Need recommendations to learn simple Wordpress to modify an existing webpage.

What exactly have you inherited - a static website? And you might want to convert it to Wordpress? We need more information to be able to help!

Could you give us a link to the website? It will help us understand what you need help with. Here are some answers to your questions: I Need help...to modify an existing Wordpress webpage. Seeking recommendations of (youtube?) tutorials, basic manuals, etc. A good place to start will be the help pages from Wordpress itself. If your site is hosted by Wordpress (you can tell by looking at the url of the website: if it looks like www.examplename.wordpress.com it is hosted by Wordpress) http://support.wordpress.com/. If your website is hosted on your own space, http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page. A warning: that second support page is considerably more complicated, as it is intended for people who know enough about web design to have done the installation of Wordpress themselves. I don't understand the mindset and terminology of pages, posts, categories. Your website is made up of multiple webpages. Because your site is managed using Wordpress, these pages are dynamically created every time someone visits each page's url. In other words, the content of the page is kept in a database, and when you visit a page, the content is called up from that database. For example, on http://ryanblock.com/, a website which also runs Wordpress, there are three main pages: Content (the main page, also called the index page), About, and Contact. One of those pages, http://ryanblock.com/, is made up of posts. Each post has a title in red, and text below that makes up the post. The title of the post can be clicked on to go to http://ryanblock.com/2009/05/last-years-model-is-just-fine-with-me/. Each post can be assigned to one or more categories. When you click on the name of a category, a page will be displayed that shows http://ryanblock.com/category/tech/. The other pages are not made up of posts. Though their data, too, is kept in a database, they are more like static pages than dynamic pages—they do not change every time a post is written. In Wordpress, you can add any additional static pages that you need. I need to rearrange the home page, adding some pages and changing the layout, add photos (linked to (apparently) pages, in a changing display, etc etc. These questions may or may not be specific to Wordpress; again, it's hard to tell without being able to see the page. I think we will set up a blog one of these days, but most important is to modify the web pages. If your site is organized using posts, you already have a blog—you are just using it in a different way. Is a blog a subset of a web page, or vice versa, or is it all the same? A blog is a type of website: "A website that displays in chronological order the postings by one or more individuals and usually has links to comments on specific postings." All blogs are websites, but all websites are not blogs.

Thank you all! This is all very helpful - I'm beginning to build a mental model. the webpage is , it is in Wordpress, and I don't know which parts are static and which dynamic. I have managed to edit the Info Session post in the top right corner. Is there a way to save a draft as a test, work with that as a test site as ijsbrand suggested above? until it is as we want it to be? and then publish it? A simple way? when I'm just editing text, it seems that the working document is somehow autosaved, and may appear as a draft post, but I'm not sure of that . I see we are hosted by our own space, so the "support page is considerably more complicated, as it is intended for people who know enough about web design to have done the installation of Wordpress themselves " (I'm guessing our webmaster did that). that's kind of daunting.

sorry, another minor question, when I'm logged in to edit the web page, I click on posts and see the three published posts and two drafts, the date listed for the post I edited is the date it was originally published, I think, and not the date for the edited, current version. so there appears to be no way to tell when it was updated? I suppose I could find that in the help,

Cohousing! How cool! I have managed to edit the Info Session post in the top right corner. Is there a way to save a draft as a test, work with that as a test site as ijsbrand suggested above? until it is as we want it to be? and then publish it? A simple way? (http://ask.metafilter.com/127695/Need-recommendations-to-learn-simple-Wordpress-to-modify-an-existing-webpage#1825117) When you write a post for the first time, you should have three buttons available to you: Save and Continue Editing, Save, and Publish. Save and Continue Editing will save your post as a draft, but will not close the editing window. This button is designed to help you save your work as you write a long post. Save will close the editing window and save the post as a draft. Publish will publish it to your site. If you are editing a post that has already been published, only the Save and Continue Editing and Save buttons will remain. These perform in the same way as above, except that all changes will automatically appear in the published post, because it is no longer a draft. when I'm logged in to edit the web page, I click on posts and see the three published posts and two drafts, the date listed for the post I edited is the date it was originally published, I think, and not the date for the edited, current version. so there appears to be no way to tell when it was updated? (http://ask.metafilter.com/127695/Need-recommendations-to-learn-simple-Wordpress-to-modify-an-existing-webpage#1825138) When you edit a post, look for the section labeled Post Timestamp. To view it, you may have to click a plus sign to expand the Post Timestamp menu. You should see a checkbox labeled Edit Timestamp. Check that box, and edit the time to the current time in the fields shown. Once the fields are correctly filled out, hit enter. This will update the time shown on the post. I don't know which parts are static and which dynamic. (http://ask.metafilter.com/127695/Need-recommendations-to-learn-simple-Wordpress-to-modify-an-existing-webpage#1825117) On the main page, the area to the right of the page (which stays the same on all the pages of the website) is called the sidebar. This area is static. The About, Contact Us, and Openings pages (and the 2nd Floor Apartment page under Openings) are all static. The boxes on the Home page marked Community and Common Space display dynamic content. The Community box displays a post titled "Life in Community" and has a link to all posts in the category "Community." The Common Space box displays a post titled "The Big Houe and More" and has a link to all posts in the category "Common Space." You might try a test post in one of those two categories, and see what happens to the box. The website is lovely! Good luck!

Thank you, thank you, ocherdraco. The buttons I see when I edit a published page are slightly different (maybe a different version of Wordpress, I don't know how to tell, or because I'm on a Mac, OS 10.5.7). I get publish or preview changes or delete or update post. Is publish different from update?. If I'm just looking and want to quit without changes, I just go to Dashboard. anyway, I'm getting bolder in trying things, and have set up a test blog of my own to experiment. I have no clue about how to add a new post and get the box to appear on the home page, probably rearranging some. What should I look for in documentation? You've all been very helpful - now I think I need to try a bunch of things. If anyone is willing to get an occasional email, I know I'll have questions, or should I comment again here? I don't have a lot of time to spend on this, so I'm afraid I'll be slow. I have started a tutorial on YouTube, (Chris Abraham, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYi4_COZMU ) I'm so grateful to all of you.