WordPress is a great tool for people looking for an attractive and professional looking blog or website but aren’t necessarily able to code it themselves. Below are some of the key terminology and phrases that you will come across when using or reading about WordPress but may not know what they mean.

1. Post

This is a time sensitive update which you put onto the site. For the purposes of helping you understand its kind of like an article. When you are typing up latest news / new offers or promotions for your website you are likely to use a post to do so.

2. Page

These pages are static and don’t move – like your About Us page or Contact Us. They look and can be formatted exactly the same as posts.

3. Category

Categories are what you can classify your posts under. They make it easier for readers to find content on your site and easier for the search engines such as Google to work out what your site is all about. E.g. if your site was about racquet sports, then your categories may be tennis, badminton, squash. You can add sub categories if you need them. E.g. If we stick with the racquet website, within the tennis category you may have womens, mens, singles, doubles – and so on.

4. Tag

Similar categories but more specific – so they don’t warrant being set up as their own category. If you had a racquet sports website for example, you may tag a post as Wimbledon – this would make it easier for your readers to click on the Wimbledon tags to see all posts relating to that subject.

5. Meta

This is the writing / page name at the very top of a website – normally on the blue bar at the top. This is also the title of the page as it will appear in Google if someone was searching for that page. You can get WordPress plug ins which mean you can write your own meta or you can set it to automatically show as your page or post title.

6. Media

In WordPress, where they refer to adding or inserting media, they usually mean images or picture. These are great for a blog as it makes it more enjoyable for your readers to absorb your site content.

7. Permalink

Permalinks are the what the post or page will having its website address – in WordPress this will default to a numbering system but you change it. Its important not to change the permalink of a page once it is live and has been published or linked to from other sites / areas of your own site.

8. URL

URL is the website address or link which appears in the white box at the top of the screen, for example our website URL is http://sgis.co.uk.

9. Plugins

These are essentially add on programmes which improve the functionality of WordPress and allow you to do more things. They are usually free but some are paid for. For example you can get a twitter plugin which will automatically publish your posts to your twitter account.

10. Themes

Your website theme is essentially how it looks. Different themes have slightly different functionality and different features but essentially they are an easy way of making a nice looking website without having to design or code it yourself – perfect for people who don’t know code. There are lots of free themes which are very good and also some which you need to pay for. At sgis we design and build bespoke themes for our clients – you can find out more at sgis.co.uk/design