Digging In to Your Site

Let’s go exploring. On the top navigation, you'll see the “Administration Panel.” On the far left, the navigation says “Add Content.”

This is where you can create a new Blog Post, Image Gallery, Custom Page (which is a sortable index of all the content on your site e.g filter chronologically, alphabetically, by popularity, or by author), Music Album, Newsletter, Press Release Post, or create a Static Page -  a page that doesn’t change much, such as an “About Us” page or a article or guide.

Next to “Add Content” on the Administration Bar, you’ll find “Manage Content.” Click on it, and you’ll find icons that let you edit or delete blog posts (like this one!) or comments from your visitors. We advise you delete comments sparingly – once a visitor finds out her comment has been deleted, she may not want to come back to your site again.

When you’re done exploring “Manage Content,” go back to the Admin Bar and click on “Design and Layout.” You’ll see several icons. Try clicking on “Widgets.” The same floating bar of widgets you saw when you first created your site appears. Each of the widgets on the bar represents something new you can add to your website.

For example, the Google Gadgets widget gives you access to thousands of external apps, like maps, games and guides, that you can use to liven up your site.

The “Multipurpose” widget can be used to create a styled text box that you can place anywhere on your site – if you know HTML, you can style the text, too.

You can edit a widget by clicking on the * in the upper right hand corner of each widget. To delete the widget, click on the “x”.

One big hint when you have “Widgets” open: if you want to change the lay-out of your website so it has fewer or more columns, all you have to do is drag out (or delete) all the widgets in the far right and/or the far left column. When you refresh, you'll have a 2 column or full page layout. 

If you specify widgets appear only on one page at a time, you can create different layouts on different pages.

To delete these starter blog posts,  go to the Admin Panel, then click “Manage Content,” then click the “B;log Posts” icon. 

You can find these and many more instructions by clicking on the Help link above the Admin Panel.