Writing posts is probably the main thing you will do with your blog. When writing a new post you can control the status, e.g. make the post a draft if you are not ready to publish it, password protect it, etc. You can also change the time stamp to control when the post shows up in the blog’s chronology of posts. In addition, you can add categories and tags to posts to create a personalized taxonomy of terms and sections in your site. You can add tags and categories while writing a new post, or later while editing an existing post.
To Write a New Post:
- While logged in and viewing the blog, mouse over “+ New” in the black menu bar at the top of the page and then click “Post” in the expanded menu. (If you are already on the blog’s Dashboard, you can also click Posts and then “Add New” in the left sidebar.) This will bring you to the post editor where you can create a new post.
Where it says “Enter title here,” type in a headline for your post.- Above the top right corner of the body field are two tabs: Visual and HTML. Visual mode is recommended for most users, as it is a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor that works more like Microsoft Word. More advanced users may wish to use HTML mode, which allows you to use HTML and in-line CSS coding to format your post.
- Begin typing the text of your post into the body field.
- Above the body field are formatting buttons you can use similar to Microsoft Word. (More on that in the “Visual Editor” section below.)
- You can preview your post without publishing it by clicking the Preview button in the “Publish” box to the right of the body field. This will show you exactly how the post will look on the blog.
If you want to save your post and come back to it later, just click the Save Draft button. (All revisions, including drafts, are accessible at the bottom of the post editor. You can always restore a previous version of a post.)- Before you publish your post, select a category or multiple categories by clicking the appropriate checkboxes in the categories box on the right side:
- When you’re done writing and formatting your post and you’ve added all the images and video you want to include, click the blue Publish button.
- To see how your post looks on the site, click the “View Post” link that appears at the top of the page.
Using the Visual Editor:
The visual editor provides an easy way to format and add a range of material to your post. Here is an image of the editor with the expanded toolbar hidden. To expand the editor and show the whole full toolbar, click the Toolbar Toggle button:
Your editor should now look like this:
Below is detailed functionality for the buttons in the visual editor, starting in the upper left corner, and moving to the right:
LINE ONE
- Bold selected text
- Italicize selected text
- Strikethrough selected text
- Create a bulleted list
- Create a numbered list
- Put text in a blockquote
- Align text left
- Align text center
- Align text right
- Create link (When you select text, this button will become active. See “To Add Links” section below for more detailed instructions.)
- Break link
- Split post with a “more” tag (used in longer posts, will insert a link that reads “Continue Reading this post”
- Run spellcheck on post
- Edit in fullscreen mode (will create a large text editor)
- Show/hide “kitchen sink”
LINE TWO
- Assign alternative style to selected text
- Underline selected text
- Justify selected text
- Change color of selected text
- Paste as plain text
This tries to correct any invalid HTML code and make the font style consistent with your site. For best results, you may need to paste paragraph by paragraph.
- Paste text created in Microsoft Word
Use this when pasting content from other applications, such as Word or Excel.
- Remove formatting from selected text
- Insert custom character
- Outdent selected text
- Indent selected text
- Undo
- Redo
- Browse WordPress Help
To Add Links:
- Highlight the text that you want to turn into a link.
- Click the button that looks like a chain link.
- To link to an outside website:
- In a separate browser window, go to the page you want to link to and copy the URL.
- Back in the post editor, paste the URL into the URL field (making sure to replace the http:// so that you do not end up with the http:// command twice).
- Click the Add Link button, and the text will change to blue or purple with an underline.
- To link to a page or post on the blog:
- Click the arrow next to “Or link to existing content.”
- If you don’t see the page you want to link to in the menu, search for the page or post title and it will appear.
- Click on the page or post title. It will automatically fill in the URL and Title fields.
- Click the Add Link button, and the text will change to blue or purple with an underline.
- To remove a link, highlight the linked text and click the broken chain link button.
To Insert Images:
Note: Most cameras now take and export pictures that are thousands of pixels wide and tall. This is good for print quality but very bad for the web. Before you upload your photos to Blogs@Baruch make sure to use PhotoShop, iPhoto, Preview, Image Resizer, or another image editing program to resize them down to something more manageable. A good rule of thumb is to set the longest dimension to 800 pixels.
- Place your cursor where you want the image to show up.
- Click the gray media icon next to “Upload/Insert” above the formatting buttons.
- The window that pops up will walk you through the upload process.
- To upload an image from your computer:
- Click the “From Computer” tab at the top of the window.
- You can either drag image files directly from your computer into the window or click the Select Files button.
- If you use the Select Files button, a window will open that allows you to browse your computer for the file(s) that you wish to upload. You can select multiple images by using Ctrl-click on a PC or Command-click on a Mac. Once your files are selected, click the Open button to upload the image. It may take a few seconds to load.
- Once uploaded, the window will expand to show you a thumbnail of the image and several text fields.
- In the Alternate Text field, type in a very short description of the image.
- If you’d like to include a caption beneath the image, type it into the Caption field. How your caption displays depends on your theme.
- Choose the Alignment style you’d like by clicking the button for Left, Center or Right. (Left and Right wrap the text around the image, Center pushes the text below the image.)
- Choose the size that you’d like. Large fills most of the width of the page, Medium fills a little less than half, and Thumbnail makes a small, 150-pixel square image.
- Now click the Insert into Post button and the image will show up, resized and aligned, in the body field.
- To add an image from the web:
- Click the “From URL” tab at the top of the window.
- In a separate browser window, find the image you want to use and copy its URL. To do this, right-click (ctrl-click on a Mac) on the image and select Copy Image Location.
- Back in the post editor, paste the URL you’ve copied into the Image URL field.
- In the Image Title field, give the item a 1-2 word title.
- In the Alternate Text field, type in a very short description of the image
- Enter source information on where exactly you found the image into the Caption field.
- Choose the Alignment style you’d like by clicking the button for Left, Center or Right. (Left and Right wrap the text around the image, Center pushes the text below the image.)
- If you’d like the image to act as a link to another web page, paste the URL into the “Link Image To:” field.
- Now click the Insert into Post button and the image will show up in the body field just as it would if you had uploaded from your computer.
- To add an image that has already been uploaded to the blog:
- If the image was initially uploaded to this post, it will be available in the “Gallery” tab at the top of the window.
- If it was uploaded elsewhere on the blog, it will be available in the “Media Library” tab.
- Click the appropriate tab, find the image on the list and click the Show link to the right of it. This will expand the image properties options.
- If not already filled in, enter alternate text and a caption (if desired), choose the alignment you want and then click the Insert into Post button.
To edit the alignment, size, alternate text or caption for an image you’ve already inserted into a post, click on the image and then click on the photo icon that appears in the top left corner.
- If the text is running too close to your image, you can click the “Advanced Settings” tab in the image editor, then enter a number of pixels in the Vertical Space and Horizontal Space fields.
- To delete an image you’ve already imported, click the image and then click the red delete icon in the top left corner.
To Post a Photo Gallery:
Once your photos are uploaded to your site, you have the option of displaying them in a photo gallery. (Click here for instructions on how to upload photos.)
- Click on the square icon above the post editor next to the text “Upload/Insert.”
- Click the “Gallery” tab to see the photos you’ve uploaded.
- To add or edit captions, click “Show” next to each image thumbnail to add a caption; be sure to click “Save all changes” after you’re done.
- Choose options for how you want your gallery to display, then click “Insert gallery.”
- You will see a graphic in the body of your post, or perhaps the text “
”.
- You can write an introduction to your gallery in the space below the text, add categories for your post, and, when you’re ready to post your work to the blog, click “publish.”
- You can always edit your post and the information in the gallery by clicking on the Manage tab in the Administrative Area of the blog, and then the Post’s title.
To Embed a Video:
From YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, blip.tv, Flickr (both videos and images), Viddler, Hulu, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Photobucket, PollDaddy, Google Video, WordPress.tv, SmugMug, FunnyOrDie.com:
- In a separate browser window, find the video you wish to include in your post.
- Once you’re on the page for that video (the headline at the top of the page should be the video’s title, not “Search results for…”), Copy the url of the video after clicking the “Share” button.
- Paste the URL into the post editor. It will embed the video directly in your post.
Note: This function only works if the pasted code is NOT formatted in any way. (Do not bold or italicize the text.)
Post Privacy Settings
- On the right side of the post-editing screen, there is a box with Publish options.
- Next to Visibility: Public click Edit.
- In the expanded view, you have three options:
- Public
This is the standard setting and makes the post visible to anyone who can visit the blog. Under Public, you can opt to Stick this post to the front page. This keeps the blog post at the top of the blog’s home page, even as newer items are posted.
- Password Protected
Choose this option if you want to control who can view the post and who cannot. Once you click the radio button it will ask you to create a password specific to that post.
- Private
This makes it so the post is only visible to the post’s author and blog administrators. This option may be useful if you are having students post assignments to the blog and you do not want them to be visible to the entire class.
Categories
Categories allow you to group posts in a way that makes sense to you or your readers. If you’re using your blog for a class you might decide to create categories for each assignment, or you might create categories for the different topics you cover in the course. You can also cross-list items in multiple categories, so you’re not restricted to one system if you want the ability to sort posts in different ways.
You can create categories as you create new posts by using the + Add New Category link in the post editor, but if you’d like to set up an organizational system before your users start posting, you should use the Categories link under Posts in the left menu.
To create a new category, all you need to do is type the category name into the “Name” field and then click the Add New Category button below. If you’d like your category to act as a sub-category within another (such as having one category called Assignments and sub-categories for the assignment titles), use the “Parent” dropdown menu to select the parent category before clicking Add New Category.
Once you’ve created your categories, make sure to let your users know which categories to place their posts in. If they don’t designate a category before publishing a post, it will show up in a group called “Uncategorized.”
Tags
While categories are used as a taxonomy created by the site administrator, tags are more of a folksonomy, built from the ground up by site authors. Tags show up as links at the end of each post (and in a Tag Cloud widget, if you’ve added one). Readers can click on these links to see all of the posts on the blog that have been given that tag.
It is generally easiest to add tags within the post editor before publishing, but if you’d like to have some standard tags for your blog’s authors to choose from, you can create them by using the Tags link under Posts in the left menu.
Simply enter the name of the tag in the “Name” field and then click Add New Tag.
