Having got everything set up now’s the time to start writing!
The WordPress back office (admin screens) can seem a little daunting at first, but you can get started very quickly without having to know your way around in detail.
There are still many functions in WordPress that I’ve not yet used – some of them because of the nature of my blogs and their contents, some because I simply haven’t needed to.
But, as with most things, the best way to start is to jump right in.
Writing Your First Post
Log in to your WordPress admin screens and you’ll come to your Dashboard.
In the ‘Posts’ section you’ll see the link to ‘Add New':
Clicking this will take you to your Add New Post screen:
Step 1: Start by writing your title. As you become more experienced choose titles that include the keywords that indicate what your article is about. This will help the search engines find your blog more easily.
After writing your title a new field will appear under the title field showing the permalink for the article. You can edit this if you like or just accept the version WordPress produces.
Step 2: Make sure you’re in the Visual View. Unless you’re ready to write your posts in HTML you should make sure you’re in the Visual View. If necessary click the ‘Visual’ tab at the right, above the window for writing your post content. You should see a screen with toolbars as in the picture above.
You should experiment with the toolbar buttons to see what they each do – make yourself familiar with the options available.
Step 3: Write your article. In the Visual View you can write posts in exactly the same way as you use a normal word processing package. Write your article in the post content area (see above).
Step 4: Links and Images. Add links or images using the buttons in the toolbar.
To add a link follow these steps:
- Highlight the text that you want to make into a link
- Click the ‘Insert/Edit Link’ button
- In the small window that opens type in the URL in the first field
- Select which window you want the link to open in from the drop down menu (second field)
- Type in a title for the link that will be displaid to readers when they put their mouse over the link
- Click ‘Insert’
To add an image follow this step-by-step process for adding an image to your article.
Step 5: Categories and Tags. When you’ve finished writing your post content you need to add some tags (1 in the picture above) and a category (2 in the picture above).
Tags and categories are the filing system that helps the search engines and readers find related articles on your blog. They tie related articles together.
For example, I have a category on my blog called WordPress. I place every article I write on WordPress into the WordPress category.
Some of the articles I write on WordPress are about WordPress plugins, and some are about WordPress themes.
So articles that are on WordPress plugins I put into the WordPress category and tag them as plugins, and those that are on themes go into the WordPress category tagged as themes.
Organising your articles in this way will help readers and search engines to find their way around your blog – which is good for building readership.
Step 6: Preview your article. Once you’ve finished writing your article you can click the Preview button (3 above). This will display a preview of your post exactly as it will appear when you publish it. It will open in a new window.
If you’re happy with everything close the window.
Step 7: Publish your article. If you want to publish your article immediately (make it available for people to read on-line) click the publish button (4 above). If you prefer, you can schedule it to be published later.
If you want to do this click the ‘edit’ link above the publish button, next to ‘Publish immediately’.
From there you can select a date and time, for WordPress to publish your post.
Step 8: Congratulations! Once you’ve either published your post or set up a time for it to be published you’re done – you’ve written and posted your first article!
Other options
Some of the other options that are available to you include:
- Trackbacks: If you want to link to another non-WordPress blog put the relevant URL into this box. The blog owner will be notified that you’ve linked to them. If you’re linking to another WordPress blog just do so within your post as I’ve described above. WordPress will automatically notify the blog owner.
- Excerpt: If your theme supports excerpts you can write a short excerpt of your article here. This will be displaid to visitors on the front page of your blog with a link through to your full article
- Discussion: Checking the two boxes here will enable comments and trackbacks on your article.
That’s enough to get your first post written and published – congratulations!
The best way to learn about the other options from here is to experiment with them. If anything goes wrong you can always delete it and start again.
Finally, some plugins and themes will add extra fields to this screen, giving you extra options. As and when you install them the options they offer will be made available to you here.
OK – next step is to take a look at the importance of content and some ways to produce it.