Add/Edit WordPress Posts

Before we get into editing and creating web pages, it’s important that you understand the difference between what WordPress calls ‘Posts’ and ‘Pages’.   For this article, let’s look at adding and/or editing a WordPress post.

Editing a Post

1. Log into the Admin
2. Click on ‘Posts’ in the left sidebar
3. Here’s a list of all the posts on the site
4. Search, filter by category, sort by date, whatever until you find the post to edit
5. Click on the post’s title to edit
6. Here you’ll find the headline (in its own box at the top)
7. You’ll also see the link to the post that contains the date of the post you’re editing (you can edit the link by clicking the Edit button)
8. You’ll see an editing window that looks vaguely like a Word page
9. Here you can edit content, add formatting (by highlighting and clicking on the buttons) – Please note that most of the fonts, sizes, colors, etc. are located elsewhere. Don’t worry too much about these at this stage. Just make any content updates/changes you’d like. You’ll have a chance to preview your changes privately before you publish the changes publicly.
10. There are also two tabs at the top of the editing window: ‘Visual’ & ‘HTML’
    1. To edit the post as if it was a Word document, be sure you’re on the ‘Visual’ tab
    2. To edit the post’s HTML code directly, choose the ‘HTML’ tab
11. Below you’ll find the ‘Excerpt’ used when we reference the post from its category page
    1. That’s what goes into the META description and the little summary/blurb before you click ‘Read More’
12. On the right side you’ll see ‘Published on:’ if you want to change the date of the post, click ‘Edit’, make the change and then click ‘ok’
13. Below (still on the right) you’ll see ‘Categories’, this is how we distinguish Video, News, Events, etc. from other post types
14. Below that, you’ll see ‘Post Tags’ were you can tag a release or article with specific keywords. Click ‘Choose from the most used tags’ to view a tag cloud.

Creating a Post

1. Login to the admin
2. Look on the left sidebar under ‘Posts’ and click ‘Add New’
3. Enter the Title of the New Post
   1. It will Auto-Generate a Link for the Post; We’ll change it in a minute
4. Make sure you’ve selected the ‘Visual’ Tab and Paste the new content into the body of the page editor (thing looks vaguely like Word)
5. To create a sub-Headline, highlight the line of content and click on ‘Paragraph’ and select ‘Heading 5’ from the little drop-down
6. If you’d like to add an image, place you’re curser in the body where you would like the image placed. If not, skip down to step 9.
7. Beside ‘Upload/Insert’ click the first little icon to ‘add an image’
8. You have two (2) choices: Add images from your computer or Add images from your Media Library
9. To Add imags from your computer:
   1. Click on ‘Select Files’
   2. Browse your computer for the image you’d like to upload
   3. WordPress will automatically upload the image, offer a screenshot, populate the image title with the file name and create the online link to the image.
   4. Make sure to write a short description for the image in the ‘Alternate Text’ field
   5. Set the image’s alignment (most images on the site are aligned ‘Right’)
   6. Select ‘Full Size’
   7. Click the ‘Insert into Post’ button
10. To add images from your Media Library
    1. Click the ‘Media Library’ tab
    2. There are over 40 images in your media library, you can search for the image, filter or just peruse
    3. When you find the image you think you want to use, click ‘Show’
    4. You’ll see a larger thumbnail of the image, the title and Alternate Text information already entered, the alignment last used and the size.
    5. If you’ve got the right image, click ‘Insert into Post’
11. You should have the page looking pretty good by now, but we still have to sort out the Post’s attributes.
12. Scroll all the way back up to the top
13. The URL being shown under the Title is likely ugly, if you would like to make a change, click edit
    1. Please note, you can only change the name of this page, not the whole link
    2. Please don’t use any spaces. Instead use a hyphen ‘-’ if required.
14. If you’re worried someone might see your page before it’s done, click on the ‘Preview’ Button at the top right of the page
15. Once your satisfied, or don’t care if someone sees your page 5 seconds before you do, click the ‘Publish’ button
16. After a few seconds the page will be created and ready for you to view it. To do so, click ‘View Page’