After installing WordPress in your WebHost and doing a couple of basic things to set it up, you are ready to create content. One of the primary ways to create and share content for your visitors is with the help of posts. These are the articles that you see on every blog site. They can contain text, images, and links, can be grouped into categories and tags, and also can be discussed on with the help of the commenting feature.
To create posts in WordPress:
- Log into your administration panel.
- In the admin menu, click on Posts > Add New.
You will be taken to the Add New Post page. It is from this area that you compose your post and add everything into it. You can see different text boxes, check boxes and buttons to create and publish your blog post.
Here are the important ones:
- Post Title: Enter it in the input box seen at the top that says Enter title here. It will be the title of your article.
- Post Body: It is the large rectangular input box. Enter all the text, images, and media in this area. You can type in directly or paste in articles after you compose them in external editors like Word. There are different formatting options in the visual editor that you see right above the post compose box. The buttons and options there are quite helpful to format and style how your post looks. There is also a Text editor tab that you can see right next to the Visual tab. It is useful if you know HTML and if you want to edit the code directly.
- Add Media: You can see the Add Media button right above the post compose box. Press on it to get the Insert Media dialog where you can upload or insert previously uploaded media from your site or from an external URL where the media is hosted.
- Categories: Select a category or create one. It is helpful to group posts into categories. Multiple categories can be selected for a single post.
- Tags: These are like categories but used more as keywords for posts. They are displayed by themes in clickable form. Separate tags with commas as you enter them.
- Featured Image: The main image to go with your post. If your theme supports it, then it will be displayed on the website when the posts are listed.
- Permalink: Permalink for the post will appear once you begin typing your title and post content. You can see it right under the title and above the visual editor. You can click on the edit button to edit the actual link or slug for the blog post.
- Publish Area: You will see a header called Publish. You can save the post as a draft or publish it from there. When sending it out, you can also schedule it or publish it immediately.
There are other additional options for the posts. If you do not see any one of the above-mentioned options, you can click on the Screen Options link on the top right. It will bring up settings that you can activate in the post compose area by checking the check boxes.
The other options not mentioned above are:
- Excerpt: A summary of the post that your theme can use.
- Send Trackback: Let others know that you have linked to them.
- Custom Fields: Special fields that can be used by your theme for extra functionality.
- Discussions: Post wise option to enable comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks.
- Comments: Add a comment or edit them for the current post.
- Slug: It’s used to configure the permalink as discussed before.
- Author: Choose an author or user registered in your blog to which you accredit the post.
The other options Layout and Additional settings that you see in Screen Options are related to the display elements. There might be additional options based on the plugins that you have installed.
To edit posts in WordPress:
- Log in to your administration Dashboard.
- Click on Posts > All Posts.
- Hover over the row of your listed post and click on the Edit You can navigate through pages or use the search and listing feature to find the exact post to edit.
You will be redirected to the post edit page. It is the same one as the post compose page but it already contains all the text, media and other information that you have entered before. You can change anything and remove any elements that you see not fitting. All the options available in it are the same that you see while composing a post and they have been mentioned before. Once you are done with updating the post, you will want to press the Update button to save the changes.
Also, in the Posts > All Posts page, you will see a Quick Edit link right next to the Edit link as you hover over the row. This feature allows you to quickly change the title, slug, date, category, and tags. It also allows you to password protect them or make the posts private. There is also a feature to disable/enable comments, pingbacks and change the post status to sticky it or turn it back to published, pending review or draft status.
The Quick Edit feature can also be used in bulk editing. Activate the checkboxes right next to multiple posts that you want to edit. Click on the Bulk Actions dropdown and choose the Edit option and then click the Apply button. You will see that now you are able to do the ‘quick edit’ of multiple posts at the same time.
Finally, use the Trash link or select multiple posts and choose the Move to trash option from the dropdown and click on the Apply button to delete them. They will be moved to the trash from where you can restore them or remove them permanently.