How To Use A Wordpress Blog And Change Settings

Publish An Article - Change The Theme - Insert Media - Use The Dashboard

In the previous section I taught you how to Manually Install A Wordpress Blog. In these next three sections I will teach you how to set it up and use it so that you can then post (write and publish) your articles, create links, create categories, change the theme (appearance) and so on. This section examples Article Writing (Posting) and Category Creation, as well as general dashboard examples/expanations.

Begin by logging into your wordpress blog, if you have logged out of it since viewing the previous section, by taking your web browser to the Administrator URL: http://www.yourwebsite.com/wordpress/wp-admin/. Doing so will take you to the Administrator Login web page where you then need to enter your User Name & Password before clicking on the LOGIN button.

Fig 5.0  Enter your user name and password before clicking on the LOGIN button to continue

After clicking on the LOGIN button you will be shown the main page, called the Dashboard. This is where you can edit settings, create categories for your posts (articles), create links to your favourite websites and so on. The first thing to do though is Change Your Password.

The password that wordpress created for you, the one you are currently logged in with, is computer generated and generally difficult to remember. Wordpress warns you of this in the way of a red message box (below). It advises you to click on the PROFILE link, which I advise too. So begin by clicking on that link to continue.

Fig 5.1  Click on the PROFILE (YES) link to change your personal preferences, such as your Password.

When you arrive on your Profile page one of the first things to do, ONLY If You Understand HTML, is to tick the setting called DISABLE THE VISUAL EDITOR WHEN WRITING under the heading Personal Options. This will disable the built-in Visual Editor, which helps non-programmers to format their article writing (post).

It basically fills in HTML code for you, behind the scenes, but sometimes does not give you the formatting power of true html coding. Hence one reason why you would want to disable it. On the other hand; If you are not a HTML programmer and/or do not need anything too fancy in your article writing then just leave that setting unticked, so that the visual editor will remain switched on.

The rest of the profile page is about you (name and contact info), your website and the ability to create a new password. When you have finished updating your profile, with a new password, click on the UPDATE button to continue (not shown here).

Fig 5.2  Tick the DISABLE THE VISUAL EDITOR WHEN WRITING setting.....ONLY if you understand HTML.

After updating your profile the next thing you might want to do is Create A Post. Or put another way. Write some text (i.e. an article) and then Publish it (broadcast it live on the internet) - Creating a post is roughly the same as creating an email.

Before creating a post though you should think about creating Categories for your posts. This will not only allow you to organise your articles, which in turn makes your blog even better to navigate around, but it also gives you the opportunity to create some keywords (make your blog well known for a certain topic for example).

CREATE  A  CATEGORY

Begin by clicking on the POST menu title, to the left of the dashboard, to see the expandable/collapsable menu-items (Edit, Add, Post and Categories). It is the CATEGORIES menu-item that you need to click on first. It will display the Categories page (Fig 5.4).

Fig 5.3  Click on the CATEGORIES menu-item to continue

On the Categories page the first item to fill in is the CATEGORY NAME edit box. Choose a meaningful name for your category because it is mentioned throughout the blog, where applicable. In this example I have given it the name Website Design, which means I can post many articles under that title. In other words; Do not make your category name too article specific, make it topic specific instead.

CATEGORY  SLUG

The next item, CATEGORY SLUG, can be ignored. It is meant for those occasions when you want to change the default path name (url) given to your new category by wordpress for a more friendly path name. For example. I chose Website Design for the category name and wordpress gave it a default slug (url) called website-design (all lowercase). This is because wordpress cleans up Spaces, and other unwanted characters, by replacing them with a dash.

Fig 5.4  Give the category a name and ignore the category slug

What this means is that my category's link will be called Website Design and when I hover over that link it's url will be http://www.websitecreationhelp.com/wordpress/category/website-design/. If I then entered website-design-for-all-your-needs into the CATEGORY SLUG edit box the category's new url would be http://www.websitecreationhelp.com/wordpress/category/website-design-for-all-your-needs/ but the category link will still be called Website Design.

As said; Ignore the category slug because it goes to a deeper level, for programmers. You would only change it for SEO reasons (i.e. to add more keywords into the url, but if the desription already contains those keywords.....!!

CATEGORY  PARENT

Scrolling down the page you will see the CATEGORY PARENT drop-down menu. This allows you to link a new category (i.e. Apples) to an existing category (i.e. Fruit), which then makes that existing category (Fruit) the parent category for the new category (Apples). Therefore, the new category is then a sub-category. So you could create three new sub-categories (i.e. Strawberries, Apples and Grapes) that are linked to an existing, parent, category (i.e. Fruit).

Fig 5.5  Click on the ADD CATEGORY button to continue

The DESCRIPTION edit box allows you to give a description to your new category, and more precisely to its tooltip (pop-up, hover over, description). Once you have filled in the category elements click on the ADD CATEGORY button to continue (Fig 5.5 above).

POST  AN  ARTICLE

When the category has been created the next thing to do is Create A Post for it. So continue by selecting the ADD NEW menu-item under the POST menu.

Fig 5.6  Click on the ADD NEW menu-item to create a new post (article)

As you can see, above, the category Website Design has been created with the description I gave it and the default category slug of website-design that wordpress gave it.

Clicking on the ADD NEW menu-item allows you to easily create an article (post) that you can then put inside any category of your choosing. Simply give your post a Title, write your Article Text inside the main writing area (ARTICLE edit box) and then click on the PUBLISH button (to the right, underneath the Publish section) to continue. This is the simplest way to write an article (post).

Fig 5.7  Give your article a Title, write its text inside the ARTICLE edit box and then click on PUBLISH

If you want to do a little more with your article before publishing it (making it live on the internet) scroll down the page for more options. One of the options is the ability to publish your article inside many categories, simply by putting a tick next to each required category.

Another option is to TAG (index) each article with keywords. Any articles with the same tags are linked (categorized) together. Simply type your tag(s) into the ADD NEW TAG edit box, separating each tag (keyword) with a comma, before clicking on the ADD button.

The Excerpts option is for those occasions whereby a quick summary is preferred, when hovering over a link for example, but requires a tweak in the Index.php file because this option is not switched on by default.

The Trackback option allows you to notify other non-wordpress (non-pingback) blogs when you have linked back to them in one of your articles for example. Simply enter the URL of each non-wordpress (non-pingback) blog that you have linked back to into the TRACKBACK edit box, separating each url with a comma, and then click on the PUBLISH button as normal.

The trackback technology will then notify each of those blogs about your linkage. If you have linked back to another wordpress (pingback) blog you do not need to do anything at all. Leave the TRACKBACK edit box empty because when you PUBLISH your article those wordpress (pingback) blogs will automatically be notified of your linkage, using the pingback technology.

Basically. There are two main linkage technologies out there, trackback and pingback. Just like file formats the blog industries cannot decide on using one technology. And who loses? You!.....the confused user/blogger. Anyway. Do not worry too much about the technologies. Just link to whatever blog you want to regardless.

Fig 5.8  Tick each category you want your article (post) to be published in and then click on PUBLISH

DELETE  A  POST

To delete one or more posts (article) you must first click on the POST menu, on the menu title POST. This will give you an overview of all your posts. Hover over the title of a post to bring up its options links (Edit, Quick Edit, Trash and View) and then click on the TRASH link. This will place the post inside the trashcan (dustbin) whereby you can later empty the trash or undelete a post.

Fig 5.9  Hover over the title of a post to bring up its options links and then click on the TRASH link

To delete more than one post put a tick next to each post you want deleting, select MOVE TO TRASH from the ACTIONS (Bulk Actions, Edit or Move To Trash) drop-down menu and then click on the APPLY button.