A Simple Guide To Get You Blogging
- Log in to WordPress
- The WordPress Dashboard
- Creating Your Blog Post
- Giving Your Blog A Title
- Visual / HTML Editor
- The Kitchen Sink
- Creating Headings
- Adding Images to Your Blog
- Categorising Your Blog Post
- Tagging Your Blog Post
- Publish Your Blog
Log in to WordPress
To log in to WordPress you must enter the domain name of your website followed by /wp-admin.
For example: www.eggywebdesign.com/wp-admin
This will take you to the WordPress login screen.
Screenshot of the WordPress Login Screen
Enter your Username and Password into the appropriate boxes to enter the WordPress Dashboard.
The WordPress Dashboard
Screenshot of the WordPress Dashboard
The dashboard for WordPress can be slightly intimidating if you have not used it before. There are a lot of things you can do to your website using the WordPress Dashboard, but for the purpose of this tutorial we will concentrate on creating and publishing blog posts.
Creating Your Blog Post
Open the Posts menu by clicking the link at the top left hand side of the Dashboard – highlighted below.
Click the highlighted area to open the Posts menu
This will take you to the Posts page and expand the Post options as shown below.
Screenshot of WordPress Posts page
To add a new post, click Add New, as highlighted below.
Click the highlighted area to add a new Post
This will take you to the Add New Post page – as shown below.
The WordPress Add New Posts page. Click to view full screen
Giving Your Blog A Title
Fairly straightforward, just type the Title of your Blog Post into the box that says Enter Title Here as shown below.
Used to create a title for you blog
When you have done this click Save Draft, seen in the Publish box on the right hand side of the Add New Post page.
Save your Posts regularly to avoid losing any unsaved work
When you have saved your Post you can click Preview to see how it will appear in the browser. You may also notice the Publish button, which will publish the blog to your website but it is advisable to wait until you have finished the article before publishing it.
Visual / HTML Editor
The Visual / HTML editor allows you to switch between a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor and a code editor. Since this tutorial is aimed at learners we shall assume that it would be best to work in the Visual editor. Make sure you are using the Visual editor by selecting the appropriate tab.
Select the Visual editor using the tabs as shown
The Kitchen Sink
The Kitchen Sink allows you to format the style of your blog. You can toggle it on / off using The Kitchen Sink button as shown below. For the purpose of this tutorial it is best to have extra options available.
Click this button to toggle The Kitchen Sink on / off
Creating Headings
Type your heading text and select the text by dragging your mouse over it as shown below.
Creating a heading
The formatting used is the default Paragraph. We can change this by selecting Heading from the drop down menu as shown below.
Choose your formatting from the drop-down menu
The formatting has been changed to Heading 1
Adding Images to Your Blog
The functionality of adding images to a WordPress blog is very similar to adding images to Facebook, if you can do that then you should have no trouble with this section of the tutorial.
Please note that if you using large image files will take a long time to load. Prior to uploading your images you should resize them. You can resize images using a program such as Windows Live Photo Gallery, which you can download for free using the following link.
Download Windows Live Photo Gallery
When you are ready to upload your images click on the area highlighted below.
Use this button to start adding images to your blog
Clicking the Add An Image button will take you to the following screen.
Choose your file then press upload to add it to your blog
Once you have uploaded you image you can format it using WordPress. The main thing to change is usually the Title attribute, which is visible by the user when they scroll over your image.
Format your image before you insert into post
When you have finished formatting your image click Insert Into Post and it will now appear in your blog.
If you wish to edit your image after adding it to you blog just click on it and the Edit and Delete options will become available.
The Edit & Delete buttons for images in your blog
Categorising Your Blog Post
WordPress allows you to categorise your blog posts. This allows you to display a list of categories, when the user selects a category all blog posts from that category are displayed.
You can choose from a list of categories you have already used or add new categories using the Categories section at the right hand side of the Add New Post page in WordPress.
The Categories box – found on the right hand side of the page
When categorising your posts I find a good analogy is to think of the movie E.T. The category that would fall into would be Science Fiction.
Tagging Your Blog Post
You can use tags to further identify the subject of your blog posts. Expanding on the analogy of E.T, which we categorised as Science Fiction, we could use the following tags:
- Steven Spielberg
- Extra Terrestrial
- Children
- Alien
Tags can be posted using the Post Tags section on the right hand side of the Add New Post page in WordPress.
Post Tags – on the right hand side of the Add New Post page in WordPress
Publish You Blog
All of the content is ready, you have proof-read your blog post, added all your images and it’s all looking great. The only thing left to do is get it on your website for all to see. Just click Publish and you blog will be posted on your website.
Click Publish to share your blog with the World
Don’t forget that you can go back and edit your blog at any time if there is anything you wish to edit.
If anyone has any questions or feedback about posting WordPress blogs then please feel free to comment below.
Happy blogging!
