Posted on April 7th, 2010WordPress has become the most popular content management system in the world over the past five years, although it was originally meant to be a blogging platform. Users around the world now use WordPress to setup and manage websites in nearly every niche in existence. The most appealing aspect of WordPress is undoubtedly the countless plugins that can be used to modify and enhance the functionality of the WordPress interface. Upon first using WordPress, most people are impressed at how simple the interface is designed and how accessible all of the information and settings pertaining to their website is.
Flexibility of WordPress
As you begin to use the platform as a content management system to manage a website instead of a blog, you’ll quickly realize that there are many features that do not allow for simple management of static pages that are necessary in the construction of a regular website. This means your latest post will always appear at the top of your home page. Although this seems like a game breaker, the fact is, there is a plugin for this that lets you make any post a sticky and place it at any point on the page. There is even a plugin that lets you remove the date form the side of the post, to completely remove the blog look and feel. This is just a small example of the flexibility of WordPress.
The Dynamic Nature of a WordPress Database
In order to maintain the above flexibility, WordPress needs to store all your site’s data in a dynamic MySQL database. This means your files are located in a secure database that cannot be modified externally, other than modifying it within your hosting control panel. This means you cannot access your site’s pages within an FTP client, and instead you must access the database directly within your control panel’s MyPHPAdmin section. There you will find all of the WordPress installations you have active on your server.
Adding Directories to Your WordPress Website
Since you cannot directly access your sites web pages through FTP, you cannot upload new information to your site’s pages through an FTP client. Instead you have to upload the page or post within your site’s WordPress admin. You can however upload completely new pages to a new directory on your site. By creating a directory for your site in your FTP client you can easily add new pages to that directory and then link to those pages within the internal structure of your WordPress site. This is useful when you would like to create reference popup pages within your site that can be linked to via anchor text within your site’s articles.
To create a new directory for your site in your FTP client, simply left-click any blank area in the bottom of the remote side of the FTP client (the bottom quadrant of the right side), then click on “new directory” or “create new directory”. The exact option will vary depending on your FTP client, but you see this command in the left-click menu. Then name the directory and you’re done! Now you can upload custom web pages to that directory that you can link to in your WordPress site!