Pages appear in the Pages widget and in navigation tabs across the top of some themes.

Examples of pages commonly used by educators include:

• An About page – for readers to find out more about you and your blog. Readers often use it to decide whether to bother subscribing to a blog.
• Blogging Rule and Guidelines – used on Class blogs to explain how-to’s, rules, guidelines for students and their families
• Contact page – provides your contact details
• Info For First Time Visitors! – for new readers to understand how to subscribe to the blog and leave comments

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Writing a New Page

There are two ways to create a new page:

1.  Clicking on Page > Add New in your dashboard

2.  Selecting New Page in the dropdown menu in the admin bar

Brief Overview of Using Your Page Screen

Your Page screen works very similar to your Post screen except that:

• You don’t assign categories or tags to pages
• You can arrange your pages in hierarchies, using sub-pages, to nest pages under other pages

Writing a page is similar to writing a post.

Use these instructions for both posts and pages.

1. Writing your First Post – But you can’t assign categories or tags to pages
2. How to insert links in your post
3. Inserting images into your Posts
4. Inserting photo gallery into your Posts
5. Inserting video or audio files into your posts
6. Embedding Videos from Video Sharing Websites into Posts
7. Inserting Documents, PDF and PowerPoints into Posts
8. Editing Posts
9. Scheduling a post for a later date
10. Why you shouldn’t write your post in MS Word

1. Posts
2. Pages

New bloggers often struggle with the concept of posts and pages.

Introduction to Posts

Posts are where you publish the latest update or new article on a blog.

Posts are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order with the most recent post at the top of the page (e.g. check out the Teacher Challenge blog).

Most of the content published on a blog is normally written as Posts.   The information you want to share or reflect on are normally published as Posts and not on Pages.

Blogs are designed to have only one Post page which normally displays on the homepage of the blog.

If you look closely at a post you will see it is normally made up of:

1. Post Title – tells the reader what the post is about.  A great post title grabs readers attention and is more likely to encourage them to read your post.
2. Date published – all post display the date a post was published.  You’ll normally see this displayed at the top of the post.
3. Categories and tags - are used to help readers locate information in different ways.  We’ll explain how to use categories and tags in a later activity in this series.
4. Your post content – this is the main information that you want to share or reflect on with your readers
5. A link to comments - This is where your readers can click to write a comment in response to your post.  Comments give readers an opportunity to share their thoughts, connect with you and interact with other readers.

Introduction to Pages

Pages on blogs are normally used for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently.

Example of Pages used on blogs

1. The most common type of Page on a blog is the About page.   Your About Page is used for telling readers more about yourself and your blog.
2. Class blogs often use Pages for Blogging Rules and Guidelines (check out these examples of Blogging Rules and Guidelines on class blogs).

There are key differences between pages and posts that are important to understand when working with them.

It’s really simple to do — only takes 4 simple steps!

Once you have written your post just:

1.  Click on Edit link next to Publish Immediately in the ‘Publish Status’ box

2.  Enter the date and time you want the post to publish

3.  Click OK

4.  Click Schedule

Your post will now be held until the time and date you specified.

You also use this method to change the timestamp on published posts which can be used to change the order the posts appear on your blog.

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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 main options for accessing your Add New Post screen:

1.  Post > Add New in the left dashboard menu

2.  Add New > Post or  New Post link in the admin bar

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.

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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:

1. Give your post a Title
2. Add your content
3. Add your tags and categories
4. When finished writing click Publish.

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.

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For more post options such as adding categories, scheduling future publish dates you should use the Add New Post screen.