By Humtech RITCs on February 25, 2025
First things first: What is WordPress?
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that allows you to build a free website. WordPress makes it easy to customize your site’s layout, fonts, colors, and other design elements without needing to code. WordPress can be a dynamic teaching tool, allowing students to share public-facing work like blog posts and videos. WordPress can also allow researchers a platform to showcase their scholarship and current projects.
But where to begin?
When designing a website, it’s important to consider not only what looks good but also what’s easy and effective for your visitors to use. After all, you’re designing their experience. Before designing your WordPress site, reflect on a few basic questions: How will visitors use your site? What functionalities will you need? What will visitors expect when they open your homepage?
When you first log into WordPress, you will be greeted by your WordPress admin dashboard — the control panel for your website. The administrative widgets or panels in the body of your dashboard can change based on your active plugins and individual settings. The navigation links in the left sidebar will enable you to create posts and pages, in addition to managing the appearance and various settings of your website.
While WordPress is highly customizable, you may find it useful to select a free theme (or a website template featuring a given design and layout) that fits your needs from the WordPress theme repository. To install a theme, access “Appearance” then “Themes” from your WordPress dashboard. (Tip: Since many users access websites from their phones, check that your site is mobile-friendly in its appearance and functionality!)
Begin by creating your essential pages. These will likely include 1.) a static “Home” page that introduces the key content of the website, 2.) an “About” page with additional information about you and/or your website, and 3.) a “Contact” page for users to easily reach you. These pages appear in the main navigation.
While pages feature static content, posts are for time-sensitive and dynamic individual pieces of content, like blog posts and articles, that typically appear in reverse chronological order on your page. This means visitors will always see the latest posts when they visit your website. The posts can also be categorized or tagged to ensure users can find relevant content with ease, but be sure to limit the number of tags you use.
Plugins can also extend the functionality of your site without requiring any coding. These can be activated or deactivated without impacting the theme of your website. Plugins can improve the security, speed, or search engine optimization of your website, or they can add features like photo galleries, forms, and search bars. But be selective and purposeful, as installing too many plugins may both clutter and slow down your website. Circle back to those original questions you asked yourself: How do you want visitors to use your site, and what functionalities are necessary? To browse the thousands of available plugins and install a new one, access “Plugins” and then “Add New Plugin” on your WordPress Dashboard.
WordPress, its themes, and its plugins regularly receive updates. Be sure to keep these up-to-date to ensure your website operates smoothly and securely.
Featured image WordPress (c); All other images by the author.
About the Author:
Emma Ridder is a Ph.D. candidate in UCLA’s Department of English focusing on 20th-century literature and film, film theory and visual culture studies, and affect studies. As a teaching fellow at UCLA, Emma teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses on literature, film, writing, and pedagogy. She works as a RITC and Digital Humanities GSR for Digital Humanities projects and tech support with Bruin Learn.