DIVI INSTALLATION & WORDPRESS OWNERSHIP
Front-end and Back-end: The basics of managing your site
WordPress allows you to create dynamic sites: to add content, no need to dive into the HTML code, you go through an interface that allows you to edit your content and store your articles in a database.
The front-end of your site is the visible part of the iceberg, the one on which your users will be able to navigate.
The back-end of your site is not accessible to your users and is used to manage all aspects of your site. To access it, you just have to add ‘/wp-admin’ to the url of your site.
For example, if your site is called www.monsiteweb.com, you will need to enter www.monsiteweb.com/wp-admin to access it.
The dashboard
When you log in to your administration panel (or back-end), you will by default come to the dashboard. It is fully configurable and allows you to display important information about your site, such as the number of visitors, the number of articles, …
Each module of the dashboard can be moved by a simple drag’n drop. Most of the modules can also be deactivated by clicking on the close cross. Finally, some modules cannot be closed, you have to go to the screen options if you want to disable them.
Install your first plugin: WP Smush
The first thing you need to install on your site is a plugin to automatically compress images.
Indeed, if images allow you toenhance your content and strengthen your SEO, they have the unfortunate tendency to weigh down your pages and harm the experience of your users.
In any case, you will have to rework your images before sending them to your site and avoid uploading files larger than 100kb. Then, we will let the WP Smush plugin bring the final touch to compress your images to the maximum without visible loss of quality.
To install a new plugin, go to the extension menu. This one allows you to install plugins either by downloading them from the site or by browsing the wordpress library. This is what we will do in this case. We launch a search on wp smush and we click on install.
When the installation is complete, you still have to click on activate to activate the plugin.
You then have access to the settings of WP Smush which kindly offers to automatically compress the images, we will just activate the option to also resize the images too large.
Installing the DIVI theme
To install the DIVI theme, you need to go to the website of the publisher Elegant Themes. You will need to create an account and purchase a license. You can choose between an annual subscription at $89 or a lifetime membership at $249. Is it worth it? We think so. For this price, you can install Divi on an unlimited number of sites, you have access to a library of ready-made templates and you can also count on very regular updates.
Once you have made your purchase, all you have to do is download the divi.zip file and return to your admin panel.
In your back-end, choose the option appearance then Themes. You will find yourself on a menu similar to the extension menu and you can either upload your file or choose a template among those proposed.
For our case, we choose to upload the file: you just have to drag the divi.zip file in the upload window without unpacking the archive.
Once this is done, click on send and once the theme is uploaded, click on activate.
At this stage, it is also interesting to delete all the other themes contained in your library to lighten your server. We won’t be needing them anyway.
Conclusion
We have just set up our site and we are ready to go. There are still a lot of things to work out but you will see that it is not so complicated to deploy a complete site in a very short time. Feel free to post comments if you have any questions!
