WordPress All-in-One For Dummies
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When you click the link to your blog in the navigation tab, you go directly to your WordPress Dashboard page. Several modules on the Dashboard provide you with information about your blog, as well as actions you can take to navigate to other areas of the Dashboard, such as writing a new post and adding a new link or blogroll.

You can configure the Dashboard modules by moving them around on the page and changing the way they display. Hover your mouse pointer over the title bar of the module you want to move. Click and drag the module to the spot you’d like to move it and release the mouse button.

This drag-and-drop capability is available not only on the Dashboard page but also on all the inner pages of the WordPress Dashboard, so you can truly configure the panel to suit your needs. You can also expand (open) and collapse (close) the individual modules by clicking the mouse anywhere within the gray title bar of the module.

This configuration feature is really nice because it allows you to use the Dashboard to see just those modules that you use regularly. The concept is easy: Keep the modules you use all the time open and close the ones that you use only occasionally — you can open those modules only when you really need them.

Additionally, you can click the Screen Options tab at the top right of your Dashboard screen to configure other options for your Dashboard display, such as which modules you would like to show or hide.

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The navigation menu on the WordPress Dashboard appears on the left side of your browser window. When you need to get back to the WordPress Dashboard, click the Dashboard link. Each navigation item has a submenu of links associated with it — hold your mouse pointer over a menu item, and the submenu flies out to the right side, so you can click any of the submenu links.

Right Now

The Right Now module of the Dashboard gives you some stats on what’s happening in your blog this very second.

The Dashboard displays the following information under the Content header in the Right Now module:

  • The number of posts

  • The number of pages

  • The number of categories

  • The number of tags

The Dashboard displays information about comments on your blog under the Discussion header in the Right Now module. Specifically, you find the total number of comments currently on your blog. Clicking any of these four links takes you to the Edit Comments page, where you can manage the comments on your blog.

The last section of the Dashboard’s Right Now module shows the following information:

  • Which WordPress theme you’re using

  • How many widgets you’ve added to your blog

  • Akismet spam stats

  • Storage space available and used

Recent Comments

The next module is Recent Comments, which you may have to scroll down to view. Within this module, you find

  • Most recent comments published to your blog

  • The author of each comment

  • A link to the post the comment was left on

  • An excerpt of the comment

  • Comment management links

    • Unapprove

    • Reply

    • Edit

    • Spam

    • Trash

  • All link

  • Pending link

  • Approved link

  • Spam link

  • Trash link

Your Stuff

Scroll further down the Dashboard page to find a module titled Your Stuff; in it, you see items such as recent posts and recent comments on your blog.

What’s Hot

The What’s Hot module provides information about happenings in and around WordPress, including WordPress news, top blogs, top posts, fastest-growing blogs, and the latest posts made to blogs on WordPress. This module helps you stay in touch with the WordPress community as a whole.

The tabs across the top of the What’s Hot module include navigation for

  • WordPress.com News

  • Top Blogs

  • Top Posts

  • Latesy

Quick Draft

The Quick Draft module is a handy form that allows you to write, save, and publish a blog post right from your WordPress Dashboard.

Recent Drafts

If you’re using a brand-new WordPress blog, the Recent Drafts module displays the message because you have not written any drafts. As time goes on, however, and you have written a few posts in your blog, you may save some of those posts as drafts to be edited and published later. These drafts will be shown in the Recent Drafts module.

WordPress displays up to five drafts in this module and displays the title of the post, the date it was last saved, and a short excerpt. Click the View All button to go to the Manage Posts page, where you can view, edit, and manage your blog posts.

Stats

The last module of the Dashboard page is Stats. It includes a visual graph of your blog stats for the past several days. These stats represent how many visitors your blog received each day. The bottom of the Stats module shows some specific information:

  • Top Posts

  • Top Searches

  • Most Active

  • View All

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Hiding and unhiding modules on the Dashboard

If you find that you don’t use a few modules on your Dashboard page, you can get rid of them altogether by following these steps:

  1. Click the Screen Options tab at the top-right of the Dashboard.

    Clicking this tab drops down the Screen Options menu, displaying the title of each module with check boxes to the left of each title.

  2. Deselect the module you want to hide on your Dashboard by clicking the check mark in the check box.

    The module you deselected disappears from your Dashboard.

If you’ve hidden one module and find later that you really miss having it on your Dashboard, you can simply enable that module again by selecting it on the Screen Options menu.

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