How to Log In and Change Settings

Logging In

While your site is brand-new, and before your site is visible to the public, you’ll access both the front end (the part that visitors will eventually be able to see ) and the back end (your admin area, where you control your site’s content, appearance, and behavior) through a temporary URL, which will look like this:

  • http://yourbiz.mighty-little-websites.com (for the front end), and
  • http://yourbiz.mighty-little-websites.com/wp-login.php (for the back end)

In both addresses, ‘yourbiz’ will be replaced with an abbreviation based on your chosen domain name or business name. We’ll send an email to the contact email address you provided during signup with your setup information, including your temporary URL along with your username and password to use on the login screen for your back end admin area.

Next, open a new browser window (- leaving this article open and active, so you can toggle back and forth between the two windows for reference – ) and paste that temporary URL into the new browser window’s address bar, then click return.

On the login screen, you’ll see a prompt to enter your username and password. Once you’ve provided those, you’ll be taken to your site’s administrative Dashboard.

Take a moment to have just look around. The main screen area (one broad column and another skinnier column off to the right, both under the ‘Dashboard’ headline) provides some at-a-glance info about recent visitor activity, how many pages and posts you’ve published, and timely newsfeeds from WordPress.org and other contributors to the WordPress platform.

Take a longer look over to the left of your screen now: This is the navigation menu that contains most of the site modification tools you’ll use to build your site. Pages, Posts, Media, Links — these are the simple building blocks with which you’ll assemble your site.

Settings – Adding a Tagline

Right now though, you should roll your mouse over the ‘Settings’ link, about 3/4 of the way down the left side navigation list, and have a look at the submenu items that fly out to its right while you keep your mouse hovering over ‘Settings’. The first item we’ll visit is ‘General’, at the top of the flyout list – click it now.

Notice that the top two fields on this screen are ‘Site Title’ and ‘Tagline’. We put your business name in as site title, and left the tagline field blank. If your business has a tagline or slogan, you should consider putting it into the tagline field — whatever sentence or phrase you put in there will appear in the masthead area at the top of every page on your site, just under your business name or other site title.

When you’ve got a tagline you like in that field, scroll down the screen until you see a blue ‘Save Changes’  button. Click ‘Save Changes’, and your tagline is added to your site  – you’ve just made your first website edit!

One Last Thing

Before we leave the Settings area for the time being, click on the ‘Reading’ submenu link, then look for the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ item (about five items down in the list of options). Notice how your site is currently configured to ask search engines NOT to index your site — when you feel your site is ready to be open for visitors, you’ll change this setting to ‘Allow search engines to index this site.’

Next: Get Started on Your Site’s Content

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