When I first logged into my hosting account, there was no such folder as mydomain.com. I was puzzled where to upload files of my site. I entered Files — > File Manager

I knew that I had to upload it to the root folder, but there was no root folder either.

I found out that it was called otherwise; in most cases it is called the “public_html” folder. Everything stored in this folder can be seen on the web. Not every file, of course, only the files which can be “read” by web browser. There is also the folder called “www” which is simply the link to the “public_html” folder.

Everything I uploaded to the public_html reflected immediately in the “www” folder and appeared in the web. On the contrary, the domain, for example, www.mydomain.com, showed the content of the www folder which was in my hosting account (in fact, it was the content of my public_html folder).

There were also other folders in my cPanel File Manager, like “mail”, where all my emails were stored, or “etc”. I was careful not to touch the default folders of my account.

Where is the admin panel?

Well, the hardest part – the installation – was over, so I was about to write interesting and unique posts in my blog. I typed in the address – testing.2by2host.com/myblog/ and saw the home page with the default post “Hello, world!”. There was no place to type in text. So, I logged in as admin (using the password I received during the installation) and saw the link to the administration area of the site. When I entered it, I saw the hidden part of wordpress site from where I could manage my blog. Nobody except me and some people whom I give permissions, can enter it. The admin panel can be accessed either through the sidebar link (1) or through the address line by simply typing in wp-admin part (2): www.testing.2by2host.com/myblog/wp-admin/. All the content of my blog can be deleted and edited from the admin panel (wp-admin) so it should be thoroughly protected.

Admin area: let’s have a look around

Managing blog with wordpress admin area is very simple as it has intuitive interface.

At the top there was the name of my site and the “Visit site” link (1). I could also enter my profile and edit it (change the password to the admin area, add more information from the top of the admin panel (2). There is also a quick way to publish posts and other content on your web blog (3).

In the left sidebar I found the main navigation menu (4). Each main function in the menu has a hovering arrow which is presented on hovering a mouse upon it. By clicking it, the submenu for each function drops down. The central part of the admin area is called work area (5). There is also the footer with various links to wordpress community. The work area is different in different pages of your admin panel. Dashboard is the home page for your admin panel. The dashboard work area shows the recent activity in your blog, allows to quickly access all your posts, pages, comments, and to quickly publish posts. It is shown on screenshot.

The problem of spam registrations is urgent with WordPress as the registration in WordPress was made very simple and can be used by spam bots to automatically register on your blog. This can be dangerous from the point of view of your blog security. Besides, spam registrations are really annoying.

The best way to fight against spam registrations is to disable registrations on your blog. Although I have disabled registrations on my blog, I could still manually register anyone from the admin panel and give the new user the suitable role.

But if you have an important reason for other users to register themselves, you should protect your blog from spam registrations by adding the necessary plugins.

Here are some of them from the plugin directory at wordpress.org.

1. The “invisible defender” plugin is said to work well. The registration is performed as usual. The invisible lines that are added to the registration form will be filled by spam bots, but not by humans. Such registrations are disallowed.

You can configure settings in your admin panel in the “Settings” subpanel.

2. The “Block-Spam-By-Math” plugin adds line with a simple math to the registration form.

There are all sorts of similar ways to add complexity to the registration form (captcha pictures, words) realized through different plugins. Just find one suitable for you.

3. The other plugin to protect my site from spam registrations is WP-invites.

It generates code which is stored at the plugin folder. The person who wants to register must first get the code from the site admin and type it in during the registration.

Its interface can be accessed through the “Plugins” section.

A new line is added to the registration form.