Your WordPress site has two faces. The public one, seen by everyone, and the behind-the-scenes face, known as the Dashboard.
This is where you add and update the content of your site. Access to the Dashboard is by log in only, using a username and password. This page shows you how to log in, and covers some connected issues.
To login to your dashboard add /wp-admin to your website URL in the browser address bar and hit return.
(replace mywebsite.com with your actual domain name)
This will bring up the login screen as shown below where you should enter your Username and Password. This should have been supplied to you – if not please ask.
Please note: On more secure setups it may not be wp-admin that you need to add to your URL. Also you may only get a limited number of attempts to log in before you are locked out for an hour or longer. Contact me for help.
An important word about security
If you are the sort of person who uses a password like Rex2015 for every login, Amazon, eBay, bank, Facebook, email, then this section is especially for you.
I monitor attempted unauthorised access to websites. You would be amazed that attempts to log in using guessed usernames and passwords can start just a few days after a new website is set up. These rapidly increase to maybe 100 per day or more.
Why would they be interested in your website? They probably aren’t. ‘They’ are interested in finding people who use one simple password for everything. And ‘they’ use computer algorithms to rapidly test against their massive databases of common passwords.
Carelessness on social media may also have revealed your pet names, your bank name, when you are away from home, your address, your state of health, your age, your mother’s maiden name, the list goes on and the consequences too. On an unprotected WordPress site Rex2015 would probably be cracked in seconds and then tested on your email, bank account etc. etc.
There are also people who like to cause destruction for no good reason – or plant links to very dodgy websites.
Please accept the difficult password you are allocated and don’t change it for Rex2015! Copy and paste into a text file – note book, or best of all a proper password application like 1password (other applications are available).
I take precautions against your site getting hacked, but you need to do your part too.