How to Use WordPress: Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide (2026)

To use WordPress, you log in at yoursite.com/wp-admin, set your site settings and permalinks, pick a theme, build your main pages, write posts in the block editor, add a few plugins, then publish and keep the site updated. This guide takes you through those eight steps in order, using the menu names you will see in WordPress 7.1, the current release.

I have built and handed over WordPress sites to clients for more than 14 years. The people I train usually trip over the same three things: which WordPress they are on, the permalink setting, and when to use a post or a page. Each gets extra attention below. None of the steps needs code.

Which WordPress are you using: WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is the free, open-source software you install on hosting you pay for, which gives you full control over themes, plugins and files. WordPress.com is a hosted service that runs the same software and includes hosting, with features set by your plan. This guide is written for self-hosted WordPress.org, though most screens look alike on both.

Beginners mix the two up all the time, because both are called WordPress and both use the same editor. The differences show up in hosting, cost and what you are allowed to install:

	WordPress.org (self-hosted)	WordPress.com (hosted)
Software cost	Free to download	Free plan, plus paid Personal, Premium, Business, Commerce and Enterprise plans
Hosting and domain	You buy them from a hosting company	Hosting included on paid plans
Plugins and custom themes	Any you like	Any paid plan; the free plan can’t install plugins
Updates and backups	Your job, or your host’s	Handled by WordPress.com
Where you log in	yoursite.com/wp-admin	wordpress.com

Those details come from WordPress.com’s own comparison page. If you are not sure which one you have, the same page suggests entering your address in its Site Profiler tool, which names WordPress.com or your hosting company as the provider. For a deeper look at the cost and control trade-offs, read my guide to WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

How do you use WordPress step by step?

Using WordPress comes down to eight steps done in this order: log in, change the core settings, choose a theme, create your pages, write posts, add plugins, publish the site, then maintain it. The order matters because early choices, such as your permalink format and theme, shape everything you build afterwards and are harder to change later.

1. Log in to the dashboard and learn the left-hand menu.
2. Change the settings for site title, time zone, permalinks, homepage and comments.
3. Choose and set up a theme for the site’s design.
4. Create your pages (Home, About, Services, Contact) with the block editor.
5. Write and publish posts for your blog, with images and categories.
6. Install a small set of plugins for SEO, security, backups, caching and forms.
7. Publish the site after a final check and decide who else gets access.
8. Maintain it with updates, backups and the occasional review.

Step 1: How do you log in to WordPress and find your way around?

On a self-hosted site, add /wp-admin to your domain (for example yoursite.com/wp-admin) and sign in with the username and password set during installation. You land on the Dashboard. The black menu down the left side is how you reach every part of the site, from posts to settings.

If you have forgotten the password, use the “Lost your password?” link under the login form. Here is what each menu item does:

• Dashboard. The overview screen with recent activity, a quick draft box and WordPress news. You will rarely need it once the site is set up.
• Posts. Blog posts, news and anything else listed newest first, with categories and tags.
• Media. Your image and file library. Everything uploaded to the site lives here.
• Pages. Static pages like Home, About, Services and Contact.
• Comments. Reader comments on posts. You can switch them off entirely.
• Appearance. Themes and the tools that change how the site looks.
• Plugins. Install, activate, deactivate and update plugins.
• Users. Who has access to the admin and what they can do.
• Tools. Import and export content, plus the Site Health screen.
• Settings. Site-wide configuration: title, URL structure, homepage, comments and media sizes.

Plugins often add their own menu items, so a live site’s menu is usually longer than this. The core items above stay the same.

Step 2: Which WordPress settings should you change first?

Before you create content or install anything, open the Settings menu and work through General, Permalinks, Reading and Discussion. Permalinks matter most. They set the URL format for every post and page, and changing them after you have published breaks existing links unless you add redirects. The other three take a couple of minutes.

General settings (Settings → General)

Set your Site Title and Tagline. The site title appears in browser tabs, search results and usually your theme’s header. The tagline is optional, and plenty of business sites leave it blank. Set the correct Timezone here too, because scheduled posts publish according to it.

Permalinks (Settings → Permalinks)

According to the WordPress documentation on permalinks, WordPress uses URLs with the date and post name in them by default, and it also offers a “Plain” format like /?p=123. Choose Post name instead, which gives short, readable URLs such as /sample-post/. It suits nearly every business site. Click Save Changes, and do this before you publish anything.

Reading settings (Settings → Reading)

This is where you choose what the homepage shows. For a business site with a separate blog, set Your homepage displays to “A static page”, then pick one page as the homepage and another as the posts page. Create those two pages first (Step 4), then come back and assign them.

The same screen has a box labelled “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. Ticking it while you build keeps a half-finished site out of search results. Remember to untick it at launch.

Discussion settings (Settings → Discussion)

If you don’t want comments, untick “Allow people to submit comments on new posts”. If you do want them, tick “Comment must be manually approved” so spam never appears publicly before you see it.

Step 3: How do you choose and set up a WordPress theme?

A theme controls how your site looks: fonts, colours, header, footer and page layouts. To add one, go to Appearance → Themes, click Add Theme, search or browse, then click Install and Activate. Switching themes leaves your posts, pages and media in place, because the theme only changes how that content is displayed.

Use the Live Preview button to see a theme with your own content before you activate it. For business sites, I start from a fast, well-maintained theme with good documentation and avoid the all-in-one themes that bundle dozens of features you will never use. My shortlist is in the best WordPress themes for business service sites.

Block themes and classic themes

How you customise the design depends on the kind of theme you installed:

• Block themes, such as Twenty Twenty-Five, add Appearance → Editor. This opens the Site Editor, where you edit the header, footer and page templates with the same blocks you use for content. The Site Editor documentation covers each panel, and my full site editing guide goes further.
• Classic themes use Appearance → Customize, a live preview panel for colours, fonts and header layout, plus separate Menus and Widgets screens. Themes paired with a page builder such as Elementor are customised inside the builder.

Child themes

If you or a developer plan to edit theme code (PHP templates or larger CSS changes), do it in a child theme. A child theme inherits everything from the parent but keeps your changes in separate files, so a parent theme update doesn’t wipe them out. Setting one up is a developer task, but it helps to know why they exist.

Step 4: How do you create pages with the block editor?

Go to Pages → Add Page, type a title, then build the page from blocks: paragraphs, headings, images, buttons, columns and so on. The block editor has been the default since WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. Each piece of content is a block you add, move and configure separately, then you click Publish.

Start with the pages every business site needs: Home, About, Services (or Products), Contact, and a Privacy Policy. Pages can have parents, so individual service pages can sit under a Services page and inherit its URL, such as /services/web-design/.

Adding blocks

Click the + icon in the top toolbar, or the one that appears between blocks, then search for a block by name or browse the list. The quicker way is to type / at the start of an empty line, followed by the block name: /image, /heading, /list. The official guide to adding blocks shows every method. The blocks I use most are Paragraph, Heading, Image, List, Button and Columns.

Configuring blocks

Select a block and its settings appear in the right-hand sidebar. A Heading block lets you set the level (H2, H3), alignment, colour and size. An Image block has alt text, caption, link and display size. Each block type has its own options, so click into one to see what you can change.

Rearranging blocks

Drag the six-dot handle on the left of a block’s toolbar to move it, or use the up and down arrows. The three-dot menu on the toolbar lets you copy, duplicate or delete a block.

Step 5: How do you write and publish a blog post?

Go to Posts → Add Post, add a title and write the body in the block editor exactly as you would a page. Before publishing, open the post settings in the right sidebar to pick a category, add tags, set a featured image and check the URL slug. Then click Publish, or use the date option to schedule it.

What is the difference between posts and pages?

Posts are dated, categorised content that appears in your blog feed newest first and in your RSS feed. Use them for articles, news and updates. Pages sit outside that feed, have no categories or tags, and can be arranged in a parent and child hierarchy. Use them for Home, About, Services, Contact and legal pages.

The quick test I give clients: if the content describes who you are or what you sell and rarely changes, it is a page. If it has a date and a topic (“what we learned this month”), it is a post.

Adding images with the Media Library

Everything you upload is stored in Media → Library, and images added inside a post land there too. Three habits keep it in good shape:

• Resize and compress before uploading. Since WordPress 5.3, uploads wider or taller than 2560 pixels are scaled down, but a 2,500-pixel photo is still far larger than most layouts need. Resize first, or use a plugin like Imagify or ShortPixel to compress on upload.
• Add alt text. Screen readers read it aloud and search engines use it to understand the image. Fill it in for every image that carries meaning.
• Use descriptive filenames. team-photo-london-office.jpg tells people and search engines more than IMG_4823.jpg.

Step 6: Which plugins does a new WordPress site need?

Plugins add features WordPress doesn’t include out of the box. The WordPress.org plugin directory lists over 77,000 free ones. Install them from Plugins → Add Plugin: search by name, click Install Now, then Activate. A new business site needs five kinds: SEO, security, caching, backups and a contact form.

These are the ones I set up most often on client sites:

• SEO. Rank Math or Yoast SEO. Install one of them; two SEO plugins would both try to manage the same titles and descriptions.
• Security. Wordfence or Solid Security for a firewall, malware scanning, login protection and two-factor authentication. My checklist for securing a WordPress website without code covers the full setup.
• Caching. WP Rocket (paid, easiest to set up) or W3 Total Cache (free, more settings). Caching serves saved copies of pages so the server doesn’t rebuild each one on every visit.
• Backups. UpdraftPlus, whose free version schedules backups to Google Drive or Dropbox. Run a backup before any big change.
• Contact forms. WPForms (free version for basic forms) or Gravity Forms (paid, more powerful).

Keep the list short. Every active plugin adds code that runs on your site, and deactivated plugins left installed can still carry security holes, so delete what you don’t use. My curated list of the best WordPress plugins covers what to add once these basics are in place.

Step 7: How do you publish your WordPress site and add other users?

Publishing a WordPress site means making it visible to the public and to search engines. Untick “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” in Settings → Reading, set up your main menu, test the contact form and check every page on a phone. Then give anyone else who needs access the lowest user role that lets them work.

A short launch check

1. Untick the search engine visibility box in Settings → Reading.
2. Check the homepage and posts page are assigned correctly.
3. Send a test message through the contact form and confirm it arrives.
4. Open every main page on a phone and tap each menu link.
5. Run a backup so you have a clean starting point.
6. Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console. SEO plugins like Rank Math and Yoast create one for you.

Which user role should you give people?

Add people under Users → Add User. The WordPress roles documentation lists six built-in roles. Super Admin only exists on multisite networks, which leaves five on a normal site:

Role	What they can do	Give it to
Administrator	Everything, including settings, themes, plugins and users	The site owner and a trusted developer
Editor	Publish and edit any post or page, including other people’s	A content manager
Author	Write and publish their own posts	Regular in-house writers
Contributor	Write posts, but an Editor or Administrator must publish them	Guest or freelance writers
Subscriber	Log in and manage their own profile	Members on membership sites

Never give Administrator access to someone who only writes posts. If their account is compromised, the attacker gets full control of the site.

Step 8: How do you manage and maintain a WordPress site?

Managing a WordPress site after launch means keeping WordPress core, themes and plugins updated, checking that backups run and can be restored, and reviewing security and speed now and then. Since WordPress 3.7, minor and security releases install themselves automatically on most sites. Major releases, plugins and themes still need your attention.

The official updating guide recommends a backup before every update, and I’d add one rule from experience: update one thing at a time and check the site afterwards, so you know exactly what caused any problem. A simple routine looks like this:

• Weekly: apply plugin and theme updates, then click through the homepage and contact form.
• Monthly: confirm backups are running, check Tools → Site Health, and delete plugins you no longer use.
• Every few months: review user accounts, test a backup restore, and check page speed.

The complete WordPress maintenance guide has the full task list and how often to do each one.