Writing a New Post & Organising Your Blog
In this lesson, we are going to tell you how to create a post, edit, and organise it using the editor on WordPress. Let’s begin!
First, go to the Dashboard menu and then to Post. Select All Posts. You will see all the posts you have created in the past. If you have not posted anything, you will see a post with the title ‘Hello World’. This is the basic template that is created when you install WordPress. Send it to trash because you don’t need it.
If you haven’t posted anything, you can start by clicking on Add New. The Gutenberg editor will create a blog post. You can type in the title and content as well as add images.
Once you are done with it, go to the document settings in the right sidebar. There will be options to choose who can see your post. Click on the Visibility: Public. You will now see Private and Password protected. Choose Private if you want to make your post visible only to admins or editors. Password protected will only make it visible for those with membership or those who know your password. The usual option is Public.
You can choose to Publish immediately when you click the Publish button. You can also schedule to post on another date and time.
Moving on to Format. You can choose different types of formats for your posts. For example, standard, video, image, and more.
Next, you can choose if you want a particular post to be at the front page by clicking on ‘Stick this post on the front page’. This page will keep appearing on the front page even if you post new posts.
You can also choose the ‘Pending Review’ option to mark it as waiting to be reviewed by the editor.
Next is the permalink structure under the title of the post. The URL is usually the title of your post. If you want to change it, just go to the Settings and then choose Permalink. There will be plenty of structure options to choose from. However, it is highly recommended to pick ‘Post Name’ for a simpler and easy-to-read layout.
Now, moving on to Categories. Categories are useful to organise your articles. Set up the categories in the beginning and avoid adding new categories to avoid clutter.
Tags are important because they are the keywords for your post. When you choose the right tag, it will be easier for people to find your article and visit your website. Take note that tags must be related to your content and what people will search for. With the right tags, Google will automatically pick your website as one of the results.
Now, moving on to the Featured image. A featured image will appear on top of your article. You can choose an existing image in your media library or upload a new one, but make sure it is related to your post. Choose an image that is attractive to readers. When you click ‘Set featured image’, your media library will open and you can choose or upload the photo that you want.
Next, you also need some text and images as part of your blog post design. You can download free fonts from Google or you can copy and paste them to your post. Change the editor to Gutenberg Editor style. You can download the latest version of Gutenberg by searching it within your WordPress dashboard under ‘Add new plugins’. Click Install and Activate. Refresh your post and you are done!
To create a new blog post, click the (+) block option near the top left of the page.
Let’s talk about creating columns in your post. Click on the (+) on the top left corner to create columns. You can choose the type of columns you want by clicking on the (+) that appears in your text section. You can also choose to have a combination of text columns and image columns. You can design the columns according to your blog’s purpose and content.
If you want a heading, just click on the (+) button and choose a header block. You can choose the type of heading you want and move it with the up and down arrows.
Other column options that you can use are block quotes, paragraphs and photo gallery. Click on the (+) button and choose gallery. Upload new photos or choose photos from your media folder to add photos to your post. You can also change the way the photo gallery is arranged. Go to the right sidebar. Change the column from three to two. Now, the images layout will change.
To add a caption to your photos in the photo gallery, all you need to do is click on the image block down below. Just type in the caption and you are done! Preview the post and see if it is how you want it to appear.
One more tip about adding images to your post: You can choose the alignment options that appear on the top of the block. You can choose Align left, Align right or Align centre.
If you go back and click on your blog, you will see that you can view more than one article with only a short excerpt from the text. It is because of a setting in the Customise settings of the blog. To change this, go to the Customise sparkling options on the top left of the page. Go to Content options and turn off Show post excerpts. Now, your whole text will appear on your blog page.
If you turn on the Show post excerpt, only the first paragraph will appear. You can choose which part of the text you want to show to your visitors. Go to your document settings. On the right sidebar, below the featured image section, you will see the Excerpt section. Type the texts you want and click Update.
Last but not least, let’s move on to the discussion section. This section is for allowing comments in the posts. Anyone can log in and post a comment on your posts. Right below the Excerpt section on the settings sidebar, you will see the Discussion section. Simply turn it on or off based on your preference.
If you take a look at the bottom of the page, you can see the Tags of the article. You can check the posts tagged under certain tags. Just type in the Tag in the search bar and all the posts tagged will appear. This is why Tags are very important.
Questions:
- How to create a photo gallery?
- How to make a specific paragraph for excerpts?
- How to insert a comment box in your website?