A content management system or CMS is software that helps to easily build websites. It creates content to be published online. This software makes it easier for beginners to create websites in WordPress. According to WordPress’s official website, it powers 39% of the websites on the internet today and is rising every day.
WordPress CMS is just an application that works as an interface between a publisher, a database, and a visitor. Creating posts and pages, organizing them, and adding media items to them, all these actions are a part of content management, and what makes WordPress so powerful is that it gives you the ability to manage your content yourself.
Benefits of using CMS like WordPress
- It is free and flexible.
- You can create, edit, reorganize, reassociate, and delete any piece of content at any time without having to worry about other pieces of content being affected.
- It is easy to set up an online store and it helps to keep everything in order.
- If you add a new post, WordPress puts it at the top of the index page.
- If you change a publishing date, WordPress will reorganize the posts in chronological order.
- You can also schedule a post that will be published at the specified time in the future.
- It helps to find and share your content easily.
- You can display reviews from your customers.
You start with navigating the admin panel
The content management section of the Admin panel is found on the left side of the Admin menu. From here, you can manage your Posts, Pages, Media, and your Comments. If you use a plugin to add extended functionality like forms or polls, they will also typically show up here. 
When you click on each of these content types, you are taken to the back-end index of that type. For example, if you click on Pages then all the pages that you’ve created will be shown there. If you click on Media then you will find all the media items you uploaded to your site, and so on. From this view, you can do several things, like using the search bar to search for individual items and sort the items based on various options, including Title, alphabetically, and Date, chronologically. At the top, you can even use the Filters. On the top right corner, you can see Screen Options, from where you can choose what you want to see on these index pages, and also how many items you want to see on each page. When you hover over each item, options like edit, quick edit, trash, and the view will appear. To edit them, you can either click on Title or click on the Edit button that appears. If you don’t want an item, you can simply place it in Trash or if you want to check how it looks on the website, you can click on the View option.
These index views are very handy for content management because they provide all the necessary info about all your items in a simple-to-understand package, they shine in quick editing and bulk management.
To delete any post completely, you have to go into Trash and then click Delete Permanently. This Trash option is helpful when you accidentally Trash a post or page because you can also Restore it to where it was before.
Here, it’s really important to note one thing when you move items to the trash. You can go to a page and check its URL. If you Trash a page from the Publish panel, it still exists in the Trash bin. Now if you try to create a New Page with the same existing name, WordPress will auto-generate a new URL, but this time the URL is a bit different. It is because we have not permanently deleted the previous page and the page in the trash has the original URL. This simply means you already have an existing page or post with the same URL.
Bulk Editing posts and pages in WordPress
After creating new posts or pages, you may need to make some quick changes. You might want to change the title itself or the slug, the publishing date, or author, or something else. Most of these are quick actions and you don’t need to open the entire post in the editor. Instead, you can use the Quick Edit function from the post or page index view.
The Quick Edit function will appear when you simply go to either All Posts or all Pages and hover your mouse over the field where you have one of your posts and click on Quick Edit. You can see that a small editor view opens within the index page. Here you can quickly change the Title and Slug. You can also change the publishing date and time. If there is more than one Author activated on your site, you can use this drop-down to choose who published this particular post. You can even set a password, change the Categories, add a comma-separated list of Tags, switch comments on and off, and also change the status of the post from Published, to Pending Review, to Draft.
Quick Edit makes it easier to edit individual posts, but you’ll find it more effective when you have to Bulk Edit several posts.
Let’s say you want to change the author of two different posts. From your index view, you can select the two posts in question. Then go to either top or the bottom where you’ll find the same drop-down that says Bulk Actions. Then click Edit and then Apply. This part lists out what posts you’re currently Bulk Editing. You can also change the Comments, Status, and Format, and also change whether or not these posts are Sticky. Once you’ve made the changes you want, you can click Update and this change now applies to both posts at the same time.
You can only ADD Categories or ADD Tags. But, you can’t bulk remove categories or tags using the Bulk Editor. If you want to remove categories or tags, you need to do that on an individual basis. However, you can still toggle post formats from the bulk edit function. To change post formats, you have to use either the Bulk Editor or go into the individual post editor. To get the most out of the Bulk Editor, you can combine it with the search bar and the filters to find exactly the post you want to edit. You can edit them all at once instead of going through the tedious process of opening individual posts, editing them, saving them, again going back to the index, opening another individual post, and so on.
Using the Media Grid
While the index views for posts and pages are virtually identical, the media index is completely different. It is not just a list-based display. The default setting for the media index is a grid view known as the Media Grid. The Media Grid makes your media items easier to preview. Images are displayed in small square thumbnails. Other media items are seen in the form of a logo that represents their file type as well as the file name. 
When you click on an item, it opens in a modal window and you can see a larger version of the image or document with all its attachment details. You’ll notice that this display is not so different from the one you get when you insert a media item from the Content Editor.
However, there are certain differences. For example, in the top right-hand corner, you can use the arrows to navigate between existing media items without having to close down the modal window. You can also use this window to permanently delete items but, this is permanent. If you delete them they vanish from all pages and posts where you might have added that item.
You can even change the attachment details for any image or other media item. If you do so, that information is changed for the image or media item itself as well as for the attachment page. However, the caption and Alt text are not changed in posts and pages where you have already added that image. That’s because the caption and Alt text become permanent HTML components within those posts or pages. So, changing these two fields will only affect future insertions of this image in future posts and pages. Finally, you can also see the name of the user who uploaded this particular media item and which post or page it was uploaded to.
Some circumstances may arise where it may be useful to upload media items directly into the Media Editor. You can do so if you have a lot of images or a lot of other documents that you may want to add to posts or pages in the future. If so, either you can go to the media and Add new in the Admin menu, or you can go to the media library and click Add New. This gives you a drag-and-drop functionality just like you get inside the Content Editor. You can drag and drop content directly onto the Media Library and add the same kind of information as you would in the Content Editor. The only difference is these new media items will not be attached to any post or page, but will live on their own until you attach them to a post or page.
The Media Grid also has its bulk editor, but it’s limited to only one function i.e. to permanently delete content. If you want to use it, you can simply go to the toolbar at the top, click Bulk Select, then select all items you want to delete, and click Delete. But, this will permanently erase these items from your WordPress installation. And if you have them on a page or post somewhere, instead of getting the image, you’ll get broken HTML. So this is something you need to do with great caution.
If due for some reason, you do not like the media grid, you can use the button on the far left-hand side of the toolbar at the top to change the display to a list view. The list view works the same way as in posts and pages except you have slightly fewer options. If you hover over an item, you can either edit it, this takes you directly to the Attachment Page Editor. You can view the item, this takes you directly to the attachment page on the front end and you can delete the item permanently.
However, you have all the information you need on the right-hand side, including the “author” and “Uploaded to”. So, you know which user uploaded this item, and what item it was uploaded to. This can especially be useful if you want to delete items and then you’re not sure if they are currently attached to a post or a page. This will also make it easier to detach an item from a post or page if you want. A media item can currently only be attached to either one page or one post, and there are certain circumstances where you may want to call up all the items that were attached to a specific page or post. In that case, you can use this function to detach an image from one post and attach it to another simply by clicking Detach and then going back and clicking Attach and finding the item you want to attach it to. This doesn’t change whether or not the item is displayed on that post or page.
This chapter is explained more in detail in our tutorial videos. You can find below, the link to our WordPress Tutorial Part 5:
WordPress Content Management
Tutorial in English
We shall talk more about WordPress in our next tutorials and blogs.
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