The Control Panel is the first thing you see when you log into any installation of WordPress. It's your captain's chair, the tower from which you overlook the grandeur of your digital kingdom, the window into your WordPress Blog, and a dozen more clichés. The Control Panel provides information at a glance about a variety of WordPress-related items through six panels:
Out of the box, the Control Panel customization options are limited, but they can be expanded with-you guessed it-plug-ins. This isn't to say that you don't have any options out of the gate, though. As long as you're logged in as a user in the Administrator role, you can change a few things. In this article, you take a look at the anatomy of the Dashboard.
At the top of the Control Panel, you see the Right Now panel, which has an orange header-no doubt to catch your attention. Because WordPress is all about creating content, the panel has two big buttons: Write a New Page and Write a New Post. Clicking either of those buttons takes you directly to the posting form so you can get down to the good stuff. Below that orange banner, you see some statistics about your WordPress Blog, complete with hyperlinks. A fresh installation of WordPress comes with one post and a comment to give you a good starting place. Clicking one of the statistics hyperlinks takes you to the related part of WordPress, as follows:
Below all that information about the content of your WordPress Blog, you get some info about the WordPress Blog itself: the current theme, which determines what your WordPress Blog looks like, and the number of widgets the theme is using. Clicking the widgets hyperlink takes you to the Widgets panel, which allows you to add or remove widgets. You can change your current theme by clicking the Change Theme button. Finally, the Right Now panel displays the version of WordPress you're running. If a new version is available, a note here alerts you to update your software
The next two panels, right below Right Now, concern the lifeblood of any WordPress Blog: comments and external hyperlinks. You'll never forget the first time someone comments on one of your blog posts, and you'll be thrilled when you find the first Web site not run by you that's hyperlinking to your WordPress Blog.
As you might expect, the Recent Comments panel displays recent comments that folks have left on your WordPress Blog. It also alerts you to any comments that are awaiting moderation. The pound sign (#) is a hyperlink directly to that comment. You can also click the See All hyperlink in the topright corner to manage all the comments on your WordPress Blog.
The Incoming Links panel is a great way to see what other people are saying about your WordPress Blog on their blogs. This feature uses Google Blog Search to see what blogs are linking to yours and reports back to you. When you first install WordPress, there won't be any hyperlinks to your WordPress Blog. As you start to blog, though, you'll start to build your audience, and people will start linking to you. It won't happen overnight, but with some work, it'll happen sooner than you think. Clicking the See All link opens a new browser window or tab to a Google Blog Search for your blog's URL. This way, you see all the blogs linking back to your blog-not just those in the panel. You can customize this panel to a degree by clicking the Edit hyperlink. When you do, the panel expands. You can set the following options in the expanded Incoming Links panel:
Whatever you do in this panel, click Save when you're done to tell WordPress to accept your changes. Neither can you rearrange the order that they're displayed in or hide them from view. This functionality isn't enabled by default.
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