• Topics

  • Writing Posts

    Posts are the entries that display in reverse chronological order on your home page. In contrast to pages, posts usually have comments fields beneath them and are included in your site’s RSS feed.

    To write a post:

    1. Log in to your WordPress Administration Panel (Dashboard).
    2. Click the Posts tab.
    3. Click the Add New Sub Tab
    4. Start filling in the blanks.
    5. As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. Each of these sections is explained below.
    6. When you are ready, click Publish.

    Note: If you previously wrote your text using a word processor, like Microsoft Word, you will transfer lots of formatting when copying and pasting the text into your Wordpress editor. It will produce much unnecessary code (click to “html view” to see). To avoid this first paste your text into a simple text editor like Notepad (all Microsoft operating systems include the Notepad program). Or ‘Text Edit’ if using a Mac. This will strip all the formatting from Word into pure text. Then copy and paste from Notepad into Wordpress. You will now need to add your formatting as you would like it displayed on your website.

    Descriptions of Post Fields

    Title
    The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post.
    Post Editing Area
    The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site. You can use either the Visual or the HTML view to compose your posts.
    Preview button
    Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it.
    Publish box
    Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.
    Publish box
    Visibility – This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)
    Save
    Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.
    Publish
    Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.
    Categories
    The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, people have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to Posts > Categories.

    Adding Thumbnails to your News Feed

    If you have a news feed set up on your website, you will see a box like this below the text edit area. This makes it easy to add thumbnails to your feed page. eg. http://webwise.com.au/news/

    All you need to do is;

    Click the browse button and upload the image.

    * Please note, wordpress does not like weird characters in the name of the file you are uploading. YOu can see if there was an issue uploading as the image will not show in teh image area – even though it may say the upload was successful.

    So to ensure this will not be an issue, please make the image file names very simple. eg. apples.com  not apples.-2.l.jpg