Here at Paper Leaf, we do a decent amount of WordPress blog design & implementation for our clients. While WordPress is super easy to learn, you can’t just build your clients a blog, send them the login information and then disappear off of the face of the earth. Where’s the customer service, people?!? Ideally, we sit down for a half hour or hour with our clients to show them the basics of how to use their new blog (writing a post, adding categories, checking stats, uploading photos, adding users). However, sometimes a face-to-face meet up isn’t doable; we offer graphic & web design in Edmonton, but many of our clients are outside of the city.

Click here to download the free basic WordPress author's guide

To combat this, we built a very simple reference guide to give to our clients that explains how to do the following in their new WordPress blog:

  • write a new blog entry
  • save, preview & publish a post
  • add tags (and what that means)
  • add categories (and what that means)
  • check blog stats
  • use the Media section
  • moderate comments
  • update plugins
  • add a new user

This covers about 99% of what most basic blog users need to know, and it provides them with a resource they can come back to when needed, share within their business, and so forth. It’s sort of a basic WordPress author’s guide suitable to email and view on screen – click here to download it (or click the image above).

We figured that since this guide has been helpful to us, maybe it will be helpful to other designers who use WordPress. Here’s hoping! Anyway, share freely (but not as your own, please!)

*note: we install the Site Stats plugin for all clients – if you use this guide, I recommend doing the same, or your clients might be confused as to why they don’t have a Site Stats link.

17 Responses

  1. James Costa says:

    Thanks for sharing this awesome resource! I use WordPress for 75% of my clients that come in, and I always just end up sending them a custom video tailored to what they need to know about WordPress for their project. I’m finding, though, that this is becoming a hassle and I definitely need to put together a library for clients to learn about it. Excellent starting point – cheers!

  2. Jeff says:

    My pleasure, James. I am sort of in the same boat as you, and I find this PDF to be just as useful & so much quicker. Hope you do too!

  3. Having a stylish website is key in this age, it looks appealing and definitely increases the traffic to a website. However, a fancy website alone does not help. You also need to get your name out there and build your reputation. A strong reputation is the backbone for any good business.

  4. This is awesome and more people should know about it. Thanks for a great resource.

  5. Jeff says:

    Thanks Joseph – feel free to tell more people about it.

  6. [...] For Your Clients: How to Use WordPress [...]

  7. Kirsti says:

    Great idea! I like the highlights, the arrows, and the “no need to go in here” labels to keep clients from breaking things! Thanks for sharing your document!

  8. Jeff says:

    Thanks Kirsti; it’s simple but gets the job done. Enjoy the weekend!

  9. Mars says:

    this is useful, thanks for sharing, currently preparing for a client wordpress installation hehehe!

  10. [...] For your clients: How to use WordPress PDF A very simple, downloadable reference guide to provide your clients that explains the basics of WordPress admin [...]

  11. Mark says:

    Many thanks for this.

    I’m working on a couple of WordPress projects at the moment.

    This will be very handy to pass onto my clients when the project’s are finished.

    It’s very kind of you to share this. Thanks again!

  12. peter says:

    Thanks Jeff for releasing this – I have always found the wordpress admin panel is not the easiest to understand straightoff – your annotated screenshot approach is just perfect . . .

    peter

  13. Jeff says:

    My pleasure guys – glad it could be of use.

  14. kirkoconnor says:

    what a simple but excellent idea. I have been using video but some people would prefer it in a quick reference guide such as this as well.

    thanks for sharing

  15. [...] For Your Clients: How to Use WordPress Here at Paper Leaf, we do a decent amount of WordPress blog design & implementation for our clients. While WordPress is super easy to learn, you can’t just build your clients a blog, send them the login information and then disappear off of the face of the earth. Where’s the customer service, people?!? Ideally, we sit down for a half hour or hour with our clients to show them the basics of how to use their new blog (writing a post, adding categories, checking stats, uploading photos, adding users). However, sometimes a face-to-face meet up isn’t doable; we offer graphic & web design in Edmonton, but many of our clients are outside of the city. [...]

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