Website Playground

The Path

The Path

Work down this list in order. Each item says what to do, where to do it, and how you will know it worked. Check items off on the My Progress page as you finish them. Nothing stops you jumping ahead — but if something later feels confusing, this list is how you find the step to come back to.

Level 1 — WordPress

  1. Look around the Dashboard. Every menu on the left, one by one. Hover, open, back out. You cannot break anything by looking.
  2. Take your first snapshot. Plugins → WP Reset → Snapshots → Create snapshot. Name it “before I touch anything”. This is your undo button for the whole site.
  3. Make a backup. UpdraftPlus → Backup Now. Watch what it backs up: files and the database. A WordPress site is always those two halves.
  4. Build a page. Pages → Add New. Title, some text, a heading, an image. Publish it and view it.
  5. Build a post and spot the difference. Posts are dated blog entries; pages are permanent. Make one of each.
  6. Menus. Appearance → Editor / Menus: put your page in the site menu. Visit the site and click it.
  7. Change the theme. Appearance → Themes. Preview a new theme before activating (Live Preview). Notice what changes and what does not: content stays, looks change.
  8. Install a plugin yourself. Plugins → Add New. Search, install, activate. Then read its settings page. This is the exact skill most site work is built on.
  9. Users & roles. Users → Add New. Make a test user as an Editor, log in as them in a private browser window, and see what they can and cannot do. Roles are how real sites stay safe with many hands on them.
  10. Run updates — the safe way. Snapshot first. Then Dashboard → Updates: one plugin at a time, check the site after each. That order is the whole lesson.
  11. Check Site Health. Tools → Site Health. Read every item. Some are real problems, some are suggestions — learning which is which is the skill.
  12. Break something on purpose. Go to the Fix-It Challenges page and do Challenge 1.

When something breaks (it will)

  • Stream (left menu) — a timeline of everything that changed, in order. The last thing changed before the break is suspect #1.
  • Query Monitor (top admin bar) — shows real errors, slow parts, and which plugin caused them.
  • Tools → Site Health — plain-language diagnosis.
  • White screen / locked out? WordPress emails a recovery-mode link to the admin email. It pauses the broken plugin so you can get back in and fix it.
  • Nuclear option: restore your WP Reset snapshot or your UpdraftPlus backup. No shame in it — restoring cleanly is a professional skill.

Level 2 — Code

When Level 1 feels comfortable, start the Level 2 — Code page: HTML → CSS → JavaScript → PHP → the database, using this same site and its child theme, which is already active so your code survives theme updates.

Level 3 — Hosting & Command Line

Then Level 3 — Hosting & Command Line: how this site actually reaches the internet — domain, DNS, SSL, server — and a sandboxed command line where you can practice on this site’s real files, still without being able to hurt anything outside the playground.