Category Archives for "Blogging"

0 The All Posts Page

Last Thursday was a quick tour of the post editor area in WordPress. Today I shall take a closer look at the all posts page. So, if you start at the dashboard and click on “Posts” in the left-hand menu, you will arrive on the all posts page.

You will see this page lists all your posts in date order. Your latest drafts are at the top, then scheduled posts in date order and then published posts in date order. Date order starts with the latest.

The various buttons and menus at the top of the page help with navigation. The search box is particularly helpful, if you have a lot of posts and can remember a word in the title of the post you are seeking, it will bring all the posts with that word in the title to the top of the first page. (Note: below “Search Posts” you can see the number of pages listing post titles. )

To the left two icons offer two ways of viewing posts on the page. By default you see titles only, the other shows title plus the first few lines of the post.

Further left there are various filters and furthest left “Bulk Actions”. You apply bulk actions to selected posts. You select posts by clicking on the box to the left of the posts title. Once you’ve selected the posts, select the bulk action and then click on “Apply”.

The List of Posts

WordPress divides the posts display into 6 columns. After Title there is Author (which identifies the author, useful if your blog has more than one author), then Categories and Tags (of which more later), the cartoon balloon is for numbers of comments and pingbacks; and finally the date last modified, scheduled or published. Hover over any of the column headings and you’ll see a small triangle, which will enable you to sort posts according to that title, either ascending or descending.

Now hover over the first post and you will see a small menu appear beneath the title. Edit, Trash and Preview are self-explanatory so click on “Quick Edit”, which enables you to make certain changes without entering the post editor.

Most of this is straightforward and will make sense when we cover it elsewhere.

Slug below the title, is a shortened version of the title which can be used in the url. Make this post sticky means this post is kept at the top of the blog page on your website.

If you make any changes, you must click on Update to confirm the changes. Click on cancel to close the quick editor.

Let me know if this is helpful and if there are other aspects of blogging you would like me to cover.

1 The Post Editor

This is the first post in a guide to the basics of blogging.  I shall refer to WordPress because it is one of the most frequently used blogging platforms. Most editors are similar; functionality is likely to be the same although you may have to hunt around to find the right button to press.

I suggest you open your website’s dashboard and then follow my description below.

When you first log into WP-admin, you will see the dashboard. There is a menu to the left. Click on Posts and you will find a page called All Posts. A secondary menu opens below Posts in the main menu. You will see Add New in this new list and you will also see a button labelled the same at the top of the main page. Click on Add New.

This page is the post editor. What you see depends to some degree on your active plug-ins.

The main menu remains in the left hand column. This enables you to move around your WordPress site. What you see in it depends on your user type.

A Tour of the Post Editor

Post Title

The main central column is where you enter and edit your blog post. The first thing you should see at the top is Enter Title Here. When you have finished typing and moved to another part of the editor, your post’s url will appear under the title. Various aspects of the url can be changed but the only thing you can change from the editor is the part of the url from the title. You will see the url includes your title highlighted, without capitals or punctuation and with hyphen between words. If you want to change your url, eg shorten it, then you can hit edit and do that. There isn’t normally any advantage to doing this. I find it most helpful if I change the title later because the url remains the same. So if you want the new title to be in the url, you need to change it manually.

Media

Next you will see one or more buttons. The one that is always there is Add Media and I shall cover this in a future post. If there are other buttons, eg Add Form, this will depend on your plug-ins.

Text and Visual Editors

Next down and on the right you will see two tabs, Visual and Text. The Text tab shows you your post with the mark-up (html) visible. Some people work in this view but I wouldn’t recommend it for a beginner, even if you know html. Visual shows you the post fairly close how it will appear following publication. However, it is not exactly the same and you can preview your pages.

Editor Buttons

Below the tabs there are the main editor buttons. I’ll look at these in future posts. Next there is the main text area for your post. Simply start typing or if you have copied your post from another document, position the cursor in the text area and press the control key and “V”. This will paste text into the text area. If you right-click you will find there is no paste control in the menu, so you must control-v.  (This works for text from Microsoft Word; to paste in text from elsewhere it is best to press the T icon in the menu before control-v.)

If you scroll down, you will most likely find nothing below the text area. However some themes include other controls and I’ll write about them another time.

Publishing

Back to the top and the right hand column. The first box headed Publish includes three buttons, two at the top labelled Save Draft and Preview and a blue one at the bottom labelled Publish. Whilst WordPress autosaves your work, sometimes it’s between saves and so Save Draft will make sure all your work is saved but not published to your website. This means you can break off, exit the programme and then return and continue to work on your post later.

Publish loads your post onto your website so the world can see your post. Preview opens a dummy webpage in your browser and shows you exactly how your post will look. This is particularly helpful when you include media in your post.

Below the first two buttons you will see Status, Visibility, Publish and Publicize. I find the first two have very occasional use. Publish is where you can schedule your post; WordPress waits until your stated date and time to publish it. Publicize shows you which social media receive notice of your posts. This may not be visible until you set something up.

I will cover the next two boxes, Categories and Tags, in future posts. There may be other boxes depending on your theme and active plug-ins.

Next time we’ll hop back and take a look at the All Posts page.  I’m happy to cover aspects in more detail on request – just leave a comment.

4 Why Blogging is So Important

Blogging has evolved over the years. The problem is whilst things online evolve quickly, public perception evolves more slowly. Consequently there are many myths about blogging.

Blogging is a tool and like many tools, blogs have multiple uses. Maybe once blogs were primarily an online diary. Today they are much more than that. Their versatility makes them valuable tools. Whatever else you have on your website you should include a blog. Even if you don’t need it today, the chances are you will at some time and you may find blogs do things you’re currently doing by some other means more effectively .

Advantages

Blogs are a great way to organise content. Each post has a unique url. This means you can link to them from other posts and pages on your site, as well as from other websites. It also means you can organise them and so build a searchable library of posts.

You can delete blogs without disturbing the structure of your website. If you display a lot of ephemeral information on your site, you can easily keep it up to date.

Types of Blog

I think there are three main types of blog:

There must be other uses – do let me know if you think of any!

A Myth

There is a myth about the need to regularly update blogs. This originates from the requirements of search engine optimisation (seo). If you need to organise your blog to attract traffic to your site, regular posting may be important. For many websites it is not necessary and a focus on good content is more important than how regularly you publish.

Next Time

In this new sequence I shall post about the basics of blogging. These posts will include tips I’ve picked up that will help you blog regularly and relevantly. Later I shall move onto looking at how you can organise blog posts to increase accessibility.

This sequence may be interrupted as and when I receive requests for help with various aspects of your website. Simply make your request in a comment.

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