Most of your website content will be posts. These are the latest news stories, the latest reviews, the latest photos, the latest blog post, the latest… whatever. Most sites publish a stream of new articles and they are all posts. Let’s create one.
Just a reminder that this course is using a free wordpress.com website as a learning tool. You can learn all the basics with a free site and then progress to self hosted WordPress in the next course.
Log in to your site
Log in to the WordPress admin interface by going to
yoursite.wordpress.com/wp-admin
You may be remembered from your last visit, but you might need to enter your username and password.
Down the left-hand side of the page is the admin sidebar and near the top is Posts. This is where you will spend a lot of time in WordPress – creating new posts.
Add new post
Mouse over Posts on the left and a menu flies out. Click Add new.
Alternatively, click Posts in the sidebar and then click the Add New button at the top of the page or Add New on the left.
Add the title
Enter the title for the post into the box at the top.
A title should not be too short or too long. Aim for around 60 characters, which is 5 to 10 words depending on their length.
Add the body
Click in the main box and just start typing. It is just like using a very simple word processor and it has similar features.
Click and drag over text to select it.
Click the B button in the toolbar to make it bold.
Click the I button to make text italic.
Click the alignment buttons to align the text left, right or centered.
More formatting options
Click the button at the right side of the toolbar and a second row of tools appears.
Position the cursor within some text and in the second row of the toolbar, change it to a heading.
Here we have a subheading on the page that is bigger and bolder than the rest of the test.
Read More
When you have dozens of posts, it is a bad idea to display them all in full on the home page. It is too much for people to read and it is hard for people to find posts they are interested in.
The solution most websites use is to insert a Read More tag after the first paragraph. This causes everything below to be hidden.
The result of this is to display a list of articles showing just the heading and first paragraph on the home page. Visitors can easily browse the headings, read the intro, and click the article to read it in full.
Upload images
Some posts might be all text, but they are usually more interesting when they have photos and other artwork. Try to include at least one image in a post and preferably more, they will bright up the page.
Position the cursor where you want an image to appear. It is common to place the cursor on a blank line.
Click the Add Media button above the toolbar.
There are two tabs in the window that appears. Select Upload files.
Drag files from the computer’s disk using Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) and drop them on the window. They are then uploaded.
Select an image
Switch to the Media Library tab and select one image. On the right are boxes to add a title (not shown on the page), and a caption (optional, shown on the page under the photo).
Set the display options
In the bottom right corner are some useful options.
Alignment: If a small image is inserted into the middle of text, align it left or right to have text wrap around it.
Link To: An image can link to something, such as another image (a larger version for example), or a web page. Click here to set a link if you want to. I don’t and have set it to None.
Size: The image can be shown full size, but if it is too big for the page, there are options to automatically shrink it. Thumbnail and Medium are options on this menu. My image is small enough to fit on the page, so it is set as Full Size.
Click Insert into post. Repeat this and add as many photos as you need.
This editing view is not exactly the same as it will appear on the page that visitors see, but it is very close.
Insert links
You might want to create links to other websites or pages on your website and there is a button for that.
Click and drag the mouse over some text to select it.
Click the Link button in the toolbar.
Type in or paste (Ctrl+V on Windows, Command+V on Mac) the URL to link to.
See that gear icon on the right side of the link box? Click it to open a larger link box with more features. Most of the time all you need is what is shown above, but if you want to add a link to another post on your website that gear icon is useful.
Publish it
In the top right corner of the page is the Publish panel. At the top is Save Draft. This saves the post, but does not publish it on the site. It is hidden and only you can access it.
Use Save Draft if you have started writing an article, but haven’t finished it and need to close the web browser and go and do something different. You can carry on later by selecting Posts and clicking the Edit link under the post title when the mouse hovers over it.
Click Publish if you are sure you have finished. This will make it live and accessible by the public.
View your posts
Return to the Posts section by clicking Posts in the sidebar. You can see the new post at the top of the list. Each new post is added to the list and if you ever want to change a post, mouse over it and click Edit to open it in the editor.
Edit or delete posts
Move the mouse over a post in the list and links appear below the title. You will probably want to trash First blog post, which is just an example provided with WordPress.
View your website
Go to your site by entering yoursite.wordpress.com into a browser and see what it looks like. Here is the home page with the list of posts.
OK, it is visually totally boring, but I don’t want to overload you with too much information all at once. We will change the look and make it much more exciting later on.
For now, let’s just concentrate on posts. When the post we created is clicked, it looks like this:
This is a very simple page with some text and an image, but it shows the basics and you now know how to create a post that contains text and images, set the title, and then publish it.
Create two or three more posts and familiarise yourself with the tools and functions. This is just a test website and when you create a real site that earns money, you will create many posts and much longer ones with more headings, subheadings, images and so on.
Action points
- Log in to your website
- Create a post – when creating a new website, several dummy posts gives you a better idea of how the finished site will look
- Add text, images and links to your posts
- View a list of posts
- Edit or delete a post
Online Course: WordPress Startup Guide
2 Where to start? Blogging platforms
3 Get a website in 5 mins! Step by step
4 Log in to the WordPress dashboard
5 Posts vs pages, what’s the difference?
6 Create posts for your website
