Blogs are composed of two main structures: posts and pages. New bloggers often struggle with the concept of posts and pages. See Differences Between Blog Pages and Posts to understand their key differences.
Every newly created blog is the same default lay out with posts displayed on its front page (‘Home’) with a ‘Hello World’ post and an ‘About’ page. When you publish posts they are displayed in reverse chronological order with your most recent post at the top of your post page.
There are two main ways to write a new post:
- The Add New Post Screen
- The QuickPress Module on your Dashboard
Using the Add New Post Screen To Write Posts
The Add New Post Screen is a more advance post editor compared to using the QuickPress and is the main screen where you’ll write most posts. Besides providing more post options it is better suited to writing longer posts.
There are two options for accessing your Add New Post screen:
- Post > Add New
- New Post button in the upper corner of your blog’s admin screens
Brief Overview of Your Add New Post Screen
The area where you write your post is by default in Visual Editing mode which uses WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option for formating.
It works similar to any Word processing software. Simply write your post, highlight any text you want to format and then click the appropriate button in the toolbar to add formating such as bold, italics, number list.
The Show/Hide Kitchen Sink button is used to view the advanced formating options including heading styles, underlining, font color, custom characters, undo, redo.
Now all you need to do to write a post is:
- Give your post a Title
- Add your content
- Add your tags and categories
- When finished writing click Publish.
TIP :
New bloggers often struggle with the concept of tags and categories but its important to start using them well when you first start blogging. See Tags and Categories to understand their key differences.
Previewing your Draft
Before you publish your post it is a good idea to use the Preview option to see what it looks like to your readers.
You preview a post by clicking on Save Draft and then Preview. This opens up a draft version of your post in a new tab. To make edits just go back to your Add New Post screen.
Using the QuickPress module on your blog Dashboard
The QuickPress module is a mini-post editor that lets you quickly write a post including title, add media files and add tags directly from your dashboard. It also gives you the option of saving it as a draft or publishing immediately.
For more post options such as adding categories, scheduling future publish dates you should use the Add New Post screen.
