If you’re familiar with WordPress, this will be pretty basic, so feel free to skim over the details (but please pay special attention to anything that says Editorial Guideline). If you’re new to WordPress, take some time to understand how each of the features work before completing your first post.
How to Login
There’s a “Login” link at the very top right of each blog (next to “About | Write | Advertise”). Use the username and password you have been provided.
How to Write a Post in WordPress
The basic process:
- Login. You will see the WordPress interface.
- Click the tab on the left-hand side for Post.
- Click on Add New.
- Write your post, adding proper formatting including a page break, an image, and links.
- When you are satisfied with your post, click Preview. You will be able to see what the post will look like after publishing (Tip: you can share preview links with others if you needs a second opinion on something).
- Before finishing your post, make sure to go through the editorial checklist. If you are not ready to publish it, hit Save and it will be saved as a draft.
- When your post is completed, in the top right corner of WordPress you will see a box with the words Publish Status. Click on the drop-down menu beneath this and select Pending Review.
- Once you have confirmed that the post has been submitted for review, send an email to your home blog editor and they will sign-off on the post and take it live.
Key Point: One nice thing that WordPress has is a draft mode, so you can save posts and come back to them later. For that reason, please do not write your posts in another program and then copy and paste them into the blogging interface. This will prevent bringing code from that program into your post (and likely doing strange things with it). If you already have an article written in a Word document that you want to use as a blog post, you can copy and paste it into a WordPress using the “Word Clipboard” icon in the “kitchen sink” editor.
How to Write a Post in WordPress: In More Detail
This section will walk you through each of the fields in the WordPress interface that you will need to complete your first post.
Note: This is an appended version of information available from WordPress help documentation. Feel free to use this as a more detailed explanation of all the features of WP.
A. Title Box
Headlines are extremely important in this media. Clever headlines are fun, but it’s more important for readers (and search engines) to know immediately what the post is about. If you have to sacrifice one of these qualities, make it cleverness.
Editorial Guideline: Use capital letters at the beginning of every word in your headline except for conjunctions, articles (a, an, the) and forms of the verb “to be” (is, are, was, were, etc.). Correct example: “A Renewable Energy Network for the Neighborhood” Incorrect example: “A Renewable Energy Network For The Neighborhood.”
B. Text Box and Formatting Buttons: Where the magic happens.
The big blank box is where you enter your writing, links, images, and any information you want to display in your post. Formatting buttons are lined up across the top of the post editing area.
There are two editing screens: Visual and HTML (where you can make changes to HTML code). You can switch between them by clicking on the words “Visual” and “HTML” to the right of the formatting buttons.
Using the Split Post Feature
For every post, you’ll want to make sure things look good on the main blog page (e.g. http://eatdrinkbetter.com).
Editorial Guideline: For shorter posts (<100 words), it’s fine to have the whole post appear on the main blog page. For anything longer, set it so that the first 2 or 3 paragraphs will appear on the main page with a link to the full post at its permalink. Make the break at a point that makes sense (the end of a paragraph, a lead-in to a block quote, etc.), even if that means the front page content is a bit longer. Do not break up a long/block quote between the front page and extended post.
- Place your cursor at the point you want the break to appear
- Click the icon in the toolbar that looks like a small white rectangle on top of a larger white rectangle, 4th from the right.(the “Insert More” tag in the tool bar)
- Your break is set.
Important Note: Do not break up a long quote, blockquote, or a section of text that is bold or italic, between the front page and extended post, or you can cause formatting issues for the entire blog. If you need to add this formatting to text that is before and after the break, do this separately for each section AFTER you have set your break. Highlight the text before the break and add formatting, then highlight the text after the break and add formatting.
Headings
Breaking up a longer post with headings (like we’ve done in this document) is a good idea for readability, search engine traffic, and success on social media sites (people love lists!).
To insert a heading, click the last button on the right part of the toolbar (the one with little colored boxes), which adds a second set of buttons to the toolbar. Select the text for your heading and click the drop-down menu that says “Paragraph.” Select “Heading 3″ and your selected text should now be modified.
Why “Heading 3″? Because the blog’s title is “Heading 1,” the post’s title is “Heading 2,” and so the next logical step in the progression of headings is “Heading 3.” If you need subheadings under this, use “Heading 4.”
One of the most effective ways to use headings is a numbered list. These kinds of posts do particularly well on social media sites like digg. See an example here.
Headings are also important for search engine traffic. The keywords used in each heading can boost the search engine ranking of your post (see the “Title” discussion above). In many cases you might also want to mark the entire first paragraph of your post as a Heading 3 to provide a highlighted introduction to your post and improve search engine results at the same time.
(More detail from WordPress help documents: Designing Headings. This is also covered in greater detail later in the training series).
Blockquotes
This entire paragraph is in blockquotes, which give you another way to visually break up page content. It’s the 6th button from the left in the toolbar (and looks like quotation marks). Quotations longer than 3 full lines of text should be broken out into blockquotes (highlight the text and use the indent list/blockquote button). Note: Blockquotes will look different than this for regular blogs.
C. Including Links in Your Posts
Key point: Link to previous posts and other posts within the network as much as possible.
To create a link, select the text you want to link and click the button above the text box that looks like a chain (the breaking chain next to the tree will un-link text). Insert the URL of the link and choose either “Open link in same window” or “Open link in new window” from the “Target” drop-down menu.
If you want text to appear when someone does a “mouse-over” of your link, enter that in the “Title” field. You don’t have to select anything for the “Class” menu.
Linking to previous posts on a blog (or to posts within the network) is one of the best ways to increase page views (and, therefore, revenue). Please do not limit your backlinking to your own posts – if everyone links to appropriate posts, we all benefit.
Editorial Guideline: For each post you write, please do a quick search of the topic to see if there are other posts to which you can refer. You can do a search for relevant IM posts to link to by using the Search Box that is on on every IM blog. The search box allows you to search just the blog you are on, and also the entire blog network. Note the tabs above the search results.
All links within posts should open in a new window (links to other posts in the same blog – internal links – should not open in a new window).
Documentation of sources is key to good blogging. Linking out to other sites and blogs also helps build traffic and reputation, as most webmasters and bloggers are checking their stats to see what links they’re receiving. Remember, karma works online!
D. Other Important Fields
Tags
Editorial Guideline: The field under the post editing window is for tags. In the appropriate field, type in at least 4-6 keywords or very short phrases to your post, separated by commas. These keywords will link us to Technorati.
Categories
Categories are extremely important for the organization structure of IM blogs, and are used for features like the related stories listed at the bottom of all posts.
Editorial Guideline: Please choose 1 and only 1 category for your posts. Don’t use more than 1 category!
The list of categories on your site is found under the tag box. By default, the “uncategorized” category will be checked. Check the categories and sub-categories the post belongs in and make sure to uncheck “uncategorized.”
E. Saving and Previewing Your Post
Save – Clicking the Save button will save your post.
Preview - To the right of the post editing screen is a button that says Preview. This will show you what the last saved version of your post will look like.
Please check your post at least once before publishing it. You can also use the preview feature to see how your post looks as you’re writing it.
Editing the Time/Date Your Post is Published
You can write a post and set the time so that it publishes at a later date.
To use this feature, look for the words “Publish Immediately” right under the preview button and the publishing status dropdown box. To change the date/time, click “edit.”
Set the date and time you want your post to go live. It uses military time, so 13:00 is 1pm. Then click “Publish.” If you go to “Manage” tab you will see it listed with the live posts. The Status column on the right side should say “Scheduled” and your post should not appear on the blog until the time you entered.
If the option in Publish Status is set to Unpublished, your post will be saved as a draft. If set to Published, the post will be saved and published to the blog.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you accidentally publish a post, you can always “undo” this by going into post edit mode and re-selecting Unpublished for Publish Status.