My WordPress dashboard looks different that what I see in your WordPress video tutorials. I still have the left menu and upper toolbar, though the body is completely different. No customizable boxes or screen options or help tabs. I do have a blue "WordPress Starter Available!" box and below two boxes that say View Site and Change Design. Then below another box that says Manage Social Media. Again nothing like the WordPress 101 video tutorials?
1 Answers
Shawn Hesketh answered 4 years ago
Hi Sterling,
I record our videos using a clean install of the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org. That means our videos represent the out-of-the-box experience you should be seeing if you've got a new WordPress website.
There are a couple of reasons why your WordPress dashboard may look different from our videos.
First, did you sign up for a site at WordPress.com? If so, your dashboard will look different, because the good folks at WordPress.com have decided to create a proprietary dashboard and editing experience that you won't find anywhere else. There are actually a number of differences between the software at WordPress.com versus the version the rest of the world uses at WordPress.org.
We cover those differences in this free video, which is part of our WordPress 101 course:
https://wp101.com/tutorial/wordpress-com-wordpress-org/
If your site is not hosted by WordPress.com, there are still other reasons your dashboard may look different than what you see in our videos.
If your site was built by someone else, it's entirely possible that they've installed one or more third-party plugins. Some plugins add additional menu items to the primary navigation menu on the left-hand side. This doesn't mean your site is significantly different than that of the version in our videos. All of the core functions of WordPress are still present, as covered in our videos. But you may have additional options available to you.
Finally, if you or someone else built your site using a third-party page builder plugin or theme, it's possible you'll see a completely different editing experience. Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi and other page builder plugins utilize a completely proprietary editing experience, so you'll want to reference the documentation for those page builders to learn how to edit your content.
Again, our videos cover the basics of ‘vanilla’ WordPress — the same version of WordPress you can download yourself from WordPress.org, or that you'll find if your site is hosted by any Managed WordPress host other than WordPress.com.
Hope this helps to clarify, but if you have further questions, feel free to follow up any time!