You’ve finally managed to create your own blog and now you’re ready to fill it with content. Before you begin, you should familiarize yourself with the basic structure of a blog. Here are the basic components:
Dashboard
After the blog has been created, the dashboard is the first thing you see after logging in. The dashboard is the command center of your blog. Here you can create, modify, or delete new blog posts, change the design of the blog, and even install new plugins. This expands the number of features the blog has. Additional plugins enable you to view important data and facts about your blog directly on the dashboard homepage. This way you will never lose track of what’s happening!
Users
When you create the blog, you create the first blog user at the same time. This user is the so-called administrator who has all the rights to the blog. However, if you do not want to run the blog alone, you can add additional users to the blog at any time, or give them the possibility of registering on the blog. Thanks to simple user administration, you can then assign different roles and rights to this user. If the blog system does not have roles and rights management, this feature can be obtained with a plugin.
Plugins
Plugins are software extensions that can add many useful features to your blog after it has been created. Most plugins are offered by external developers and can easily be installed with a few clicks and added in this way. There are currently over 45,000 plugins available for WordPress. From security plugins to forum plugins and anti-spam plugins, there’s a relevant plugin for almost any feature you want to add.
Themes/templates
Themes or templates make up your blog’s appearance. Each blog system includes a few themes to choose from in the default settings. When creating your blog, you can choose a template directly from the settings. If you would prefer a larger selection, you can download free (and also premium fee-based themes) from other design sites and add them to the blog in just a few clicks, as you would with plugins. If you are artistically gifted and can also program a bit, you can create your own themes and give your blog a more personal touch.
Comments
You can use the comment system to let your readers get in touch with you. By default, readers can leave comments and thoughts on their posts without logging in. These then appear under the article, as well as so-called trackbacks or pingbacks. These are automatic notifications that let you know whether your blog was mentioned on another blog.
Feed
Most blog systems have a web feed or newsfeed to make sure readers are kept up-to-date. Readers can subscribe to this feed so that they automatically receive a notification if a new post has been written and published on the blog.
Permalinks
Immediately after creating the blog and before posting the first post, you should adapt and check the permalinks. Permalinks define the structure of the URL, which is what each blog post is filed under. They are generated automatically when you write a post so you don’t have to deal with them yourself. If you do want to include the date or the topic of the post that is to be in the URL, you can set this up using the permalink setting.
Settings
Although the blog is ready to use after you’ve finished creating it, you can still adapt it further if you wish to. Just select 'Settings' in the dashboard, which will then enable you to define the language, time zone, and visibility of the blog. If for example, you don’t want your site to be found on Google, you can prevent this with WordPress by setting the blog to 'private'.