This page is intended to guide you through the process of creating your first post. You need to have a WordPress Account and be registered on our blog to do this. If you need to create an account, read our short guide.
Login
To login to the class blog, visit the login page (you might want bookmark that link). It will look something like this.
Enter your WordPress username and password to login.
Once you are logged in you will see the WordPress dashboard or admin page. This is where you need to be to write a post.
Create a new post
Once you are logged in to the site, look for the ‘Posts’ settings on the top left hand side of your WordPress dashboard. It will look like this:
Simply click ‘Add New’ to create a new post.
Writing your post
The first task that you need to do is to create a title for your blog post. When thinking of a post title, think newspaper headlines: you want a snappy title that will draw in readers but that also accurately communicates what the post is about.
The number one rule with editing and writing blog posts in WordPress is to save your work, and to save often. WordPress saves all of your revisions, so you can quite easily go back to earlier versions of a post if you accidentally delete your work. WordPress will save revisions automatically every few minutes, but it’s also good practice to hit the save button frequently.
Saving
If you look on the top right-hand side of the ‘Edit Page’ area, you will see a settings box called ‘Publish’. This is where you save – and it will look something like this:
The only three options that you really need to be concerned about are those highlighted in this image. These include:
- Clicking ‘Save Draft‘ will do exactly that – it will save your blog post.
- ‘Publish‘ will submit your completed blog post for moderation. In some cases, an editor may ask you to make changes before it is approved and it may also take 24-48 hours for your post to appear.
- The ‘Preview‘ option will open a new tab in your web browser and show you how your most recent saved draft will look once published. It is always worth previewing your post before you publish because it is a good way to quickly find formatting errors and so on.
If your post is already published, you simply need to select the ‘update’ button to save your work.
Writing
Our advice is to write your blog post using the ‘Edit Page’ options rather than using offline programs such as Microsoft Word. The reason? Because it is the easiest way to write blog posts and you are less likely to encounter any problems.
In some cases you may need to cut and paste from an existing document. If you do, simply copy your text and then use either the paste as plain text or paste from word options shown in the image below.
Formatting
You will notice a number of options for formatting your blog post. These are much the same as in conventional word processors and include options for Bold, Italics, Bulleted/Numbered lists and quotes. The following video provides a quick overview of creating and editing a post, which may help you to get started.
The two options that may not be self explanatory that you will at some stage need to use are the ‘Links’ and the ‘Add Media’ options.
To add a link to a word or phrase (such as this) follow these steps:
- Copy the full URL (including the ‘http://’ bit) from the place you want to link to;
- Select the text that you want to associate your link with;
- Click on the ‘Link’ button in the formatting bar (the small chain/link graphic to the immediate right of the ‘Right Align’ button).
- Paste your URL into the ‘Link URL’ field
- If you like, select where you would like the link to open (i.e. in a new window or in the same window)
- Click ‘Insert’ and you’re done!
Adding images and other media such as videos or podcasts is quite straightforward. There is an an ‘Upload/Insert’ option above the formatting toolbar that is shown in the image below.
Each of these options allows you to upload other kinds of media including videos, audio or images. The following video provides an overview of how to use these options.
Happy writing!
