WordPress Administration is the most important aspect in WordPress site management. The administrator oversees and monitors all activities that occur on the site. To perform this, a specific user account is required which is the Admin account.

WordPress Terminology

WordPress has its own set of terminology that every developer, site admin, and user should know and understand to ensure proper and efficient administration of the site.

• Dashboard: The central control panel of WordPress. Here, we can access all settings, posts, pages, plugins, and media files.
• Post: Content published on a WordPress site. It is typically displayed in reverse chronological order. Posts are ideal for blogs, news articles, and updates.
• Page: A static content type in WordPress, often used for “About Us” “Contact” and “Services” pages of a site.
• Theme: The design template that defines the layout and appearance of a WordPress site. Themes can be also customized to suit specific needs.
• Plugin: They are add-ons that extend the functionality of WordPress. Plugins can improve SEO, enhance security, integrate with third-party services, etc.
• Widget: A small block of content or functionality that can be added to the WordPress site. It is often used in sidebars, footers, or headers.
• Taxonomy: This is a way of grouping and organizing content. Categories and tags are the two primary taxonomies in WordPress.

Site Administration

Site Administration involves configuring and maintaining various settings to ensure that the site runs smoothly.

As an administrator, a user has access to the following:

• Settings: This section allows us to configure general settings like site title, tagline, time zone, and URL structure. There are also options to adjust reading, writing and media settings here
• Themes: The Appearance section of the dashboard enables us to install, activate and customize site themes. It also included an editor for custom theme management and changes
• Plugins: The Plugins section allows us to search, install and activate plugins that enhances the capabilities of WordPress
• Security: Admins must keep the site secure by ensuring the use of strong passwords, firewalls, SSL certificates, and keeping all the site components up to date
• Updates: Regular updates to WordPress core, themes, and plugins are essential for maintaining security. The Updates section notifies the user about available updates
• Site Backups: Admins must also maintain regular backups of the site ensuring recovery in case of any problem ensuring smooth user experience and avoid data loss

User Roles and Types

WordPress offers different user roles, with different permissions and capabilities. These roles are critical for managing the access and permissions of the various parts of the site.

• Administrator: They have full access to all site settings, including plugins, themes, and user management. Administrators are responsible for site maintenance and configuration.
• Editor: They can manage and publish posts and pages created by others but they cannot modify site settings, plugins, or themes.
• Author: They can write, edit, and publish their posts but cannot manage other user’s content.
• Contributor: They can write and edit their posts but cannot publish them. Their content must be reviewed by an editor or administrator before it will be visible.
• Subscriber: They have the least access. Subscribers can only manage their profiles and are able to comment on posts.

Apart from these default roles there is one additional roles which only exists for Multisite WordPress and that is of Super Admin. The capabilities of the site administrator is reduced in WordPress Network. Site admins cannot install new themes or plugins and cannot edit the profiles of users on their site. Only the Network Admin (aka Super Admin) has the ability to perform these tasks in a WordPress network.

Multi-Site Introduction

WordPress Multisite is a powerful feature that allows us to run multiple sites from a single WordPress installation. It is useful for organizations like businesses and education institutions that need several websites but want to manage them centrally.

Multisite enables the creation of a network of sites within a single WordPress instance. This means that a single admin can manage multiple sites without needing separate installations for each one of them.

Multi-Site WordPress offers:

• Centralized Management: Admins can manage plugins, themes, users and other site settings across the whole network of sites.
• Individual Site Control: Each site in the network can have their own themes, plugins and settings.
• Subdomain or Subdirectory Structure: We can choose whether we want the site to appear as subdomains like, site1.parent.com, or like subdirectories like, parent.com/site1.

Conclusion

This blog covered some of the essentials of WordPress site management. The basic terminology and the knowledge of user roles is quite essential for an Admin to manage the workings of a WordPress site. The Multi-site architecture offers a centralized approach to manage multiple instances of WordPress in an organization.