WordPress is the number one blogging platform in the world. It’s also the most popular choice for powering websites. According to recent estimates, WordPress has been downloaded over 50 million times and is used by millions of people across the world.
One of the advantages of WordPress is how easy it is to use. Adding posts and images is straight forward and quick once you know what you’re supposed to do. If you’ve never posted an article on WordPress before, the following steps will show you how to add a post to your blog.
I’ve put in links to several of our other posts that explain other aspects of a post in detail
Steps to Adding a Post
1. Sign into your WordPress account using your account information. You’ll be prompted to provide your name and password. Key these in and sign in.
2. Logging into your WordPress account takes you to the WordPress dashboard. You’ll find different options on your dashboard in tabs located on the left side of the page. Click on the Post tab and then, to create a new post, click the Add New Post tab. It’ll connect you to the post creation page.
3. Check the top of your screen. You should see the words ADD NEW POST overhead. There should also be a writing panel beneath. If you can see this you’re on the edit page. You’re doing great, that’s just where you should be.
4. The broad writing panel that takes up most of the center of the page is the area where you type in your text. WordPress interprets keystrokes the same as other standard editors so you won’t need to worry about inserting page breaks, quote tags or any special code while writing. But, if you’re familiar with html scripts, there’s an option for you to switch to the HTML mode. As well as typing, you can also paste text into the content box.
5. Above the content area is a section for the title of your post. You don’t need to worry about formatting your title since WordPress automatically wraps anything you type within the content box with an H1 tag. You can also add subheadings to the actual content using the dropdown selection option (under paragraph). Alternatively, you can switch to the HTML view by clicking on the HTML tab at the top right of the content area and wrapping the targeted text with the heading tags.
Editing your Post
6. At the top of the content area, you’ll find editing tools with familiar tags such as the bold button (B), a button for italics (I), one for underlining (U) and others. You can use these to edit your post.
7. Above the content area, you’ll see a section with the words “permalink” by the side. The permalink is the URL link that is connected to each of your posts. WordPress automatically creates a permalink for each post. This link is very important because it’s the address for people and for the search engines to find your page. You can change this link by clicking the edit button.The default option is rather complicated with a lot of non-alphanumeric characters. You can however create attractive permalinks by editing your permalink settings and choosing to name them with more familiar options such as the month or post name.
8. To add pictures to your blog, click on the picture icon beside the UPLOAD/INSERT tag. It’s located above the content area. Clicking the icon will launch a window that you can use in uploading your files. See our post on How To Use The WordPress Media Library for a more detailed explanation on using images and the Want Images For Your Blog post for where to get images.
9. At right hand side of the content area, you’ll find a selection option for categories and another section for Tags beneath it. WordPress uses its categories and tags to arrange and group different posts making it easier for surfers to find related content. You can select from any of the existing categories and tags or add new ones before posting your article.
Draft or Post
You have two options for your post now that you have it written. On the right hand side of the Add New Post page, you will see the Publish box. You can either publish your post by clicking on the blue button, or you can click the Save Draft button to post it later. And you should always take a look at you post buy using the Preview button. You will be surprised at how many times you may want to change the layout of your article, move an image, or change the spacing.
Editing with Plugins
There are several useful plugins that you can use to manage your post.
A good example is the WP SEO plugin by Yoast. The WordPress SEO plugin offers a lot of useful features that you can use in improving the search engine optimization of your page.
This plugin can help you in creating content that is focused around particular keywords. You can also use the snippet preview to see what your post will look like when it appears in search engine results. Other useful features include its support for pretty permalinks, XML Sitemaps, RSS Optimization and the site’s meta content. To use the WordPress SEO Plugin, you’ll need to install it.
The Meta data on a site is not the same as the normal content found on a page because it does not actually appear on the website. Instead, you’ll find it when you search for your site using a search engine like Google. The Meta description provides a clearer overview of a site’s content on the search engine results page. WordPress does not support the manual entry of Meta tags which is why you need a plugin like the WP SEO to achieve this.
There you go. Now you know the basics of how to add a post to your blog. Now get going!
Sources
Wpbeginner.com – How To Add a New Post in WordPress and Utilize All the Features
Siteground.com – How To Add and Publish a Post in WordPress
WordPress.org – Pretty Permalinks
Wordpress.org – Plugins: WordPress-SEO
About Beth Kelley