If you’re a complete newbie when it comes to WordPress, don’t worry. It’s pretty straight forward and once you get the hang of it it’s a breeze. To log in to the dashboard, the backend of WordPress where all the fun happens, navigate to your site and put /wp-admin at the end of your web address. (http://yoursite.com/wp-admin). Log in with the username and password you’ve been provided with from us or the person who installed WordPress for you. (If that was you, well done!) The first time you log in, we recommend you go to Users in the left-hand menu and change your password.
Creating a New Post
In the dashboard menu on the left-hand side, choose Posts – Add New.
A page called Add New Post appears.
Add the post title in the skinny box. Choose a title that reflects on your content in the post and clearly communicates to the reader what the post is about.
Add your text in the big fat box underneath.
You can format your text using the toolbar just above the text box. If you hover over the symbols there, you can see what they do. If you only see one row of options, click on the ‘Show kitchen sink’ button, which is the button farthest to the right with two rectangles on it.
You can then see the box where you can choose to use a heading instead of paragraph text for example.
When you press Enter WordPress automatically start a new paragraph for you. If you want a line break instead, hold down the Shift key when you press Enter.
On the right-hand side you have a few boxes. The top one is called Publish, and here you can Save Draft if you want to keep working on this post later, Preview at any time which will bring up a new window, or Publish, which will make your post visible on your site.
You can also set the post to publish at a certain time, useful if you’re going away for example, and want to continuously add content to your site when you’re not there to physically do it yourself.
Use the little Edit link next to where it says Publish immediately and set your date and time there.
Format
Here you choose what kind of post you want to make. An image post will show the featured image in your post for example, and if you want to make a video post, choose that option and then hit Save draft, and you will get a box underneath your text box where you can add your YouTube link (for example) to make the video play from your website and be prettily incorporated in your post. (Choose embed underneath the YouTube video you want to show and copy and paste this code)
Choosing Quote (hit Save draft) brings up a quote box. Have a play with these settings and click Preview to see what the post looks like. These things will vary from theme to theme so the best thing is to explore.
Categories
Categories are important because it’s how your readers will browse your content. If you don’t choose a category, WordPress assigns the post to Uncategorized, which we don’t want. Most of the time, posts should have only one category.
You can add another category at any time by clicking the Add New Category link. You can also create sub categories by assigning a parent category, if you have a lot of categories.
Tags
Tags are similar to Categories in the way that they are labels that make it easier for your readers to browse and find what they want. The main difference is that whilst you should only have one Category per post, you should have several Tags. Choose 5-10 Tags for your post. It can be several words such as a name, or single words. Write them in the box and separate Tags with a comma. Then just press Enter and they appear underneath. You can add more and just press Enter again.
Kepp them short and precise, and re-use tags that relate to the same topic from other posts. Don’t use a tag that is the same as your Category.
To spare your poor fingers having to write the tags every time you can click Choose from the most used tags and just click on the relevant ones there.
Featured Image
Always choose a featured image. It shows on most index pages and the front page of your blog. The themes differ on this bit, sometimes you can choose to exclude the featured image from showing up in the post, so if you want to show that particular image you have to also add it to your text box as well. Just explore the options and hit Preview to see what the post looks like.
Images in post
To add an image in your text, click the Insert Media button which is located just above the text box. You can choose from your media library in WordPress, or upload a new image from your computer.
Once it’s uploaded, you can write a caption that will show underneath your image. It’s a good idea to spend the time to add a title, alternate text, and description in this box as well because that means people can find your site via google images.
To add a link in your text, select the text you want to be clickable, and then click the Insert link button in the toolbar above the text box.
