WordPress.com

Now that you’re signed up, it’s time to go over some tutorial videos to help you make the site your own. What’s nice about the videos is you can pause them to try something out, or go back and listen to a part again. There are a ton more great videos at Simple WordPress Help, but these 6 cover what we consider to be the most essential skills. As you watch, try out what you see on your own site.

Adding, Editing, Deleting, and Publishing Posts

Posts are news updates. You might use a post to call for donations, feature a recent success story, or inform visitors of a change in your service. Check out the video below to become a WordPress posting master!

Adding, Editing, Deleting, and Publishing Pages

Pages are the sections of your website with relatively static information. That means once you set them up, you won’t change them very often. For some examples, many sites choose to have an About page, just for those who want to learn more about the organization; and a Contact page, so that visitors can privately ask questions and make comments.

Choosing Your Theme

The theme of your blog determines the basic color scheme and layout. Two popular themes recommended for non-profits include Digg 3 Column and the unfortunately named Contempt. Try searching for them on the Themes page after watching the video below.

Customizing Your Sidebar with Widgets

Widgets allow you to list links to other sites (like on the right sidebar of this one), display a snazzy logo, or give visitors access to older news updates – and that’s just for starters. Widgets can do a lot, and in many themes, visitors can see them no matter what page or post they’re on. That can be very useful! To learn how to use these handy creatures, check out the videos below.

These next two videos review using the Links and Custom Menu widgets, respectively. They each have their own video because they can be a little complicated, but once you know how to use them, both can be very useful!