You must be wondering about that. You might say writing a blog post is quite easy and most of the people do not need directions for that. But a guide always helps you when stuck on some technical issue. Moreover, there are many features of the article writing which one may not know in the beginning. Therefore, I thought of writing this detailed guide to post writing which also includes how to enhance the post and schedule the post.
A blog post can be directly written in the WordPress editor or written somewhere else like Microsoft Word and then copied to the WordPress editor.
For writing directly in the WordPress, you need to reach the editor by which can be done in many ways
- By clicking posts> Add New in the admin interface
- By clicking New on WordPress bar when you are logged in and viewing your blog
- By typing yoursite.com/wp-admin/add-new-post
In either case, you would be taken to writing panel which looks like this
Here is little idea about different fields.
Title Field
You fill title here
Permalink Field
– When you fill your title, after some time, this field is automatically filled. You can alter this to a better suited one if your title is not what you want in URL. This is especially true in cases where the title is long.
Editor Buttons
There are two kinds of editors in WordPress.
Visual editor and Text editor. You can toggle between the two if you desire. Each is presented with its own buttons which serve to change the content looks and formatting.
For discussion, we would mainly resort to Visual Editor.
Add Media
For adding pictures, videos, and other files.
There could be more buttons depending on your plugins. For example, a contact form button is visible in the above page.
Know Your Visual Editor
As I wrote above, you can either write directly in the editor or paste it by writing somewhere else like MS Word.
In either case, you would need to use “Visual Editor” for final formatting. So let us apprise ourselves with a visual editor.
WordPress visual editor allows you to create content in a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) environment.
It is a modified version of TinyMCE editor. A look at the Visual Editor would let you know the different buttons available. There are two rows of buttons available and the second row can be accessed by pressing Kitchen Sink button.
You can get to know the shortcuts by pressing “?” sign in the second row. You would get a screen like this
Rather than reaching for your mouse to click on the toolbar, use these access keys. Windows and Linux use Ctrl + letter. Macintosh uses Command + letter.
The following shortcuts use different access keys: Alt + Shift + letter. Macintosh uses Ctrl + Alt + letter.
Focus shortcuts:
To move focus to other buttons use Tab or the arrow keys. To return focus to the editor press Escape or use one of the buttons. |
Paragraph and Line Breaks
To add a new paragraph in the visual editor you need to press the Enter key. WordPress will add a new paragraph with double line spacing. If you would like to just enter a line break with single line spacing, then you need to press Shift + Enter keys together. [If you use Microsoft Word, you would find these familiar.].
Distraction Free Writing Mode
You press this button and you are left with blank space to write. Everything magically comes back when you move your cursor outside the writing area. And disappears again when you start typing in the writing area again.
Here is how it is done
Formatting Buttons
One look at the editor buttons is enough to indicate you about their functions as most of them are same as your Rich Text editors like MS Word.
You can change the size and colors of font, alignment of text, insert special characters in addition to common formatting tasks.
A special button as marked T on a cardboard icon which is toggle button between pasting as rich text or pasting as text. If it is on, everything you paste is pasted as text. Normally, it is off and when you paste text from MS Word, WordPress preserves the formatting.
There are plugins available for enhancing the functions like table or column creation and many more. You can explore the plugins if you are looking for a particular enhancement.
Adding Media
You can add audio, video and image files.
For Sharing youtube and other videos, you just need to paste the URL and video would be loaded. You can upload an image by dragging the image to your editor and the image would be loaded and inserted where your cursor was prior to dragging.
You also have a choice to share an image from a URL.
Spelling and Grammar
After you have written the post, WordPress can proofread and present you with suggestions. This is good because you just can’t correct all the mistakes by simply re-reading your articles. There is a button in the top row just left to Kitchen Sink. It can be identified by a tick icon and ABC written over that. Pressing it would cause the editor to read your article and suggest ideas for correction.
Outside Writing Area
The post editor screen has other sections known as metaboxes, arranged on the right side and below the writing area, for many other things such as categories, author, custom fields etc. You can rearrange them to your own liking and even remove the one you do not like. You can choose if you want a featured image for your post which would be displayed as a thumbnail. This featured image could be different from the one in your article.
If you are interested, you could also add manually written excerpts in the Excerpt field.
Saving Draft, Publishing and Scheduling Posts
When you write a complete post, you can publish it by clicking the “Publish” button. But sometimes the post is not complete or you want to make changes in formatting which need to be completed. You can save your current work by saving the post as a draft.
[Pending Review option is for blog users with a contributor role. They can contribute to blog, but all their articles must be approved by an administrator].
By default the post is public. But you can make it password-protected so only users with the password can see the post. When you click on the Password protected radio button, another field will pop up where you can insert the password. When a user sees the post, it will say the post is password protected, and it will ask them to enter the password.
Another option is to make the post status Private and only admins and registered users can view those posts.
Scheduling The Post
You can schedule the post. This feature comes handy when you write your content in quite advance and you can create a publishing schedule. This feature is also useful when you are on vacation and you want your blog to continue publishing.
Make sure you have Time Zone set up in Settings so as to post the publish without fail at your desired time. If your Time Zone is not right, you may want your post to publish at some time and the post gets published at a different time because of Time Zone difference.
SEO Works For Your Post
For effective search engine placement, you must work on SEO aspects of the post. This includes keyword research and structuring of the post.
It is beneficial to have installed an SEO plugin such as WordPress SEO which would remind and guide you to make your posts SEO friendly.
in WordPress perform important functions of organizing the posts so that if your user is interested in a particular section, she would be able to browse all the articles assigned to that category.
For example, if you want to search for WordPress related articles on this blog, you can search for them by clicking the “WordPress” category.
As a new blogger, you might wonder what are categories in WordPress and how to use those categories for your maximum advantage.
Categories have just one function. They organize your content.
With this understanding, we discuss how to add categories and how assign posts to categories.
How to Add Categories in WordPress Blog?
Most of the WordPress functions appeared intuitive to me when I started using WordPress. But I had explored the web enough to get hang of things and how to look for things, and how to seek help in case you are stuck.
But some people need directions. Adding categories in WordPress is very easy. You need to go through the following process. Here is the technical stuff.
Click Posts on left-hand admin column. Then click on categories.
You would reach this page.
On the right side is the list of categories in this blog. On the left side is space for adding new categories. Let us zoom on that
On this page, add the following
- Name of Category
- Slug
- Description
You can leave the slug blank and your category name would be converted to the slug. For example “Time Management” name would be converted into “time-management”. So your category URL would become
http://yoursite.com/category/time-management
But if you want it to different, then you write the slug in the field. Say you want the URL to be
http://yoursite.com/category/time
Then, you would write ‘time’ in the slug field.
Write the description of the category in the field description. Some themes might display a description.
There is another field labeled parent below the slug field. This is to be used when you are creating a subcategory or a category within the category. For creating a subcategory, you assign it to a parent category [from the list of already created categories].
Adding Categories in WordPress while Writing Post
Another quick way of adding category is adding it when you are writing a post. Often when you are writing an article, it might not fit some of your other categories and you may want to assign a newly created category. This feature allows you to create and assign a category page without leaving the post creation interface.
On the right-hand side of your editor in WordPress would be a link called “Add a new category’. When you click that, it expands.
You can then create a category or subcategory as you desire.
Creating Subcategories in WordPress
Sometimes, you would need to create categories under the categories. These are called subcategories.
This is especially true when you want a broader category to divide into many smaller categories. This way your blog is even more organized. Note: Do not create a category for every single post.
For creating a and you would also assign a parent category from the list of already created categories.
With this method, you can further create categories under subcategories and so on but a word of caution. If you make many levels of categories, it becomes confusing.
How to Change Subcategory to Main Category
Changing a subcategory to the main category is also very easy.
You need to go to your categories page by going to Posts -> Categories and select edit from the menu that appears when you hover on the category name.
On that page, change the parent category to none. Your subcategory has become the main category.
How to use Categories in WordPress
All the above stuff was technical. It has set a pattern of doing things. How you use categories is your imagination.
At the beginning of blogging, you would be tempted to create many categories, sometimes, too overlapping. I also did that. You would like to categorize things into unique sections and end up in many sections which from outside appear quite similar too.
Before you delve into that, let us see how people reach you and browse your site and would they further explore the site.
People reach your site by clicking a link either in search engine listings or from other hyperlinks on the web.
After they read your content, they might want to read the related content. They would either click the related articles you display under the post or search from your site using the search button.
Very few would browse by category names.
In addition, even those who search by category name might miss your some of the wonderful content if you are too rigid about categories.
In my view categories should be broad enough.
How to Apply Category when You Write Post
After or before you complete the post, just choose the relevant category or categories from the list on right side of your writing editor. WordPress would automatically apply those when you save the articles.
Should You Include Category in Your Permalink
What do you want
http://yoursite.com/category/category-slug/post-title
or
http://yoursite.com/post-title
I follow the latter. I use to include permalink with category but I changed because
- Shorter URL
- I can change the category names without worrying about permalink change. A change in permalink may lead to 404 errors for already published links on the web.
- I can change the wrongly assigned category without affecting URL
Some people do mention that keeping category offers SEO value but then contrary school also exist’
How to Strip Category URL of Category
See this.
http://yoursite.com/category/category-slug/post-title
Would you want
http://yoursite.com/category-slug/post-title
instead of the above URL.
You can do this with WordPress SEO just by ticking a box.
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