The WordPress admin dashboard is where you control almost all of the functionality on your WordPress site. Think of it kind of like your WordPress site’s mission control center.
Often called WP Admin or WordPress Dashboard, it lets you create new posts or pages, choose which theme your site uses, install and work with plugins, change general settings, plus plenty more.
Because all of this functionality is located inside the WordPress admin area, it’s important to understand what all the Admin Dashboard lets you do.
In this article, you’ll first learn how to access the WordPress admin dashboard at your site.
Then, we’ll show you how to perform some of the most important actions and tweak the admin dashboard to fit your needs.
If your site is at URL yoursite.com, then your WordPress admin dashboard is usually located at:
yoursite.com
https://yoursite.com/wp-admin
If you installed WordPress in a sub-directory, you’d just append “/wp-admin” to the sub-directory instead.
If you’re already logged into WordPress, you’ll be able to access your dashboard right away by visiting that URL.
Otherwise, WordPress will redirect you to the WordPress dashboard login page, which is usually located at:
https://yoursite.com/wp-login.php
To log in to your WordPress dashboard, you’ll need to enter the username/email address and password for your WordPress account. These credentials can be found in the Atomic control panel:
If you’re having trouble logging in to your site, our post on the most common WordPress login errors can help you diagnose and fix the issue.
Once you log in to the WordPress admin area, WordPress will take you to the Dashboard screen, which gives you a basic overview of your site:
To access other important areas of the WordPress admin, you can use the sidebar menu on the left.
Here are some of the most important actions contained in that sidebar…
To create a new post or page, you go to Posts → Add New or Pages → Add New:
You’ll then be able to use the WordPress editor to create your content.
Your WordPress site’s theme affects how your site looks to visitors. The Appearance area of your WordPress dashboard lets you:
Furthermore, if you go to Appearance → Customize, you’ll be able to change specific aspects of your theme using a real-time, visual interface called the WordPress Customizer.
While the exact customization options depend on your specific theme, typically the WordPress Customizer lets you control:
While themes control your site’s looks, plugins are mainly focused on adding new functionality or modifying existing functionality.
The Plugins area of your dashboard lets you manage existing plugins and install new plugins:
Regularly updating your WordPress site is essential to keeping it functioning and secure. To help you see exactly what needs to be updated, you can go to the Dashboard → Updates area to view updates for:
If you choose Pagely as your Managed WordPress Host, we will automatically update your WordPress site and plugins for you to save you time and keep your site secure.
And, yes, that is 24×7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) — even while you sleep, even while you are on vacation, or at that important meeting — we are worrying for you, constantly monitoring and pro-actively responding to changing conditions.
Beyond the specifically highlighted areas above, the WordPress admin dashboard also lets you control:
Additionally, as you install new plugins, many of those plugins will also add their own menu or sub-menu items. From those areas, you’ll be able to control settings specific to each plugin.
Beyond the functionality directly in the admin area, WordPress also includes a feature called the WordPress toolbar that lets you access important WordPress admin functionality from the front-end of your site.
From the toolbar, you can:
Other plugins might add their own options to the WordPress toolbar, as well:
If you don’t like how the WordPress dashboard functions out of the box, you have several options for customizing its looks as well as the information that it displays.
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The Screen Options feature lets you control how individual WordPress admin areas behave.
Each area in your WordPress admin has its own set of Screen Options which let you control things like:
To access these settings, look for the Screen Options button in the top-right corner:
Once you click that button, a list of settings will appear. Again, these settings vary between different admin areas and only apply to that specific admin area:
Beyond the Screen Options, WordPress includes a number of other admin control settings that each registered user can modify in their profile.
To access these settings for your own account, go to Users → Your Profile.
From this area, you can:
If you’d like to customize the login page URL for your WordPress admin dashboard, you can follow the steps in our guide to hiding the WordPress login page.
Beyond letting you create a more personalized, human-friendly login URL, another benefit of changing your login URL is that it will cut down on bot traffic to your WordPress site.
We’ve covered the most important WordPress admin dashboard functionality in this post. But remember – there are plenty of other smaller settings, and your site’s plugins and themes will add their own settings, as well. For those reasons, we encourage you to further explore your WordPress admin area to understand every little thing that it can help you do.
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