Using the Admin Menu

The admin menu is the vertical bar on the left-hand side of your backend, which you'll see highlighted in red here:

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The admin menu is divided up into eleven submenus, each with its own set of options.

Dashboard
In the Dashboard section, you can view your home screen (shown above) or a list of all the sites of which you are a member. Or you can check your Akismet; statistics or syndicate other sites into your own blog - which is something you probably won't need to worry about.

Posts
In the Posts section, you can display all of your posts in a page view, you can add a new post or you can work with your categories and tags.

Media
In the Media section, you can view your media library, that is, everything from pictures to videos, to audio to PDFs that you have already uploaded, whether it be in a post or on a page, or you can upload new media to your library to use it later.

Links
In the Links section, you manage your links. By links, we don't mean every single link on every single page or post, but a list of sites or other blogs that you link to. In the admin menu, you can view all of the links that you've added, or add some more or categorize your links.

Pages
In the Pages section, you can view or add new pages.

Comments
In the Comments section, you get a more focused view of all the comments on your pages and posts, including pending comments, approved comments, spam or trashed comments and perform bulk actions.

Appearance
In the Appearance section, you can change your theme, manage your widgets, add menus (if your theme supports it), add some custom CSS and change your Gravatar.

Plugins
In the Plugins section, you can activate (or deactivate) a certain number of preinstalled plugins to extend the functionality of your blog.

Users
In the Users section, you can add or remove users from any of the blogs that you have created or on which you are an Administrator.

Tools
In the Tools section, you can import posts and comments from another blog, export your current UMW Blogs blog to a file, delete your blog, map a domain that you own onto your UMW Blogs blog, read the Terms of Service (recommended) or view subscription information for your posts.

Settings
In the Settings section, you can change the title,  tagline,  default time zone, date and time formats and language of your blog. You can also change how your posts are formatted, what shows up on your front page when someone visits your blog, how your media appears on your blog, or your  privacy and  Google Analytics settings. If you've activated some plugins, often times you'll see menu options for them as well.