WordPress Site Super Easy Crash Course for Beginners

1. Introduction to the Course: Hello everyone. My name is Rohan Ajgaonkar, and I would like to welcome you to this WordPress site super easy crash course for beginners. Now let's take a quick look at the roadmap of this course. Now, I have divided this course into three parts. So the first part is a locally host the WordPress site. Okay, so in this course, the approach that you are going to use is we are going to be locally host the WordPress site first. That means we are going to practice and learn all the features of WordPress on a local server. not a actual live paid one like the paid hosting and domain stuff. So if you don't know what local hosting is, you'll get to know as we progress with the course. The second step is learning various features of WordPress. So we will learn how we can control our WordPress site, how we can customize it. We will explore various features of WordPress, learn about plugins, themes, widgets, and so on. And in the last part, once you have understood all the features of WordPress and you know how you can control your WordPress site. I'll show you how we can migrate our WordPress site from our local hosting to a live hosting. By live hosting, I mean the paid hosting method. But in this course I'll show you a method to get a free domain and free hosting as well. So the third part is not mandatory. When you feel that you are ready to go live. At that time, you can migrate your site from all local to a live server. Now without wasting any time further, let's just get to the course. So let's begin. 2. How to create a WordPress Site and locally host it: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to set up our WordPress site and locally host it. Now it's a very easy process. All we need to do is just download a tool called local. So let's proceed. Now you need to visit a site called localwp.com. So this is the site of the tool that we're going to need. So you can see this download button right here. So let's just click on it. And now it's asking us to select our platform. So select the platform that you have. Now, I got windows, so I'll just click on windows right here. And now you have to fill in some details. Now the phone number is not mandatory, so I'll just fill in my name and e-mail address. And once you're done filling in your details and just click on Get it now so that you download a file will be available. So you can see this is the file that we need to download. So just click on save file. And now you can see the download has started. So it's going to take some time. And once the download is complete, the downloaded file is going to look somewhat like this. So let's double-click on this application. Now we're going to install the local application on our device. So it's just like your normal setup. Just click on Run. And now you're able to select an option if you want to install this for all users or just a single user that's on their device. So if you have just a single user on your device, click on only for me and then just go for the next. And now you have to select the destination folder. The default destination folder is the C-drive. You can also change it. I'll just show you how we can change it. So I'll just select the F drive. And now you have to give a name to this folder. Just give a name called a local. So it will create a folder called local and there all the files off in this local application will be there. So let's click on Install. And now the installation process has started. It's going to take some time. So now you can see the install it on as completed. So I'll just click on Run local and then click on Finish. So now the local application will start. So this is what the local tool looks like. Here you can see there is an option for us to create a new site. So just click on that. now you're you have to enter the name of your site, the name that you want. Just enter a name without the extensions, since this is local hosting. So I'll just give a name to our site without any .com or anything. Cause you can see the domain is going to look somewhat like this rohantech.local And now just click on Continue. And now there's an option for selecting the environment. So this is the preferred environment. They have given us these settings by default. You can also go to Custom and change it if you want, but we will keep it as preferred. Now let's click on Continue. And now this is an important step. They are asking us to choose username and password. So make sure you keep this as simple as possible and remember it, because every time you log into your WordPress site, you are going to need this username and password. So I'll just keep it simple. I'll just give the user name as Admin. And the password has admin as well. Because we are going to need to login a lot of times. So keep it simple. And this email address that's just Default you don't need to worry about that. Now let just click on Add site. So now you can see the WordPress is getting installed and your site is getting ready. This local application will take care of the hosting as well. Now this is just the first time setup. You don't need to do this every time. So now you can see the site is live. Here. There is an option for stop site. Don't click on that just yet. Now if you want to check your site, all you have to do is just click on Open Site. So it will open this site in your browser. So here is our WordPress site. Here you can see the domain name rohantech.local And this is the default WordPress site. Now this is exactly like the WordPress, the only difference is. This is locally hosted and not on a live server. Now let's go back to the local application. Now if you want to open the admin panel and just click on admin right here. Now we already, it's asking us to enter username and password. So I'll just enter my username and password. So this is the dashboard of our WordPress site. Now all the changes that we are going to make on our site are going to be from this dashboard. And now let's just open the local application once again. So right now the site is running on localhost. Now if I click on stop site right here, you can see it's no longer hosting. Now when I click on refresh, the site will no longer be available. Because currently the hosting has been turned off. So this is how the application works. Now I will just close this application. And now the next time you want to visit your site will see what's the process. Just open your local application and select your site. So I'll just select this site that I created. And all you have to do is just click on start site right here. Now the local hosting has started and your site is Live So just click on Open Site or admin. I say just open your admin panel first. Now we're logging back. So here we are back to our dashboard. So that's all about it. Now if you want to visit your site, you can visit from here as well. So I'll just open the site in a new window. So this is our site. And I hope you understood how to use the local application for running our site on a local host. So that's all for this session. Thank you. 3. How to install a Theme on your WordPress site.: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to install a theme on our WordPress site. So first let's just open our local application. So this is the local application and just select the site that we created in the last session. So here's the site. And now just click on start site. so the local hosting will get started. So now you can see the local hosting has started. And one more thing I would like to tell you is if you want to work on multiple sites at the same time, all you have to do is just click on this plus sign right here. It says Add a local site. And it's the same process that we did in the previous video. So just enter the name of the site and then create a new one. And you can manage both of them simultaneously, like you can see right here, I have created a site called as raw stuff, where I experiment various features of WordPress. So you can do that as well if you want to manage two sides at the same time. So for now, this was the site that I created in the previous session. And as you can see, the site is live. So let's open the admin panel. And now I'll be entering my login details. So here is our dashboard and I will just open my site in a new tab. So this was the site that we left in the previous session. As you can see, this is the default template. That's the default theme of WordPress. So now we're going to install a theme. So all you have to do is just go to Appearance and then click on themes. So you can see these are the installed themes. But. If you want to add a new theme, just click right here on Add New. Now there are various themes for every purpose. I wanted to create a shopping site. You can just search for shop right here. And you will find various, shopping themes. So you can see these are the themes available for shopping purpose. Now if you wanted to create a gaming site, you can search for gaming and various. Gaming sites will be available. Now if you want to create a blog site, I suggest search for magazine. So I'll just type in magazine right here. So now you can see these are the various themes of magazine. Now if you want to install one of these themes and activate it, all you have to do is just click on Install. So I'm installing this theme, Renden eMagazine. and it will take some time to get installed. And once the installation is done, you then see there's an option for activate. So just click on Activate. So this themewill get activated on the site. So as you can see now I'm visiting my site. This was the previous theme. Now if I click on refresh, you can see the themechanged to the one that we installed. That's the Renden eMagazine.. And now we can customize this theme anyway we want, we can make lots of changes out there. Also. You can change theme if you want. So it's not like you can only install once. I'll just change the theme. So just click on Add new. And now I will be installing a theme called as Magazine plus. This is the theme I prefer for blog sites. So I'll just search for magazine plus. So this is the theme. So I'll just click on Install. So now the theme is installed, so I'll just click on Activate. And now when we go back to our site and click on refresh, you can see the new theme will be activated. So this is the new theme. And you can see this is the default version of the theme end site. Now we can customize and edit this all we want. So just make sure that you have installed and activated the same theme as me. That's the magazine plus theme. Now this is just for this course so that we can be in a proper sync. And once you are done with the course and you are good with all the features and the editing part. You can install any other theme you want and create your own site. The customization interface for all themes are more or less the same. So that's all. Thank you. 4. Pages and Menus in WordPress: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to talk about pages and menus in WordPress. So just open your local application and start your site. I hope you are familiar with the process. Just click on your site, then click on start site. So the local hosting begins. And now just open your admin panel and put your login details. So here we are in our dashboard. And before we make any changes, just open your site in a new tab. Make it a habit that every time you visit your dashboard, just to open your site in a new tab so you can monitor the changes. So this is our site. In the previous session we installed a theme called magazine plus. And now let us talk about pages and menus in WordPress. So as you can see, this site is quite empty right now. So I'll just visit a popular site so we can understand better. So let us visit ufc.com. So this is the site you have, ufc.com and the first page that shows up when you open a site, it's called the homepage. So now if I scroll down, you can see this is the homepage of the site. So similarly, our WordPress site has a homepage as well. Now, this is the homepage of our WordPress site. Now it's not mandatory that this stays the homepage. We can change the homepage to any page we want. We will cover that in the later sessions. So for now let us talk about menus and pages. Now here you can see there are some items. there's events, rankings, athletes ,news. Now these items are basically pages and the place where these pages are located, that's called the menu. So you can see if I click on one of these items, if I click on the rankings, the ranking page will open up. So you can see this is the ranking page. Now the main use of pages is for navigation from one section of the site to the other. Now if I click on some other item, if I click on athletes an another page will open up. So this is the athlete page of this site. And the place where these all items are located. That's the menu. Now it's not necessarily that only pages will be part of the menu. Even categories or posts can be part of the menu as well. We will explore that later. So I'll just close this site for now and let's focus on our site. So here you can see since this is the default version of the site, there is only one item in the menu. That's the sample page. So let's click on it. So here you can see they're given us a sample page. Now, all pages in WordPress, we can edit them anytime, so they are not like permanent. And now if I click on this Home icon, we will be redirected back to our homepage. So now we are going to edit the pages and menus using the dashboard. So let's go to our dashboard first. So now we are in our dashboard and we are going to add it to our page. So you can see there is a pages option right here. So just click on that. And all the changes that we are going to make that add a page, delete a page, edit a page. And all of these changes are going to be made from here, That's Pages section in the dashboard. So right now you can see there are two pages. There's a privacy policy page and there's a sample page. If I go back to our site, you can see there's only sample page right here. That's because this privacy policy page hasn't been added to the menu, is just default page. So you can delete the pages. Well, now to delete a page, all you have to do is click right here and then click on trash. So the page gets deleted. You can also restore the page if you click on Undo. So now we have restored the page as well, but we'll keep it deleted so I'll just delete the page back. Now, we're going to talk about how we can edit the page. So I'll just open this sample page first. So you can see this is the sample page. And now we are going to edit this page. So do I did a page, just go to the page and click on Edit. And now we're in the editor of the page. So here you can edit the page as you want Now the first thing that's right here, It's the name of the page or the title of the page that shows up. So here you can see it says Sample Page. Now let's just change the name of this page first. So now we have changed the title of the page and we can add the contents of these pages. Well, so I'll just clear this all out. Just hit the backspace. So now you can add any content you want. You can also add images as well. So for now let's just type some text. And once you're done, just click on Update. Now let's go back to the dashboard. And now if I go back to your site and click on refresh, you can we have made changes to the page. the title of the pages change and so is the content. So this is how editing the page works. Now let's go back to our editing panel and edit some more. So I'll just click, go to the page section and then click on Edit. Now you're going to add a lot of contents to your page. Not only text, you can add images, videos, audio, youtube embeds or short links as well. So to do that, just press the forward slash(/)once. And now you can see there's a variety of options. So let's click on Image. And now there is an option you want to upload from your device, or from media library or from URL. So I'll just upload from my device. So now you can see we have added an image and we can change the alignment of these images. We can take it to center. So we'll just keep it like this. and when you have made your changes. just click on Update. Now I'll just go back to our site and click on Refresh. So here you can see here I've made a change to our pages. Well, so similarly, you can explore a lot of options on how to edit your page. Now let's embed a YouTube link. So press the forward slash(/) once. Just search for YouTube. And you, or you can just enter the URL of any YouTube video you want. So I'll just delete this image for now. Just click on these three dots and then click on remove block. So this image gets deleted. And now let's enter some youtube URL So just copy the URL of the video you want. And let us paste it, here. And then just click on Embed. So now you can see the YouTube video has been embedded in our page. Now I'll just click on Update. So going back to our site you can see there's a YouTube video embedded in our page. Well, now let us create some more pages. So I'll just click on Add new. And now I will be only giving titles of these pages. I won't be writing any content. And then just click on Publish. Now let's add some more page. And now if i go to our site and click on the refresh You can see we got three pages that we created. have been added to the menu by default. Now if you want to customize your menu, you have to go back to your dashboard. And in the appearance section, you can see there's an option for menus. So from here, you will be editing our menu. So just click on that. So this is the menu section and here you can see no menu has been created as of now. That means any page you create automatically get added to the menu. Now if you want to create a custom menu you have to create a menu first. So let us create a menu here. It's asking us menu name. So just enter, I guess menu. And here there are some options. There is an option for automatically adding pages to the menu. That means every page you create automatically gets added to the menu. You can choose this option if you want. And there's a display locations, so just click on primary. And I'll just click on Create a menu. So now the menu has been created. And now if I go back to our site and I click on refresh, you didn't see the items that are there the previous three pages. They are gone from the menu because our menu is empty. So let's go back to our menu panel in the dashboard. And here you can see the menu is empty, like there are no contents in the menu. So if you want to add the contents you're going to add from here, you can see you can add pages, posts, custom links, autocratic these to the menu. So for now let us add pages. So you can see there are three pages or idea. So let's add all of them. to the menu. So just select them and then click on Add menu. So now I have added three pages to the menu and make sure you click on save menu. Like so the changes gets saved. Let's go back to your site and now when I click on refresh, you can see the three pages are a back to the menu. Now we can change the order of these pages as well. If I want to set contact us as last, I'll just go back to my menu panel. And here you can see it's simple drag-and-drop. So I'll just drag this Contact Us page and keep it as lost. Then click on save menu. So the changes gets saved. And now when I click on refresh, you can see the Contact Us page is third now. So this is how the menu panel works. If you want to remove certain page from the menu, you can just expand this right here and just click on Remove. So now I have removed the music page from the menu. I'll just click on save menu so that changes, gets saved. And now when I click on refresh, you can see the page is gone from the menu panel. And now let us create another page. So I'll just go back to our dashboard, go to Pages, click on all pages or you can just directly add a new page by clicking on Add New. So let us add a page called home and just click on Publish. And now when we click on refresh, you can see the page hasn't been added to the menu because we didn't select the option that says automatically add a page to the menu every time. That was the default menu back then. And this is a custom menu. So we have to manually add the page to the menu. So to do that, let's just go back to the menu. Just go to Appearance and then click on menus. Idea you are to select the page. And then just click on Add to Menu. So now you can see the page has been added to the menu. If you want to change the order, just drag and drop. I'll just add it to top. And then just click on save menu. And if you don't want to manually add pages every time to the menu, you can just select this option. That means every time you create a page, it automatically gets added to the menu. So just click on refresh. So now you can see the homepage has been added to the menu as well. So that's all about pages and menus. Now, all the changes that you want to make, your menus and pages, you can make it from your dashboard and make sure you always click on save menu so that the changes gets saved. Now in the next session we will be talking about posts and categories. Now they are also part of the menu. So that's all. Thank you. 5. Posts and Categories in WordPress: Welcome back everyone. In this session, we are going to talk about posts and categories in WordPress. By now you must be familiar with the process of starting our site. So let's do that. Just select your site, start site and then just open the admin panel and enter your login details. So now we are in the dashboard and like every time, just open your site in a new tab first. Now, in the previous session, we learned about pages and menus. Now we're going to talk about posts and categories. So here you can see there's a sample post given by the theme. So let's click on that. So this is just a sample post given by the WordPress. And there's a sample comment as well. And here you can see it says uncategorized. Now this is the category of the post. Now, these two things we are going to discuss in this session posts and categories. So let's go to the Dashboard. And just like we made changes to our page using the page section of the dashboard. Similarly, if you want to make changes to the posts, all you have to do is just go to the post section right here. So just click on there. So from here we can make changes to our posts. so we can add, delete ,edit our posts. So now you can see there's only one post right here That's the sample post we are seeing here on our site. And now let us just delete this post. So just select the post and click on trash. And now I'm going to go to our site and click on refresh. You can see the post is no longer available. So let's go back to our dashboard and now let us add a new post. So just click on Add New. And this is exactly same like the editing panel of the pages. You can see there's an option for adding a title. So this will be the title of the post. So let's give it a title to our first post. So this is the title of our post and let's add some content. Now I'll just type some text. And this is very similar to Microsoft Word, like you can edit this text as well. If I just select this text and I click on bold, so it will be changed to bold. You can also insert a link if you want. You can change the alignment as well. So this is how it works. So it's a very simple interface and you'll get used to it over time. And now coming to the details of this post, just click on Post right here so we can make changes to their details. So first option is status and visibility. You can choose if you want to make this visibility public or private for this post. If you keep it private, this post will be visible only to you and the other editors. So just keep it public. There's also an option for publishing this post immediately, or you can also schedule this post if you want. Like, you can put a date and time for publishing this post and it gets published. I'll just keep it immediately for now. Then moving on, there's, an option for a category. By default, it will be added to the uncategorized category, will be adding categories later. So we'll come back to this part and there's an option for featured image. Now this feature images just like the thumbnail of your post. So just click on it. And now you can upload images from your device. so I'll just click right here. And every image you upload gets added to the media library by default. that means the next time you visit your site, you can use them as well. So now you can see this image has been selected and I'll just click on set featured image. And now coming to the excerpt section here here you can just give a short description to your post. So I'll just type something. so that's done, And now we have filled in enough details. So let us just publish our post. Just click on Publish. And now when we visit our site and click on refresh, you can see the post is right here. There's the featured image that we selected. And here is the short intro to our post. And here's the category that says uncategorized. Now this is the default category. So now we are done with our post. Let's move on to categories. Now just like post, categories can be accessed from the dashboard as well. Now categories are. Part of the post section. So you can see in the dashboard, if I just go to post, you can see there's an option for categories as well. So just click on categories. And from here, you can make changes to the categories on your site. Now this uncategorized category will stay its default. You can't delete it. So let's add some other categories. So I will just give a name to this category. Let it be music. Now there is an option for slug and selecting a parent category. Leave it as it is for now, we will explore that later. So just scroll down and click on add new category. So now you can see music has been added as a category. Now let's go to All Posts. So yeah, you can say this is our first post. Now this post comes under the category of uncategorized. So let's change this category to music. Now for that, just click on Edit. And here you can see in their details of the post, you can just go to Categories. And here there's an option for selecting which category you want your poster under. So currently it's under uncategorized. So I'll just uncheck this box and click on music, and just click on update. So now this post will come under the music category. And now when I go to our site, you can see previously it goes uncategorized. And when we click on refresh, you can see the category has changed to music. So that's on. And now let's go back to our dashboard. Now in the previous session, we learned how to add pages to the menus. We can add post and get degrees to the menu as well. So let's go to appearance and then go to menus. So this is the menu panel. And now we're going to add a categories to the menu as well. So do add categories. Just expand this right here. Select the category that you want to add. And then just click on Add menu and just click on save menu. And now when we go back to our site and refresh. So now you can see music has been added to the menu. And now if I click on this, you can see it displays the posts are under this category. Similarly, you can create any more categories if you want. just go to the post, then go to Categories. And here in the add new section you can just name your category. So let's name this category as. You can use space as well in the name of the category. And now let just click on adequate degree. Now let us add this category to the menu as well. So just go to Appearance, go to menus. Click on categories, and here just click on View all. So you're just select the category that we created, crypto news. And let's add it to the menu. And don't forget to click on save menu. So now if I click on refresh, you can see another category has been added to the menu as well. Now if I click on crypto news, you can see this category is empty because we haven't added any post through this category. And now let's go back to the category section in the dashboard. So yeah, I'll just go to posts then Categories. And now let us talk about slug. A slug is the part of a URL that's located at the end. Now here if you see the slug of music . 00:08:40.120 --> 00:08:43.570 is music, Uncategorized is uncategorized. But when there's a space in between the name of the category, WordPress will give a default slug like this, crypto-news, but you can edit this as well. So let's go to our site. Now. You can see I've selected the grip no news category. So the URL at the end that looks like this crypto-news. So this is the slug. Now you can make changes to this slug as well. So just click on Edit on the category. And here I can add anything I want. I can simply type cy. So this is the slug now. And scroll down and click on Update. And just go back to categories. And now if I go back to our site and then go to the crypto news, you can see the slug has changed to just cy. So this is how it works. And now when someone visits your site, they can open your posts either by clicking on the title or the thumbnail. So I'll just show you by clicking on the title. So this is what the post looks like when open. Right now we haven't added much content to the post. We have just added a single line and this is the thumbnail. So that's all for this session. I hope you understood about post and categories in WordPress. In the next session, we are going to learn about many features that you can use while making your posts. So that's all. Thank you. 6. Features of Post and Pages: Welcome back everyone. In the previous session, we learned about posts and categories. We also created a post. So here's the post that we created. Now you can see we didn't add much content to our post. All we did was just add a single line. So now in this session we are going to explore various features that you can use while creating a post. And this is applicable to the pages as well, because the interface of editing your page and post is almost same. So let's go back to the dashboard. And let's go to the post section. Now we're going to create a new post. So let's click on Add New. So let's add a title to our post. So now you can see I've given a title to our post. Now let's move on to the content part. So let us add some simple text. So now we can customize this text. So I'll just select this. And now you can see again change it to bold. You can change the alignment. And you can also change the size of this text. You can see in the block section in the typography, the font size is default right now. You can change it to medium, or you can also make it large. And if you want custom size, you can just make change to the Custom Size option. So you can see we are getting a custom size to this text. So that's the first part. And you can also change the color of this text. So just select the text. And then here you can see in the color settings option, you can change the color of this text. Now this was just normal text. You can use text in aheading format as well. So for that, just press the forward slash(/) once. And now you can select the heading option. So now you can see that text that we typed will be written in the heading format. And you can change the heading size as well Well, you can see there are various options. Also the color settings applies to this part as well. So you can just select this and go to the Block option. And here you can change the color of this heading as well. And now if you want to add something other than just normal text, just press the forward slash(/) once. So you can see there are some options that have shown up. Now. These are not the only options, these are just the default ones there are many more. All you have to do is just type the initials. So other options will show up as well. And now we are going to cover some of the important ones. So now we're going to add a gallery. So select the Gallery option. So let's upload some images from our device. Just press the Control key and select the images that you want to add to the gallery. So now you can see the images have been added. And this is default gallery of WordPress. In the further sessions, we will be adding a custom gallery using plugins. Now if I select one of these image, you can see we can write a caption as well. And now let us add a calendar to our post. So press the forward slash and type calendar. So if you just type ca, you can see the calendar has shown up. So let's select the calendar. So now you can see your calendar has been added to our post as well. So similarly, there are many such features that you can explore on your own and add to your posts. And if they're not enough, we can add external features as well using plug-ins that we will cover in the later sessions. So now let's press the forward slash again. You can also add categories. So just type in categories and select the categories option. So when you do that, you can see the categories that you have created on your site. They will show up right here. So for now, let's just click on Publish and see how the site looks like. And now when we go back to our site and click on refresh, you can see a new post has been added. Now I didn't set any featured image for this post, so it looks like this. So you can see the difference between a featured image post and non featured image post. So let's open this post. And here you can see this is how it looks like. This is the heading right here , that's the gallery. Here's the calendar, and here are the categories. Now if I click on one of these, you can see the categories page will open up. So this is how it works. Now let's go back to edit our post. So let's add some more items. Just press the forward slash(/) once. Now, WordPress lets you upload files as well in your posts and pages. So we are going to upload some files on our post and just type files. So you can see there's a file option. So just click on that. So you are, you can see the Upload option. And now I'll just select this file. So here you can see the file has been uploaded and this is the default file name. You can change the file name as well. Though. I'll just name this file. And here you can see there's a download option as well. That means the visitor can download this file. So let's click on Update and now let us check our site. So here you can see this is the file that we uploaded. Now when visitor clicks on this, they can view the image. And if they click on Download, they can just download this file. So this is how it works. Now let's add it some more. Now, just like text and heading, you can add lists as well. So to add a list, just press the forward slash, then search for list. And here you can just enter the list. So here you can see this is the list and you can change the style of the list as well. You can change it to a numbered list. So just press the Enter key twice to go to a new block. So now let's add it some more. Now there are many more things that you're going to embed in your posts and pages. So let's explore them. Just press the forward slash and type S. So you can see there's an option for Spotify and SoundCloud as well. So let's select Spotify. So just copy the Spotify URL of the song or an album or an artist, and just paste it right here and click on Embed. So now you can see the song has been embedded here and the visitors can play this song as well. And now let us talk about the custom HTML feature. So let's press the forward slash once. And now if I want to add a post and that I created on the application called Figma. So I'll just type Figma idea. Here you can see there is no option for adding a post from Figma like there was for Spotify and YouTube. So in such conditions, more do you need to do is type HTML and select the custom HTML option. And now all you have to do is just paste the embed code right here. So I'll just go to my Figma application and copy the embed code for this post. So I'll just copy my code. And then when we go back to our site and paste it right here. So you can see in the preview option. So this is how it works. So not only figma, any site that's not available by default on this WordPress block. You can just select the custom HTML. You can just paste the embed code right here. And you can also check the preview and just click on update. So here's the Figma post that embedded using the custom HTML feature. Now let's go back to the dashboard. And now I would like to show you another important feature called social icons. So just press the forward slash once and type S. So select this social icons right here. And now this is a very convenient and important feature while creating your posts in page, because this lets you add links to your social media accounts. So just click on this plus sign right here that says Add block. And now you can see there are various social media sites. So you can just click on browse all. And now you can add any you want. You can add your Facebook page, you can add your LinkedIn, you can add your Instagram. So let's add LinkedIn first. And now you need to add the URL of your profile as well. So just click on the icon. and here you need to paste the address of your profile. That's the URL. So when someone visits your site and they click on this icon, they will be redirected to your profile. So I'll just paste my link right here. So now you can see I've pasted the link of my profile and I'll just hit Enter. So you can see the LinkedIn icon is set. And if you want to add more, you can just press on the plus icon and, and add more social media icons. Just click on Instagram. Just make sure you enter the URL as well. Right now I'm not on Instagram, so I'll just leave it blank. And now if you want to delete one of these icons, you can just select the icon. Then click on these three dots, and just click on Remove block. So now you can see there's only LinkedIn option. I'll just click on Update. Now let's go back to our site and refresh it. So you can see the social media icon has been added as well. Here's the LinkedIn icon. Now when a visitor clicks on that, they will be redirected to your LinkedIn profile. So this is my LinkedIn profile. I added this URL back in the editing post section. So this is how it works. Now let's go back. And now you can see our post doesn't have a feature image. So let's go back to the editing panel. And here, if I click on Settings, you can see the post and blog option is now visible. You can hide this by clicking on the settings again, so you can edit it better. Now, let's quickly add a featured image. So now when we go to our site and refresh it, you can see the featured image has been added as well. So till now, we explored a lot of features that you can use while creating your posts and pages. Now this is a post, but you can use these same features for creating your pages well, because the editing interface for both of them is same. So let's quickly check that. Now let's go back to the dashboard. And now let's add a page. So just click on pages. And now let's try some of these features on pages. Well, so let's add a new page. And now if I want to embed Spotify song or a playlist, I'll just press the forward slash, then search for Spotify and just selected. And now just paste the URL that you copied. So now you can see the Spotify song has been embedded in our pages. Well, so let's click on Publish and check it out. And now when we go to our site and refresh it, you can see the page that we created by the name of Olympics has been added. And if I click on that, you can see yours, the song that we're married. So like I said, the features that we explored just now, they can be used for both posts and pages. So you can keep experimenting with these features. You can explore them. And if you feel they are not enough, you can add more by using plugins, which we will cover it in the later sessions. So that's all for this session. I hope you understood the various features that you can use while creating posts and pages. Thank you. 7. Subpages and Subcategories in WordPress: Welcome back everyone. So till now we have learned about pages and categories. We also learned how we can add them to the menu. So now we're going to talk about sub-pages and subcategories. So for example, let's take this category music. So you can see this music category has been added to the menu. Now what if I wanted to add a subcategories to music as well? Like for example, music has some subcategories like new releases, old songs. Hits, so there are such categories as well. Now WordPress gives us an option to create these subcategories. And we can also add the subcategories to the menu. So if music has like three subcategories we can add all of them. To music right here in the menu. Now let's try this. So let's go back to the dashboard and now let us go to the categories section. So categories are a part of post. So just go to posts and then click on categories. And now we're going to create a subcategory for music. So I'll just name it as old songs. And now coming to the topic of parent category, you can say it says here none. Let's select music. Now this means old songs is a subcategory of music. Now this is just for the reference. We still have to add it to the menu. So I'll just click on add new category. So you can see old songs category has been created and there's a - before the name, and it's below music. So it means this is the subcategory of music. Now this is just for your reference. We still have to add this to the menu below the music category. Now if I create some other category and name the parent category as crypto news, then let's see what will happen. So I'll just create a subcategory called Bitcoin. And I'll select the parent category as crypto news And now when I click on Add a category, you can see this subcategory is now below Crypto News And there's a dash as well which says it's a subcategory. And now you can add these categories to your posts as well, these subcategories. So let's add it to one of our posts. So I'll just say this post right here. And now in the Post Settings option, you didn't see in the category section, the category that we selected previously was music. Now if I select this old songs category as well, Let's see what will happen. So I'll just click on Update. And now when we go to our site and refresh it, you can see there are multiple categories right here One is music and one is the old songs. So this is how you're going to add multiple categories to your posters. Well, and now if you want to add these subcategories through the menu as well. So all Songs is a subcategory of music. So let's add this category to the menu. So in the dashboard, in the appearance section, just click on menus. So you can see this is what the menu looks like as of now. Now let us add the category to the menu. So go to Categories, click on View All. And now I want to add this old songs category to the menu. So I'll just click on Add menu. Now let's click on Save Menu and see how it looks like. So now you can see the old song subcategory has been added to the menu, but it's not exactly under music category. So for that, let's just go back to the menu panel. And it's just simple drag-and-drop. So I'll just drag this old songs option and I'll place it, you have to just drag it to the right a little bit and just place it right here. So you can see it says sub item. So this is how it works. Now let's click on save menu. And now when we go back to our site and refresh it, you can see this is how it looks like. The subcategory is now been added to the menu panel as well. And this is how the visitors will see it. Now when I click on this old songs, you can see the posts will show up that belong to this subcategory. And now since we are done with subcategories, let us talk about subpages. So subpages are similar to the subcategories. And now if I want this page right here to be the sub page of home, so I'll just drag this and move it two side a little. So you can see it's now a sub item. So this is how you can add subcategories and subpages to the menu as well. And don't forget to click on save menu. So your changes get saved. And now when I click on refresh, you can see the homepage as a sub-pages, well called editing the page. So this is how it works. And that's all about sub-pages and subcategories. I hope you understood how these things work and how you can add them to the menu. The menu panel is very simple. All you have to do is just drag and drop. And if you want to remove something from the menu, just click on the remove. So when I click on save menu, you can see it's gone. Now it's no longer a part of the menu. So this is how all this works. So that's all for this session. Thank you. 8. How to set any Page as the Homepage: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to talk about how we can set any page as our homepage. As of now, this is our homepage. So you can see this is a default homepage. Now what a default homepage does is it displays all your posts that you have created. So since we have created two posts It's displaying only two posts right here. Now before we create a custom homepage, we need to create substitute page for the default homepage right here. So you can see now the function of default home page is to display all your posts. So similarly, we need to create a page that will be displaying all your posts. Or you can just assign this function, to any of your existing pages. So I'll just create a new page for this purpose and name it as blog posts. So let's go to our dashboard and here in the Pages section, we will be creating a new page. So just click on Add New. Now I'll just name this page as blog posts. Now you don't need to add any content to this page other than the title, because all it's going to do is display all your posts. So just give a title to this page and then just click on Publish. You can give any title you want. So now when we refresh, you can see the page has been added to the menu. So now we've created a substitute page that will perform the function of their default homepage right here. And now we are going to set a page as our home page, so you can just create a new page, customize it, and then set it as your homepage. Or you can choose an existing page. Well, so here you can see I've created a page with the title home, so I'll just click on it. Now, I haven't added any content to this page, so we will just quickly add some content to this page. So this is the page right here. So I'll just click on edit. By now. You must be familiar with all the features that you can use while creating your posts and pages. So I'm just adding few contents to this page. And I'll just click on Update. So you can see we have made the changes to this page, We will assign this page as the homepage and the page that we created as blog posts. We will assign this page has our posts page. So let's get to that. Just go back to your dashboard and go down to settings. And here, just click on the reading option. Now it says here your homepage displays and there are two options. One is the your latest posts, that's the default option for all homepages. And the second option says static page. That means you can assign any page as your home page. So just click on a static page option. And now we're options to assign roles to the pages. Now when I click on Select, you can see there are a number of pages. Now you can assign any one of them as your homepage. So I'll just assign this one right here. And in the posts page option I have created a page called a blog post. So this will be assigned as the post page. It will be displaying all our post. And once you're done, just scroll down a little bit and click on save changes. And now when we click on this Home icon, you can say this is our homepage right here. Now the homepage is no longer displaying all your latest posts. But this blog post page right here. When you click on that, it will be displaying all your latest posts. So this is how you can set any pages, your homepage. For this process, you need to create one extra page as well for the posts, And then you can assign any page you want as your homepage. So that's all for this session. Thank you. 9. Customizing the Site (Part 1): Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to talk about how we can customize our theme. Now there are a lot of things that we can customize. You can see this is what our site looks like as of now. We can change the entire layout of our site the way we want. Now, if I don't want this midbar section, I can remove it. If I want to change my site name, I can change that. Or if I want to remove the site name, I can do that as well. We're going to add a logo. We can add a background image. We can remove this sidebar. Right now you can see the sidebar is in the right side. If you want, you can take it to the left as well. So there are many such features that we are going to explore in this session by customizing our theme. So let's get to it. So before we customize our site, make sure you are logged in. That means you have access to your dashboard. So this is the first step. So here you can see there's an option for Customize in the top bar section. So you can just click right here. And once you do that, you then see the customization panel has opened up. So now we can customize the theme the way we want. Now I'll just go back to our site first. Now there are two ways from where you can customize your theme. First one is just click right here. And the second one, just go back to our dashboard. You can access the customization option from your dashboard as well. All you have to do is just go to Appearance and then click on customize. You can see these are the two ways you can access the customization panel. Now, before we start customizing our theme, I would like to inform you that there are many themes in WordPress, and all of them can be customized by clicking on the Customize option that I just showed you. However, the editing interface might differ a bit. You can see there are options like theme option, There's homepage settings there's site identity. So more or less, they will be similar for all themes. There will be just slight difference like you can see the it says Theme option. So if you install some other theme, it will say general options. So don't get confused. The interface is slightly different, but the functions are just the same. So now we will explore all the features one by one. So let's start with theme options. So just click on it. And you're in the theme options, you can see it's divided into certain areas, like base, header, featured section. So one by one you can explore all of them. So I'll just quickly show you how it works. Now I'll just click on this base Global first. And in the layout section, you can see the layout style is currently full width. You can change it to boxed as well, but I recommend you keep it as full width. And you can also change the sidebar layout if you want. Currently it's selected as the right sidebar. That means this section right here. You can change it to no sidebar as well. That means the sidebar is now gone. You can also select left sidebar, but currently there are no items in the left sidebar. We can add that later from the widget section, which we will explore in the later sessions. So I suggest keeping it as right sidebar for now. We can also customize this right sidebar the way we want. We can remove these items, we can add anything we want. So we will explore that when we reach the widget section. So for now I'll just keep this as it is. Now. Moving on, let's talk about the breadcrumbs. So they are basically in little navigation tags to your posts. Currently they are turned on. So I'll just show you an example. So now I opened one of my posts and you're at the top, you can see it says home/uncategorized. So this thing is called as breadcrumb. Now if I turn this off, you can see that the breadcrumb is no longer available. So this is how it works. Now. Just keep it as on for now. And whatever changes you are making, they are not saved unless you click on Publish. If you exit in middle of that, the changes will not be sued. So pay attention. Now moving on to date settings. It's just default, so keep it as it is. No need to change anything. Now moving on to title layout. Currently it's set as Title 4. So this thing refers to the title of these sidebar area. Now when you change their style, so I'll just change it to style 2. So you can see the style has changed to this. You can get a live preview of the styles as well. So before you publish, just make sure how it looks. Now, let's go to category color. So you can give a custom color to any category want. So now if I just click on blog posts, you can see there are only three categories as of now. Now if I want to change the color of this category music, so I'll just click right here, and I can change it to blue. So you can see in the live preview, the color of this category has changed. So I'll just keep it as blue, then move back. Now moving onto social. Now this option is only available for this particular theme. I don't think many themes I have this option. You can see in the footer section there are some social media icons. So all you have to do is in the URL section, you have to enter the URL of your social media profiles so that the visitors will be redirected once they click on it. Now I'll just leave it as it is. And if your theme doesn't have this social media icons, no need to worry about it. We can add them manually by using widgets. So let's move on. And now the sidebar and go to top are not that significant So we'll just leave it as it is. And moving on further in the theme options, Let's talk about header. So this is a very important part of your site. So you can see the header is divided into certain areas for this particular theme. So we'll just customize them one-by-one. So let's explore top bar first. And here there's an option for showing or hiding the date. You can see the data right here. You can just turn this off or on. So I'll just leave it as ON. And also there's an option for displaying the social media icons on the top bar. You can just turn this on. So you can see on the right side now these social media icons that are available. That way the visitors can be redirected to your profiles. Now let's move on to the header section. We are done with the top bar. So let's talk about the mid bar section. Now, mid bar is this part right here. We have options for adding a background image and an advertisement image. So I'll just quickly add a background image in the mid bar section. So this is how the image looks like in the middle bar section. So I'll just keep it as it is. It looks good. Moving on to the main header. There are these options you can enable or disable any of them. However, I recommend keep it as on , the home icon is very important key. Now once again, all of these options are only for this particular theme. If you install some other theme there will be slightly different options for customization. So no need to worry about that. We'll just explore this particular theme. And then there's this popular tags option. We haven't added any popular tags, so it's not displaying currently. So I'll just move on. And another important feature of this particular theme is this new ticker right here. So here you can see there's a news flash and it displays all our latest post. Now you can customize this news flashes. You can firstly change the title of this news flash. I can keep it as. So now I have changed the title of the news flash. And you can choose from which particular category you want to display your posts. So you can select the category that you want. I'll just keep it as show latest posts. And also there are options you can displayed on the homepage only. So I just select this option show on all pages. So now when I go to blog post page, you can see it displays the news flash here as well. So we'll just move on. And another important feature of this theme is called as header ordering. So we'll just click on it. So here you can see there are various sections of the header. You can change the position of them by a simple drag-and-drop. Now I'll just take this Mid bar, above the top bar section so you can see the live preview. This is how it looks. It doesn't look quite good, so I'll just take it back. Now you can also enable and disable any of these sections. Now, if I don't want this midbar section at all. all I have to do is just click on this eye icon. So now you can see the minibar section is disabled. This is how the site will look. Now if you want to turn it back on, just click on the Eye icon again. So the midbar section will be visible. So this is how it works. So now we are done with the header options, and now we will talk about the featured section. So in the feature section there are two options. One is Banner and there's a post block. So let's explore the Banner option first. So here you can see currently the Banner option is turned off. Now if I turn this on, you can see this is how it looks. The banner section has been added. And here it displays all of our posts in a banner template. You can change the ordering of these posts and you can edit them in detail. This is post column 1. Now I'll just add a heading to this. So now I've changed the name of post column one, and I can choose to display posts from our particular category if I want. Currently it's displaying latest posts. So I'll just choose to display posts from, you know, old songs category. So now it will only be displaying posts from the old songs category. So this is how the banner feature works. Now this is only if you want this. You can disable this if you want. If you want to create your own custom homepage, I recommend you don't need this banner section. And the post Block option is similar to the banner section. Now, just turn this off. As of now, we don't need the features section. And now let us talk about blog and archive options. So here there's content and Metaoptions. Now to understand this, you need to click on blog posts first. So here you can see in that blog post section it's displaying our posts. Now if I disable this show category option, you can see these categories will be gone. So this is how it works. And it's similar for Meta and excerpt as well. So you can enable and disable them if you want. There are many such options. You can edit your site in depth. Now, moving on, there's an option for editing a single post in this team. So I'll just open one of these posts. Now we can edit the layout of a single post that is being displayed on this theme. So the first one is content and metas. So here you can see this is the content ordering and you can change the ordering by a simple drag-and-drop. So this is how it works. However, I recommend keeping it as it is. And you can also enable and disable any of them. Now, if I want to disable featured image, I just click on this eye. So now you can see the featured image will no longer be displayed when you open your post. So this is how it works. Now let's go back. And just like customizing the single post for this theme, we can customize those single page for this theme as well. Now there are a lot of options for customizing single page. There are only two options, so you can change them if you want. And now moving on to the you missed section. So this option is also limited for this particular theme. This option is usually at the bottom of the page or bottom of the posts to be precise. So now you can see I'm at the end of my post. Now if I turn this you missed section on, you can see it displays our latest posts. Now you can also choose this from a particular category and change the title. So I'll just write similar posts. So you can see the live preview right here. Now just go back and now let us talk about the footer option. So currently we haven't added anything to our footer. It's blank. So I'll just leave it as it is. in the later sessions, we will learn how we can customize our footer. So that's all about theme options for this particular theme. And since we're done, all the changes just click on publish to ensure the changes are published. Unless you click on publish, the changes won't be saved. So now if I click on publish, all these changes will be saved. So now if I go to our site and refresh it, you can see the changes have been made. We haven't made much changes. I just showed you a demonstration. You can make changes as you want. So that's all for Theme Options in the customization part. In the upcoming sessions, we will explore site identity, homepage settings, background image one-by-one. So that's all. Thank you. 10. Customizing the Site (Part 2): So we're done with the theme options part, and now we're going to customize our site further. So let us talk about homepage settings first. So I'll just click on it. Now this is just an option for setting a custom homepage. This is something what we already did. We created a custom homepage. This setting can be accessed from the dashboard as well. All you have to do is just go down to settings. Just click on reading. So you can see these are the same customization options that we saw right here. Only thing is that in the dashboard they are in details. You can choose how many posts you want to display on a particular page and stuff. So we'll just go back. So now we're done with the homepage settings and let us move on to site identity. So let us explore these features one by one. So the first one is select a logo. Now you can upload a file from your device or you can upload from your media library. Just make sure that the image you upload is according to the standard image size. You can see it says 260 by a 100 pixels right here. So just upload the image in a similar manner or you can crop it as well. I'll just upload this image. Now you can crop this image anyway you want, however, I suggest keeping it as 260 by a 100. The better option is if you just upload the image that is already in that dimension. So I'll just keep it as it is and then just click on Crop image. So now you can see the logo has been added to our site as well. Now coming to the site title and tagline part, you can see this thing right here. That's the site title and the one below it. It's the site tagline. So from here you can change the site title and tagline. And you can see the live preview as well. So this is how it's going to look. And if you don't want to display your site title and tagline at all, you can just uncheck this box right here. So now you can see the site title and tagline is no longer visible. The only thing that's there is the logo. And you can remove this logo as well if you want all you have to do is just click right here on the logo. So the logo will disappear as well, and it's looking quite blank. So I'll just add the logo quickly. And now coming to the site icon part. So site icon is something that the visitors will see at the top of the browser. So here you can see the current site icon is just the WordPress logo. So you can set a custom site icon as well. All you have to do is just upload an image. Now, just make sure that the image you upload has this minimum dimension of 52 by 52 pixels. Now again, you can upload it from your device or you can just select from the media library. So here you can see this image is already 52 by 52 pixels. So I'll just click on Select. And now you can see the site icon has been updated as well. This is how the site icon will look when someone visits your site. And when you are happy with the changes, just click on Publish so that the changes get saved. Now we're done with the site identity part as well. So let's go back and customize some more. Now moving on to the colors part. And there's only one option here that's to change the background color. So if I just click right here, you can change the background color of your site and you will get a live preview as well. Now I'll just keep it as black for now. So here you can see we have changed the color as well. I'll just go back. And not only colors, you can set an image as your background as well. So for that, all you have to do is just click on the background image option. And here you can select an image for your background. Now the dimensions for this image recommended by experts is 1920 by 1080 pixels. So select an image accordingly. Choose image once you have uploaded the image. And now the image has been set as the background, but it's not looking nice. So don't worry, we can change those settings as well. You can see there are a lot of settings right here. The preset is default. You can change it to full screen. So now you can see the image that we set as our background. So this is how it works. You can customize the layout of the image the way you want and choose a perfect background for your site. So now I'll just keep the background as this image and click on publish to save the changes. So now, going back to customizing our site, you can see the remaining options are menus, widgets, and additional CSS. Now the menu part we have covered before, we can customize the menu from our dashboard as well. The dashboard provides us more features to customize our menu. All you have to do is just go to Appearance, then click on menus. And from here you can customize the menu the way you want. So this is how it works. Now moving on to the additional CSS part. Now this thing is not for beginners because you need some knowledge of CSS for this, it's all about coding. So we will leave it as it is. And the last thing that remains in the customization part are the widgets. Now we will cover widgets in depth in the next session. So that's all for now. Thank you. 11. Widgets in WordPress: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to customize the widgets section of our site. Now before starting with the customization first, let us understand what widgets are. So I'll just go back to our site first. Now, widgets are basically blocks that have some content And these blocks widgets are placed in various areas of your site. Now these areas are mainly the sidebar and the footer. So right now you can see in the sidebar section there's this search box. Now this search box is also an widget. And the ones and below this search block, our widgets as well. The recent posts, recent comments. So all these are widgets right here. Now if you look at the footer section, you can see it's quite empty because we haven't added any widgets as of now. So in this session we'll be learning how we can customize the various areas that contain the widgets. Now there are two ways you can customize the widget section of your site. The first one is just click on customize right here and then go to the widget section. And here you can see it's divided into certain areas. Now the sidebar and footer area will be available for other themes as well. However, some themes don't have the sidebar, so you need to install a theme accordingly. Now if you want to customize a particular area, all you have to do is just click on it. And from here you can customize it, but you can see the interface is not quite nice, like you won't be comfortable editing it from here. So we'll just go back. And now we will be customizing the widget section from our dashboard. So to customize these widget areas. All you have to do is just go down to appearance and then click on widgets. So from here you can customize your widget section better. Now I'll just unexpand this one right here. And here you can see there are various areas that you can customize. Now before we start editing, I would like to inform you that this site right here has the latest version of WordPress. Thats 5.8. So here they have made significant change to the widgets editing panel. Now the previous one had this drag-and-drop feature. So if you have that version, no need to worry about it. I'll just do a quick demonstration of how that used to work. So now I'll just open my local application and start my other site, which has the previous version of WordPress. Now the local application lets you access two or more sites simultaneously so you don't need to log out from 1 to access the other. And now I'll just open my other site in a new tab as well. So here's my other site, and I have installed a different theme on this one. And this site runs on an older version of WordPress, that's 5.7.2. And you can update the version of WordPress as well from the local application. All you have to do is just click right here so it will get updated. So if you have an older version, make sure you update to the new one regularly. Now I'll just quickly show you how the previous widgets section use to work. So I'll just go to Appearance and then click on widgets. So this is how the previous version use to look like. And the theme that I've installed is ocean WP. It's quite simple and nice theme. You can install this one as well if you want. Now, like I said, the widget section is divided into certain areas and you can add or remove widgets from here. Now the previous version had this drag-and-drop feature. So this area is the default sidebar. Now, you can see this is the default sidebar. Now if I want to add a certain widget to this default sidebar, all I had to do back then was just a simple drag-and-drop. So now I'll just drag and drop this calendar right here. And there is no Save Changes button. It automatically gets saved. All you have to do is just click on refresh. So now you can see the calendar has been added to the sidebar. So this is how the previous version used to work for the widget section. And now, coming back to our latest version, this is how it looks. Now the new version doesn't have the drag-and-drop feature. So if you want to add something to your area, all you have to do is just expand that area and click on the plus sign. And from here you can just search for the widget that you want to add. It is similar to what we did with the pages and post customization. So now let us add a widget to this area. I'll just add a calendar widget. And here you can see the widget has been added. And just click on Update so that the changes gets saved. And now when I click on refresh and scroll down to our footer, you can see the footer section now has a calendar. So here's how you can edit the various areas of your site. You can add widgets to them. And now let us customize our sidebar as well here you can see that a lot of items, if you don't want to, you can remove them as well. Now all of these items are located on the right sidebar area. So in the widgets editing section just expand the right sidebar. And now if I want to remove one of these widgets, say the meta widget right here. So I'll just click on it. And the three dots option, you can just click on the remove block. And if I want to remove the archives as well, just click on that block, then click on the three dots, and then click on Remove block. So this is how the blocks will get removed. Just click on Update so that the changes gets saved. And now if you want to edit one of these widgets, all you have to do is just click on that particular widget. So let's say if I wanted to edit this recent posts widget, so I'll just click on it. So these are the editing options for this particular widget. Now let's add a title. Now, the default title is a recent post. Now if I want the title as let's say. Now if you want to see the preview, you just have to click outside. So you can see this is how it's going to look. We'll change the name of this widget. And if you want to set it back to default, just remove the name. So now you can see it's back to recent post. So this is how it works. And once you're done, click on update. You can also add a column and add multiple widgets in it. So just click on this plus icon and search for column. Now just click on the column icon right here. And here there are options, Now, if you want it to be divided into three parts Just click right here. Now you can any widgets you want So I'll just quickly add some widgets right here. Now you can add widgets of different types as well. So you can see I have added an image. it's not necessary that you have to add a image only You can add any other widget you want. So I'll just add a YouTube embed. Paste the link and just click on embed. So now you can see the YouTube video has been embedded here as well. And you can also add a caption. And similarly you can add a third widget in this column as well. So just click on this plus icon and select the widget that you want. And since this is a text, you can edit the color as well. Just select this text right here. And in those settings option here, you can change the color. And once you're done, just click on update. So now let's check our sidebar. So here you can see we have added widgets in a column. There are three widgets right here, there's an image, then there's this YouTube embed video, and there's this text. Now it's not looking nice. that's because this column widget feature is not for the sidebar area or the footer. This is for pages and posts. Now if you must have noticed, these widgets are similar to what we did with the pages and posts customization. These are the same widgets. Now I'll just remove these widgets for now. Now, let's go back to editing one of our pages. So while editing pages and post, if you want to add widgets and all we had to do was just press the forward slash once. And from here you can just type the initials of the widget that you want and you can add a widget. So now let's explore the column widget options here as well. And just click on Update. So yeah, you can see in the Contact Us page, I've added three widgets column. And all of these are playable videos. And if you want to explore what all widgets and plugins are available for this one, just click on the plus icon, scroll down here, and then just click on browse all. So you'll get a nice preview of all those options that are available. So you can see these are the widgets you can add. You can add the embeds as well on your widget areas. And all these features are available for the pages and posts as well. So whatever you add to your widget areas, you can add them to your pages and posts as well. So that's all about widgets. Thank you. 12. How to add a Responsive Gallery using plugins: Welcome back everyone. In this session, I'm going to introduce you to plugins in WordPress. So we are going to learn how we can add plugins to our WordPress site. So in this session we are going to install a responsive gallery plugin. So before installing the plugin first, let us understand what is a responsive gallery Now we know how we can add our gallery to our posts or pages. We did that while exploring the features of posts. So you can see this is a gallery that we have added. Now this is our default gallery, and this gallery is not responsive. Now by responsive, I mean these images are not responding when you hover over them or when you click on them. So this gallery is non-responsive gallery and this is the default gallery of WordPress. So now we are going to add a responsive gallery using plugins. So let's go back to our dashboard. Now to add a plugin to your site, all you have to do is just go down. And here you can see there's a plugins option and just click on Add New. So from here you can search for any plugin that you want. Now, since we want the responsive gallery there's a plugin called Responsive Lightbox and Gallery.. So I'll just search for that. Now, if you just enter responsive Lightbox, the plugin will show up. Now it's not necessary that you have to install this particular plugin for your responsive gallery. There are many more plugins for responsive Gallery. This one is just quite user-friendly, so I'll suggest this one. Now. Let's click on install now. And once the installation is done, just click on Activate. So now if you look at your dashboard, you can see two other options have been added. There's a gallery and there is a light box. Now these options are from this plugin. So if you want to add a responsive gallery, just click on this gallery option. So you can see it says no galleries found. Now we have to add a new gallery. So just click on Add New. Now there's an option if you want to add a title to this gallery. So if you want, you can add a title or just leave it blank. so I'll just leave it blank. And moving on, here, you have to select the images for your gallery. So just click on this media library option and then click on Select images. Now you can upload images from your device, or you can just select images from your media library. So for now I'll just select from my media library. And once you're done adding these images, you can see there are some other options as well, so we'll go through them one by one. So these are just configuration and some other settings. Now here you can see in the gallery configuration, they are asking us to select our type. This is our basic grid. You can choose a slider as well if you want. Now I'll just keep it as basic grid. You can see like the size of the image, you want, medium, large or something like that. You can edit the columns. Now, moving on to design, you can see there are some options here as well, so you can explore them and see what's best for your gallery. Now I'm not making any changes to the remaining settings. I'll just keep it as it is. Just click on Publish once you are satisfied with the results. So now our responsive gallery has been published, but it hasn't been added anywhere. We have to manually add it. Now the method for adding plugins to your post pages or the widget areas is by the short code method. So you just have to copy this short code right here. Now this short code contains the responsive gallery that we just created. And now if I want to add to this responsive gallery, to this post right here. so let's see how we can do it. Now let's go back to edit this post. So yeah, you can see this was the gallery that we previously added. So I'll just remove this gallery for now. Just click on one of these images, then click on these three dots and click on the Remove block. So the entire gallery gets deleted. And now we will add the responsive gallery using the shortcode method. so to add a shortcode All you have to do is just press the forward slash(/) once and search for short code. So here you can see this is the short code option, so I'll just click on it. And here you have to do is paste the short code that we just copied. That's it. Once you are done pasting the short code, all you have to do is just click on Update. And now when we go back to our site and refresh it, and now the responsive gallery has been added. Now when I click on one of these images, you can see it opens up and there's a slider down here as well. So this is how the responsive gallery works. Now you can customize your responsive gallery any time. Let's go back to the dashboard. And now if you want to customize any of your created galleries, just go to the gallery option right here. And from here you can edit the gallery anytime just like your pages and posts. Just click on edit. And now we will just add some effects to this gallery, Go to the design option and in the, Hover effect, I'll just select effect three. And once you are done making changes, just click on Update. Now, you don't need to paste the shortcode every time you make changes. once its pasted it automatically gets updated every time you make changes from here. So let's check our response to gallery now. And now when I just hover over one of these images, you can see it's responsive. So this was the Hover effect that we just added. So similarly, you can explore many such things. You can customize your gallery. And if you want to add another gallery, you can just click on Add New. And you can just add the gallery you want. And once you are done creating the gallery, just click on Publish, then copy the short code that you have created. And you can add this short code anywhere you want. Now I'll just do another quick example. So now I added some images and I'll just click on Publish. Now, this is a second gallery that I've created. So I'll just copy this short code. And I'll change the design of this gallery. And in the configuration settings of this gallery, you can change it to basic slider and just click on update. So now if I want to add this gallery to the footer of my site, I'll just go to Appearance, then go to widgets. And in the previous session, we learned how we can add widgets to the footer section. So I'll just select this footer area 3 and click on the plus icon. And here I just search for short code and just paste the code that we copied. so that's it just click on update. And now let's check the footer of our site. So yeah, you can see we have added are responsible gallery to our footer as well. You can change the design anytime you want. And if you want to remove this, you can just click on it and then on remove block. So now it's gone. So this is how the plugins work in WordPress. Now there are lots of plugins for almost everything. You can just explore any of them you want. I showed you how you can just search for plugins. Just go down to the plugin section, click on Add New. And from here you can just search for the plugin that you want. So this was the introduction to plugins. Now we're going to explore a lot of such useful plugins in the upcoming sessions. So that's all. Thank you. 13. How to add a slider using plugins: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to learn about another useful plugin called as smart slider. Now we know how we can customize our theme. We just have to click on Customize. But the options are quite limited. We can only customize the theme as per the default options given by the theme. So if you want to add some different features like a slider or say a responsive gallery. Now these things are not provided by the theme or WordPress. So for this purpose, you need to install a plugin. So let's go back to our dashboard and install this plugin called as smart slider, will just go down to the plugins option and click on Add New. And we'll just search for smart slider. So here's the plug in, and all you have to do is just click on install now. And once the installation is done, just click on activate. And whichever plugin you install and activate on your site it will be available in your dashboard. In the previous session, we installed a plugin called responsive gallery. So you can see there's the gallery and lightbox option. Now these two options are from that plugin. And now we installed a plugin called smart slider. So if I just searched down here, you can see there's the smart slider plugin option here as well. So that's how you'll find all the plugins that you have installed. And if you want to check what all plugins you have installed, you can just click on Plugins and then go to installed plugins. So now let's go to the smart slider plugin. Just click on Smart slider. So here they have given us a small overview of how this works. You can watch this video if you want. I'll just go straightaway to the dashboard. So just click on Go to dashboard. So this is the dashboard of smart slider plugin. Now if I wanted to add a new slider to our site, just click on New Project. So here there are two options. You can start with a template or you can create a new project from scratch. So let's create a new project from scratch. And here there are some options for our project. If I just scroll down, you can see there are some more. So I'll just leave it as it is. I'll just change the name of this project and just click on Create. So let's create a slider. Just click on Add slide. And here you can create a slider that contains posts as well as images. You can make a mixture of both as well. So for now let us just create a slider that contains images. So just click on image. So now I'll just add some images from my device. Just click right here. And once the images have been uploaded, just click on Select. And once you're done, just click on Save right here, just to ensure the slider is saved. And now if I scroll down, you can see there's the short code, that's the main part of plugin. But before copying and pasting the short code, there are many more customization options for this particular slider. You can see right here, there's the size option. You can customize the size of this slider and so on. Now currently the layout is full-width. The full-width layout will cover your entire site. So I suggest keeping it boxed. And other options are quite simple, so you can select what's better for your slider. Then there's this autoplay option as well. Now your current slider has buttons that will help users navigate to the various items of the slider. Now if I just turn this autoplay option on, you can customize the duration for this autoplay well, so I'll just remove one 0 from here. And you can also turn this button option on as well. So now your slider will have both auto-play and buttons. And once you're done exploring all the options and customizing your slider, just click on save. Then go back to the general. And from here you have to just copy the short code. Now this short code contains the slider that we just created. And now we can add this slider anywhere we want to pages, posts, sidebar, footer. So let's add this slider to our homepage. And here you can see this is our homepage, so I'll just click on Edit. Now I'll just remove this image and add a slider. So we learned in the previous session, if you want to add a short code, you first need to press the forward slash(/), then type short code. And then you can paste the short code that. you have copied. And once you're done, just click on update. So yeah, you can see there's the slider that we created. So this is how the slider works. Now, this is an image slider. You can see the auto play is on as well. Now we can add a post slider as well, like I said. So let us add a post slider below this one. So let's go back to our dashboard. And now if you want to edit one of your existing sliders or add a new one, just click on the smart slider plugin. Click on Go to dashboard. And here you can see there's the project one that we created. So if you want to customize your existing slider, you can just click on the project. And from here you can customize your existing slider. Now I don't want to make any changes to this one, so I'll just go back, to our dashboard. And let's add another slider to our site. So just click on New Project. Create a new project. I'll name this project #2. And now we will be creating a slider that contains posts. So just click on Add Slide, click on posts. I only created two posts, so I'll just add both of them. So now the two posts have been added to our slider. And I'll just customize the size. So now the slider is ready. I'll just turn on the autoplay, change the duration, and turn on the buttons as well. And you can just click on Save once you're done. So now let us copy this short code and add this to our homepage. And down here, I'll just add another short code block and paste the code. And when you're done, just click on Update. And now when you refresh your site and just scroll down, you can see the second slider has been added as well. Now if the visitors want to check one of these posts, they can just click on the read more, so the post will open up. So this is how plugins are useful for customizing your site. Now there are plugins for almost everything. All you have to do is just go to the plugin section, click on Add New, and search for the plugin that you want. Now, if I wanted a Google Translate on my site, I can just search for Google Translate. So the Google Translate plugin will show up. Over here. You can see these are the various plugins for Google Translate. And not all of them work on the short code method. Some plugins, you just have to allow them access and they will take care of the rest. So that's all about the slider plugin and we will explore a lot of such useful plugins in the upcoming sessions. So that's all. Thank you. 14. How to Add Social Sharing Icons to site using plugins: Welcome back everyone. In this session, we are going to talk about social sharing icons. So till now we learned how we can add social icons to our posts or pages. All we had to do was just press the forward slash(/), then search for social icons. Select the social media icon you want. Then just enter the URL and click on update. So that's how we used to add social media icons to our site. So the function of these icons was to redirect the visitors to your social media profile. Now if you want to add social media icons that will help their visitors share various content of your site, like the posts or pages. So for that, we need to install a social sharing plugin. So let's go to our dashboard. And in the plugins section, click on Add New. And here just search for "Add to any". And just click on Install Now. And once the installation is done, just click on Activate. Now if you want to access this plugin, you just have to go to your settings And here you can see there's the add to any plugin, so just click on it. And here there are a few simple settings for your social media icons. And from here you can select what all share buttons you want for your site. So just click right here. So there are a lot of options for us. So you can select whatever you want. And once they are done, just scroll down. And here there is a sharing header options. So you can give a title above all these social setting buttons. Now here there are some options about the display location of these icons. So you can select accordingly. Now I'll just keep these other options as it is and just click on save changes. So now when you click on refresh, here you can see below every posts and pages there are the social sharing buttons. So when some visitor clicks on them, they can share your site or your posts anywhere they want. So that's all. Thank you. 15. Comments in WordPress: Welcome back everyone. In this session we are going to talk about comments in WordPress. So this is one of our posts. Now if I scroll down. So here is the comment section. and from here visitors or admins can add comments to your posts. Now we're logged in as the admin. So let's add a comment and click on post comment. So now we have added a comment to this post as an admin. Now let us add a comment as a visitor. Now to access this site as a visitor, we need to log out from this site first. Here You can see we are logged in, so I'll just click on logout. And now let's access this site as a visitor. So just enter the domain name of the site. All you have to do is just enter the name of your site and at the end just type .local And now we're seeing this site as a visitor. We are no longer an admin, so let's check out the post and add a comment. So here's the post and here you can see this was the comment that we added as an admin. Now to add a comment as an admin, all we're gonna do is just type the comment and hit Enter. But since we are a visitor, we need to add our name and email as well along with the comment, you can see these are mandatory options. So let's enter our comment first and then just click on post comment. So now the comment has been added. This comment won't be visible to other visitors because this one hasn't been approved yet by the admin. You can see it says here your comment is awaiting moderation. So this is how comments work in WordPress. the comments need to be approved by the admin before they are visible on the site for everyone. So now let's go back to our dashboard and see how we can approve or disapprove our comments. Now if you want to access the dashboard of our site from here, just click on the homepage first. And from here at the end of the URL of your site all you have to type is /wp-admin, and hit Enter. So here's the login page and I'll just enter my details. So this is how you can access the dashboard of your site. Now we have added a comment as a visitor. So let's see how we can approve or disapprove the comment as an admin. In the dashboard section, you can see near the comment it says one notification. So let's click on the comment section. So here's the comment that we added as a visitor. And there are some options like approval, reply, quick edit, edit. So I'll just click on Approve. And now everyone who visits your site can see the comment on that particular post. Now there are other options as well, like reply, edit and trash. So you can delete this comment as well if you want. So let's add a reply to this comment first. And this is how it's going to look. Here's the comment that we added as a visitor and here's the reply by the admin that we just added. Now you can edit the comment of the visitors as well. You can see this was the comment of the visitor. So I'll just click on edit. You can change the comment of the visitor and you can change the name and e-mail of the visitor as well. So this is one of the features of WordPress. So I'll just leave it as it is. Now if you want to disable comments on a particular post, you can do that as well. All you have to do is just go to the Edit Post option in the dashboard. And just click on edit. And in the settings option you can see these are the settings of the post. Just click on Discussion. And here you can just uncheck this allow comments box and click on update. So now the comments won't be allowed for this particular post. Now if I click on refresh, you can see it says comments are closed. Now, even the admins can't leave comments on this particular post. And if I want to delete all these comments, you can just go back to the comment section in your dashboard. And from here you can just delete all of these comments. Click on bulk actions, select, move to trash, and click on Apply. So now all the comments are gone as well. So that's all about comments in WordPress. When you host your site on a live server at that time, there will be some comments on your posts from visitors. So you can interact with the visitors from the comments section in your dashboard. 16. How to create a WordPress Site on live server (Free Domain and Hosting method): Welcome back everyone. So till now we learned how we can customize our site and we explored various features of WordPress. Now it's time that we export this locally created site to a live server. Now in order to export this site, we first need to create a WordPress site that's hosted on a live server. So in this session now I'm going to show you how you can create a WordPress site on a live server free of cost, using free domain and free hosting. And in the next session we will see how we can export this locally created site with a WordPress site that we will create in this session. So let's begin. Now we're going to create our WordPress site using the free domain and free hosting method. But the free hosting methods are not quite reliable because there are a lot of limitations that come with the free hosting and free domain. So when you feel that you are confident to take your site live at that time, you should go with the paid domain and paid hosting method. Now here are some of the popular WordPress hosting sites. You can pause the screen and take a screenshot and go through them one by one. So you can check these sites out and you can compare the various plans that they're offering. You can see the features right here. And once you have decided which of these sites you prefer, you can just search on the internet on how you can set up your WordPress site using that particular service. And from there you can easily set up your WordPress site. So now I'm going to show you how you can set up your WordPress site using a free domain and free hosting. So just open your browser and search for biz.nf Now majority of the sites that offer free domain and hosting are unreliable because they can shut down anytime. And even if they don't, there are lots of restrictions for the free plan. You can see right here. So you can't experience WordPress to its full potential. So get a paid hosting using one of these sites or any other. Now I'll just show you how you can set up your WordPress using the free hosting method. So here's the site, biz.nf and just click on Sign Up. Now stay on this page. It will take some time to load. Okay, so here's the page and I'll just scroll down. And you can see there are various plans right here. Now, since we want a free hosting plan, you can just select the free hosting plan right here and just scroll down. Now you don't need to fill anything in the domain name option. So just leave it as blank and just click on Continue. So just scroll down. And here you can see we have to enter some details. Now just make sure that the e-mail address you enter is legit because they're going to send a verification email. And that's how you can login for the first time. The other information you can just enter anything you want. And also remember the password that you are going to enter because you will need this while signing in the dashboard. Click on yes, complete the verification, and then just click on Continue. So just click right here to login to your account. So here they have sent an confirmation email. So just go to your inbox. And here you can see there's the confirmation Email. So I'll just click right here. So now your account is verified. Now, let us get a free domain. So just click on domain manager right here. And here, select the last option that's "Create a Free .c1.biz Domain" Now enter the domain name that you want. And once you're done, just click on Create. So now the domain has been added. Now let's install WordPress on this particular site. So just go back to your dashboard. And down here in the website manager, just click on Zacky App Installer. Here just click on Browse and install apps. So here are the various applications that you can install on this particular site. Now since we want WordPress, I'll just click on Wordpress, then click on Proceed. Now this is a very important step. So just pay attention. Here you can see this is the initial setup of your WordPress site. You can choose a title for your WordPress site. Now this is the most important part, the username and password. The WordPress site that we are now creating won't be locally hosted. It will be on the live server. So make sure that you set a strong password and a proper username and write it down somewhere because you will need this for login. And once you're done, just click on Install application. So now the WordPress is installed, and if you want to visit your site, you can just click right here. Now it will take some time for the WordPress to show up on this page. So just take a break. So here's our WordPress site, and this is the default theme of WordPress. The only difference is that this site is not locally hosted. It's on a live server. You can see the URL of this site right here. If you share this with anyone, they can access your site even from mobile phones. Now we're seeing this WordPress site as a visitor. So if you want to login as an admin, you know what to do. Just at the end of the URL. Type /wp-admin, and press Enter. So here just enter your login details. So now we are in the dashboard. You can just open your site in a new tab. And now this is similar to our locally hosted WordPress. You can customize your site anyway you want, you can add plugins and themes and so on. Now this is a newly-created WordPress site that's on a live server. In the next session, what we're going to do is we will import our existing WordPress site, which we created locally. So this is the locally created WordPress site. And we are going to transfer this entire site to our newly-created WordPress site right here. Now if you want to access your newly-created WordPress site, you don't need to turn on the local application. All you have to do is just search for the URL. So here's the site, and that's all for this session. 17. Migrating WordPress Site from local to live server: So this was the site that we created in the last session. Now we will see how we can import our local site on this one. So first I'll just access the dashboard of this live site. Now for that at the end of the URL, just type /wp-admin, enter the login details. So now we are in the dashboard, and I'll just open this site in a new tab. So here's the site, and now we're logged in as an admin. And now let us visit our local site. So I'll just open the local application. And here I'll click on start site and then click on admin to access the dashboard. And I'll open this site in a new tab as well. Now this is our local site and we will see how we can import this entire site, including the themes and plug-ins on this freshly created live site right here. Now for that, you need to install a plugin on both these sites. So first we will just install the plugin on the local site. So I'll just access the dashboard. and here in the plugins section. just click on Add New and search for WPvivid. So I'll just click on Install Now and just click on activate. So here's the plug-in and in the backup and restore section, just select the first option, database and files. And here select save backup to local. You can also choose this one right here, send back up to remote storage. But I won't recommend that just select save backup to local and click on Backup now. So it will take some time for the backup to complete depending on the size of your site. So now the backup process has been completed. You can just scroll down to see the backup. So here is the backup and all you have to do is just click on download. And once again click on Download so it gets saved on your device. And once the download is completed, we will install this same plugin on our live site as well. So this is our live site and here's the dashboard. So we will install the same plugin here as well. Just click on plugin, then click on Add New. And here search for WPvivid. We will click on Install. Now. Click on Activate. Now here you don't need to click on Backup now. So just scroll down and just click on Upload right here. Just click on select files and select the backup that we have downloaded. Now here just click on Upload. So now the backup is getting uploaded. You can see right here and it's going to take some time. So here it says the upload has been completed. Now here's the backup file that we uploaded, and there's only one step remaining that is to click on Restore. But before that, we'll just take one look at our site. So this is the default site right now. And when you click on restore, the entire local site that we have created will be imported right here. So this is how the feature works. So just click on restore right here. Now it's giving us an error. So don't worry about it, just click on restore again. So now the restore process has started, it will take some time. So just take a break. And here it says the restore has been completed successfully. So just click on Okay. So it says your session expired. Now this happened because the login details have now been changed. The login details of this live site are those of the local site because we have completely imported the local site. So we need to login again. So I'll just close this site now. So let us visit our live site. Now I'll just enter the URL. Now if you take a look at our live site, you can see the entire local site that we created has been imported right here. And now let us visit the dashboard of this live site. And here you need to enter the login details of your local site. So here's the dashboard, and the first thing you need to do is change the password because the username and password that we set while creating our local site is very weak. And anyone can login to your site. So to change the password, just go to the top bar and click on Edit Profile. And here just scroll down and down there. Just click on Set new password. Now set a strong password for your WordPress site. And click on update profile. So now the password has been changed and you can see down here the username is admin. Now this was the username that we set while creating our local site. And it cannot be changed, but the password can be changed at any time. So you can login using this username and password. So this is how the process of importing WordPress site works. You can do this process with a locally hosted WordPress site or even the live site as well. And you can try this method on any hosting service, This was a free hosting method that I use to create this site. If you have paid hosting, you can use the same plugin method to import your site. So that's all. Thank you. 18. Few Things To Remember: There are a few things I would like you to remember before you start your own WordPress site. Number one is practice on local hosting first. Now let's say you are implementing an idea of a WordPress site. You are experimenting with the various plugins and themes and customization and something goes wrong. Now if this happens on a live hosting, your entire site gets compromised and you can't go back. But if you're doing it on a local hosting first, then even if it fails, you don't need to worry about anything because it was just local hosting. So this is one of the advantages of local hosting. So always practice on local hosting first. So this way you won't be taking any risks and you can safely try out various combinations on your WordPress site. The next thing you need to remember is explore new plugins. In this course, I showed you some of the plugins in WordPress. We even migrated our site from local to live hosting using a plugin. So similarly, there are plugins for almost everything. All you have to do is just search for the function that you want if you are stuck somewhere, the default features of WordPress are not enough. Just search for plugins and you can perform that particular task. Number 3, keep experimenting with the customization if you want your site to look good and up-to-date, for that you need to constantly keep browsing other sites and take inspiration from them. And then try out the features that you like on your own site. Just try them on the local hosting. First, number 4 is go live with the proper hosting plan. Now I said that if you want to take your site live, you need to get a paid hosting service. The free ones are unreliable. Do proper research before selecting a particular plans. So that's all. Number five is always keep a latest backup of your site. In the previous session, we saw how we can migrate our site from our local host to a live host. Now there what we did was first we downloaded the backup of our local site on our device and on our live site, we uploaded the backup and then clicked on restored. Now this was just for migrating the site, but it's a safe practice to download the backup of your site on your device. So all you have to do is download any plug-in. The one I installed was WPvivid. So you can install the plugin and then just click on Backup and you can download the backup on your device and keep it safe somewhere. So just in case if your application fails or the data is deleted, you can always restore your site using that particular backup. So make sure that you always keep a latest backup of your site. And the last one is feel free to ask doubts in the Q&A section. I'll try my best to solve them as soon as possible. I hope you understood the basics of WordPress and I wish you all the best. Thank you.