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Before I started my own business as a web designer, I had not had to rely on my own creative abilities so much. I had worked with designers before, but now I am the designer. I chose this line of work because I knew I had creative talent and had had this reflected back to me. I wanted...
Someone recently sent me an email asking me the following question, and I thought I would share the answer here.
The Question
“I’m hoping you can point me in the right direction about where to look to change my thumbnail picture that auto fills on one of your client’s WordPress blog when I post a response?”
The Answer
Those images are called avatars, and on a website powered by WordPress, you assign a photo to your email address by going to http://en.gravatar.com/. There you can assign an image to your email address, or assign multiple images to different email addresses if you have several email address, like I do. Since WordPress powers more websites than any other platform in the world right now, that is a lot of website blogs.
It is pretty quick to set-up and sometimes takes a little time for your gravatar to show up, but it should within 2 or 3 days from my experience. I also recommend using a .png image file over a .jpg as I had issues with JPGs when I was last adding images, but that may have changed by now. Not a big deal, just a preference.
If that helped, or you have something to add to my explanation, please share below, and see if your gravatar shows up.
Below is a list of WordPress Video Tutorials created in Sept. 2011.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners. And to view a playlist on YouTube with all of the below videos, you can go here: WordPress Video Tutorials
WordPress Tutorial | Introduction to WordPress Admin
If you are interested in the WordPress User Guide, click on that link to start at the beginning.
How to make an email address on your website automatically open a users default email program on their computer and insert that email address in the To: field. Instructions here are specifically tailored to use with WordPress, but can be applied in any case.
Add the email address to your website’s content as you would any content.
Then you are going to make it a link, jut as you would make some text link to another page, for example. So you would highlight your new email address (ie double click over it or click-drag your cursor of the email address); and then click on the “Link” button in your website editor to open the pop-up dialog box that allows you to add a website address.
INSTEAD of creating a link starting HTTP://….. – you will want to erase that part and insert the following: mailto:john@cnca.com
…where john@cnca.com is the email address being used. By putting mailto: before the email address, this causes the effect you want.
That is it. Save your changes. You do not have to specify a Target for that link in the pop-up.
For example, if you generally use an email address myname@yahoo.com, and you want to add an email address to your website myname@mydomain.com, and have that newly created email address (which has your website’s domain name), then you will want to create a forward to forward myname@mydomain.com to myname@yahoo.com). This will have the effect of automatically forwarding all email to your yahoo.com email address without having to share it on your website, (and also you can share a more professional email address on your website). This is often desirable if you do not want to change how you manage your emails, as you would still be able to continue to just check your yahoo.com account as usual.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners.
How to Update your WordPress Installation.
When a new update to WordPress is released, you will be notified in your admin panel by a one sentence statement to that effect, displayed at the top of each page of your WordPress admin panel. There is a link in that notification to update. Updating your installation immediately is always a good idea. Sometimes the updates have security patches that protect your website from hackers.
Click that link to go to the update page where you will have 2 options – to update automatically or manually.
The WordPress automatic updater works very well. Just click the button to update and wait 5 to 10 seconds until it tells you it is complete.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners.
It is actually super easy to create a new post or page in WordPress.
Login to your WordPress Admin panel;
On the left column where the core navigation buttons are, click on either the Posts or Pages button, depending on which you want to create;
Click on the “Add New” link. This will take you to the “Add New Post” or “Add New Page” screen.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners.
Video Resources: In September of 2011 I created a series of video tutorials and uploaded them to YouTube – you can find them here: WordPress Video Tutorials
This section of the guide starts on the Edit Post or Edit Page section of your WordPress Admin area. You can get there either by choosing the “Edit” or “Add New” option under Posts or Pages on you Core Navigation bar at the left of your admin screen (see image to right for reference). If you are adding a new post or page, you may want read How to Add a New Post or Page before continuing below. If you are editing an existing post or page, you will be presented with a list of posts or pages to choose from. You can either click on the title of the post or page, or hover your cursor over the bottom of the title and options will appear, including “edit”.
Let’s get started.
The control panel to edit a post is identical to that used to edit a page, therefor the information below pertains to both.
Upload/Insert Media
The icons at the top left of the editor next to the words Upload/Insert allow you to add and edit images, video, audio and other media. We will be focusing on editing text in this article. You can learn about uploading and inserting media in the article titled How to Add Images and other Media in WordPress.
Visual and HTML Editors
There are two content editor modes, the “Visual” editor and the “HTML” editor. You can select which editor you want to use using the buttons at top right of the content editor. The image below shows the Visual editor.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners.
Let’s Get Started
Orientation » There are two editing modes, Visual and HTML. Each have their own edit commands. We will be working within the “Visual” editing mode. See below at top right of the editing area where the word “Visual” is clear and “HTML” is faded out. This means you are in visual mode. If you are not, simply click on the work “Visual” to switch modes.
WordPress is a powerful program that is simple to use. It is that way because many people have put years into refining it to be so. Millions of people use it, and there are endless resources to help you learn more and do more with it. It was designed as a blogging platform and has grown to serve as a multi-faceted content management system for seemingly endless possibilities.
This is a simple WordPress user’s guide for beginners, designed to guide a new user through the basics of adding and editing content in a pre-installed WordPress environment. Whether you are using this as a blogging platform or as a content management system, this guide should serve the beginner well. This user guide is written at a time when the current version of WordPress is version 2.9.
Side Note: Whether you are a web designer or developer using this guide to support your clients, or a first time user of WordPress, feel free to let me know how I can improve this guide – by submitting comments below. It is not intended to be exhaustive, just the basics. And please be patient and check back for updates.
Video Resources: In September of 2011 I created a series of video tutorials and uploaded them to YouTube – you can find them here: WordPress Video Tutorials
Lets get started.
What you need
The URL address (website address) to login to your admin panel. (It will likely end in: /wp-admin or /wp-login.php).
David Tierney is a professional web designer and webmaster who lives and works in California's scenic Napa Valley with his wife and son. View his custom web design portfolio for sample of his work.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to 
It is actually super easy to create a new post or page in WordPress.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to 
This section of the guide starts on the Edit Post or Edit Page section of your WordPress Admin area. You can get there either by choosing the “Edit” or “Add New” option under Posts or Pages on you Core Navigation bar at the left of your admin screen (see image to right for reference). If you are adding a new post or page, you may want read 
