Where you inserted your Gallery
Hover your mouse over the gallery
You will see 2 options Edit and Remove as shown below

Remove will only remove this Gallery
It will not touch your images

Inserting Audio or Video files

Same as you upload images
You can still upload Audios and Videos
WordPress supports the following files
M4a, MP4, OGG, WebM, FLV, MP3, and WAV.

Inserting an Audio or Video Playlist

Same as creating Galleries
WordPress allows you to create Audio or Video playlists

Getting Familiar with WordPress Comments

If you are blogging, comments can be a good feature
They will be displayed at the end of your posts
It allows your audience to comment on your post
Whether they ask a question or thank you for the information

With WordPress, you can put all comments under your approvals
Meaning they will not be visible until you review them
This helps fight comments spam

Dealing with Comments from inside Dashboard

Click on comments menu to the left
All comments will be loaded to the right hand side

You have different options from
What you see under posts or pages

I would like to discuss the difference
Between Approve (or Unapprove) and Spam

First I highly recommend to review and
Approve all comments manually

To do this, go to Hover your mouse over Settings menu
Select Discussion, look under Before a comment appears
Check both options that say
Comments must be manually approved
Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Regarding the latter option, it is up to you
I don’t believe that if someone visits my blog and
I approve his/her comment, later he/she will spam

Now Approve (it toggles to Unapprove) will always keep
All comments listed there
If your comment is approved,
It will show up under your post or page

By default, any comment is unapproved
It will not show up on your post until you approve it

Spam will eliminate it and move it to the Spam section
You can still go there and move it but at least
It filters what you think are really Spam

Replying to a Comment

Under the comments section where you see all your comments
You can click on Reply, you will get a screen
Similar to Add New post or page

Getting Familiar with WordPress Appearance

Appearance is the place where you can change your WordPress skeleton
Appearance lets you change your theme (WordPress template)
Under Appearance you find Themes, Customize, Widgets, Menu and Theme Editor

N.B. If you have previous plugins installed
You may find extra options but what I listed above is the standard ones

Selecting your WordPress Theme

Hover your mouse over Appearance and select Themes as shown below

Previewing and customizing any theme (before applying it to your WordPress site)

If you click on any other theme not your current one
You can still preview it live without committing it as shown below

Adding a new theme to your WordPress site

As per the screenshot above, if you click Activate
You will switch to another theme

Modifying your WordPress theme header or background (if they exist)

Hover your mouse over Appearance and select Customize
Or click on Customize on your current theme

you will be presented with all the features
Which you can change for this current theme
Remember if you change your theme
You may see different customization options

Getting Familiar with WordPress Widgets

Widgets are independent sections of contents that can fit
Into any area that can accepts widgets
An example of areas that accept widgets are
Sidebars (left or right), header, footer
And sometimes Posts and Pages themselves

By installing amr shortcode any widget
Below is an example of how widgets shows up on sidebars

Updating Your WordPress Menu

Hover your mouse over Appearance and select Menus

All menus will show up as shown below
As you can see, you are not limited to
Adding only pages but you can add category
Or post even an external link

Editing or deleting an existing WordPress Menu

if you are on the Edit Menus page, just click on any menu
Let’s say the Contact menu
You can either change its menu name
Or completely remove it as shown below

Adding a new WordPress Menu Item

I will go over this topic on the video below

Adding a Custom Link Menu Item

Same thing, I will cover this topic on the video below

Managing Menu Locations

If you click on Manage locations beside the Edit Menus
You can add menu on the below shown location
It all depends on your theme design

Getting Familiar with WordPress Plugins

Plugins are components that get integrated with your WordPress
To add more functionality to your WordPress site
Or extend an existing feature
Plugins has its own menu item to the left on WordPress admin area

Adding or Deleting Plugins in WordPress

The best approach is to read my detailed post on
How to add plugins to WordPress

Using Theme Editor (not highly recommended)

Hover your mouse over Appearance to the left
Then move your mouse to the fly-out menu
And select Theme Editor

This is the last thing I would think to touch it
You will get a warning before you proceed

Getting Familiar with WordPress Users

By default WordPress gets installed with one administrator
This is the highest level of privileges
Using this administrator account, you can create multiple users
By going to Users menu, a fly-out menu shows up with 3 options
All users, Add new and your profile

Adding or deleting Users in WordPress

Hover your mouse over Users menu to the left
A fly-out menu will show up
Select All users option

Editing your Profile in WordPress

Hover your mouse over Users menu to the left
A fly-out menu will show up
Select Your profile

Getting Familiar with Tools (I don’t use it)

Hover your mouse over Tools menu to the left
You will see Available tools, Import and Export
If you see extra options this is due to
Installing extra plugins and your current theme itself
They added extra features

The Import and Export features can help you
Move few posts and media from one WordPress site to another
I haven’t use it at all

Getting Familiar with Settings

All WordPress tutorials confirm that Settings are the back bone of your WordPress site
If you hover your mouse over Settings menu
A fly-out menu will show up
Look for these options
General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media and Permalinks

You may have extra options
Due to your installed plugins and current theme
I will cover Settings in a separate video due to its importance

At the end of this WordPress tutorial for beginners, I hope I made it clear on WordPress features

If you think I missed something, feel free to notify me in the comment section

Finally download WordPress Tutorial PDF file, please share it with your friends using social media to the left hand side or bottom (mobile)