Log in to WordPress and click on Posts. To write a new post, click on Add New…, to edit an existing one, click on its title in the list.
Using the WordPress editor is quite similar to writing an email and most of the buttons will seem quite familiar. If you need a little extra help, hovering the cursor over the little editor buttons will show some help text. Here are some extra tips for a few of the less obvious editor features which I find useful:-
Extra Editor Tips
- Click on
to see a second row of formatting tools - Be careful if you Paste from Word – If you have already written the content in Word, copying and pasting is fine…. but make sure you use
to paste, so that the formatting is stripped out…. Word adds a lot of extra stuff in the background, which can mess up a web page layout (or even just make it unnecessarily large in size, which is not good from a Search Engine point of view). - Bold, italic and sub-headers – Use the
dropdown as well as B, I etc, to add sub-headers or other formatting. To see how they are going to turn out, use Preview…. because the WordPress editor does not render these using the styles as defined for your website. - Links – To create a link to another page or website, select the text which you want to be “clickable”, then click on and type or paste the destination URL.
to see a second row of formatting tools
to paste, so that the formatting is stripped out…. Word adds a lot of extra stuff in the background, which can mess up a web page layout (or even just make it unnecessarily large in size, which is not good from a Search Engine point of view).
dropdown as well as B, I etc, to add sub-headers or other formatting. To see how they are going to turn out, use Preview…. because the WordPress editor does not render these using the styles as defined for your website.
and type or paste the destination URL. Three Things to Remember When Adding a Post
- Post title – make sure you give your post a good, key-word rich title. After you have saved the post (even as a draft), you can change its URL (the “link” to the page) – this can sometimes be useful if your title is long.
- Categories – remember to choose a category for your post – the Category selection box is in the right-hand column.
- The More tag – you can use this icon to create an excerpt of your content which will appear on “summary” type pages, such as the Blog front page, rather than the full content. Position the cursor in the edit window where you want the content to be cut off and click on the icon.
to create an excerpt of your content which will appear on “summary” type pages, such as the Blog front page, rather than the full content. Position the cursor in the edit window where you want the content to be cut off and click on the icon.