WordPress Help – Adding Posts & Pages

One of the best things you can do to ensure your website gets a steady stream of traffic is to provide fresh, original content on a regular basis.  If you have a WordPress site, then adding content (in the form of posts and pages) is easy!

First, log in to your WordPress backend by going to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin.  When you log in you will be taken to your dashboard.  To create a new post, expand the “post” menu in the column on the left.  Click on “add new.”  This will bring you to the screen where you can create your post.

In the bar where it says “Enter title here,” type in the title of your blog post.  The box underneath is where you can type the body of your entry.  In the toolbar above that box you will see icons that will allow you to do things that any word processing program will allow you to do, such as bold the text, create italics, create bulleted lists, adjust the alignment of the text, insert links, and spell check.

When you are done with your post you can see what it will look like on your blog by clicking on the “preview” button on the right-hand side of the page.  When you are happy with your post simply click the “publish” button on the right-hand side of the page and your post will be made public.

Now that you know the basics of publishing a blog post, let’s talk about some of the finer details.

Notice that on the right-hand side of the page, under the “preview” and “publish” buttons is a section called “categories.”  This feature allows you to assign specific categories to your blog posts.  For example, if your blog is about cooking, you might have categories such as desserts, appetizers, and entrees.

Each time you create a new blog post you can tag it with the appropriate category.  This way, people who visit your blog can search for all of the posts in a certain category, and thus quickly be able to find the exact posts they are looking for.

To create a new category, simple click on the “add new category” link in the categories section, type in the name of the category you want, and click the “add new category” button.  When you create your post, just click the checkbox next to the category or categories that you want that blog post to appear in.  You can choose as many categories as you want.

You can also create sub-categories if you want.  For example, if you have the category “desserts,” you may want to create a sub-category under desserts called “chocolate desserts.”  You can do this by clicking the “add new category” link, typing in the name of your new category, and then clicking the “parent category” dropdown menu.  Highlight the main category (in this example, “desserts”) that you want to a make a sub-category for, and then click the “add new category” button.

Now look on the right-hand side of the page again, under the categories box.  You will see a box called “post tags.”  This is where you can assign specific tags, or keywords, to your blog post.  For example, if your blog post is about shrimp appetizers, some tags may be “shrimp,” “cocktail,” and “appetizer.”  Tags are used to describe your post in more detail than you can accomplish with categories alone.

Along with categories, tags help search engines to find and index your blog so that it can appear in search engine results for the appropriate keywords.

Beneath the box where you type in the body of your blog post is a box where you can type in an excerpt of you post.  Some themes include a space for a blog excerpt, so if you choose such a theme for you blog you should write a short summary of your post in this box.  This is an optional step.

If you scroll down you’ll see a box labeled “discussion.”  This is where you can allow or disallow comments on this blog post.  Simply check or uncheck the box next to “allow comments” depending on whether or not you want to allow people to leave comments on this blog post.  This rule will apply to this blog post only, not your blog as a whole.

In the “publish” box in the upper right-hand side of the screen you’ll see an option that says “publish immediately: edit.”  If you click on “edit” you can actually schedule when you want this blog post to be published.  That means you can set up the blog post and then schedule it to publish sometime in the future.  This is a great feature if you are going to be on vacation or unavailable for some reason but still need to publish your posts at a certain time.  Or can you can set up all your posts in your free time and schedule them to post themselves when you know you won’t have time to do it yourself.

Now let’s talk about adding a page to your website.  Pages are for static content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” your privacy policy, etc.  Pages do not have to appear in chronological order the way blog posts do.  Unlike posts, pages do not have categories or tags.

From your dashboard expand the “pages” menu in the left-hand column.  Click on “add new.”  In some ways, adding a new page is similar to adding a new blog post.  You can type in the title of your page in the box that says “Enter title here.”  The large box beneath that is where you type in the body text of your page.  Again, the toolbar attached to this box allows you to do things such as bold or italicize text, adjust the alignment, create links, and spell check.

In the “page attributes” box on the right-hand side of the page you can choose your page template and which order you want your pages to appear in.

As with your posts, you can click on the “preview” button to see what your page will look like, and then the “publish” button to make the page available to the public.  You can also schedule when your page will be published in the same way that you can schedule blog posts.