How to Blog
This section teaches you how to use WordPress, our blogging facility.
Topics
• Basic Post screen
• Advanced Post screen
• Uploading files
• Notifications & Subscriptions
Basic Post Screen
Your Drafts
Drafts are posts that have been saved rather than published. If you have posts you have written and saved, thereby creating a Draft, they will be listed above the Write Post title. Click on the title link to open that posts’ Write Post edit screen, edit the post, and when you are ready, click Publish and it will be released to your site and to the world.
Title
This is where you enter the title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post. WordPress will clean it up for the link to the post, called the post-slug.
Discussion
The Discussion section hosts two checkbox choices. One is for Allowing Comments and the other is for Allowing Pings. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.
Password-Protect Post
To keep this particular post private so that only those with the password can read it, enter a password here. Be sure and write it down somewhere safe.
The list of categories on your site is found here. By default, the uncategorized category will be checked, unless you have already changed the name of that category. Check the categories and sub-categories the post belongs in and make sure to uncheck “uncategorized” if applicable.
Excerpt
An Excerpt is a summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. WordPress handles Post Excerpts in two ways. One is by an explicit excerpt and the other is through the use of the Quicktag button more. If you want to have a summary of the post show, rather than the first paragraph or so, write the summary of your post in the excerpt field.
Quicktags
Quicktags are buttons right above the Post editing textarea box. These buttons produce HTML tags for bold, italic, image, link, lists, and more. Click on these to add their HTML tags and the tag will either be reproduced in the editing area or a window will pop-up asking you to fill in the details, and when you are done, the information will be in the editing area.
Post Editing Area
The big blank box is where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site is the Post Editing Textarea or editing box.
Save and Continue Editing
Below the Post Editing textarea box are three buttons. The first one is Save and Continue Editing. If you would like to save the post to your database, but continue working on it, click this button. Below in the Preview screen, you will then see your post. Using this button, the post will not be published unless the Publish check box is checked below in the Post Status area.
Save
In theory, clicking the Save button will save your post. But it is a conditional save. Using the Advanced Editing screen, if the option in the Post Status is set to Draft, your post will be saved as a Draft. If set to Publish, the post will be saved and published to your site. If set to Private, the post will be saved as a private post, accessible only by you, the user/author and not the public. Once you have clicked Save, the Write Post screen will clear and you will be ready to add another post.
Publish
To publish your post to your site, click the Publish button.
Advanced Post Screen
Post Status
In the Post Status section there are three choices. Draft, Publish, and Private. To save the post as a Draft, choose Draft. To publish the post when you click Save, then choose Publish. To keep the post private, choose Private.
Send Trackbacks to
Trackbacks let other blogs know you’ve referenced one of their articles. To send trackbacks from this post, enter the URI or website addresses in the box, separating each one by a space.
Post Slug
This is where WordPress will “clean up” your post title to create a link, if you are using Permalinks. The commas, quotes, apostrophes, and other non-HTML favorable characters are changed and a dash is put between each word. If your title is “LSQC - Past, Present and Future”, it will be cleaned up to be “lsqc-past-present-and-future” as the title. You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to “lsqc”.
Post Author
This is where the author of the post’s name is chosen from a pull down list. Authors are added to your site by registering and through the Users and Authors panel.
Edit Time
By default, at the time the post is saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database. To change this, click the checkbox and change the date and time information. All posts dated in the future will not appear on the site until that time has passed. If you wish to write posts that will automatically appear on your schedule, set the date and time here.
Delete This Post
If you decide to Delete this post forever, click this button. It will ask “Are you sure?” to give you a second chance to reconsider.
Custom Fields
Custom Fields offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.
Uploading Files
(Under construction)
Notifications & Subscriptions
(Under construction)
For a more complete documentation of WordPress, please visit: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons.