WordPress is a free online publishing system. WordPress is meant to separate the technical back end code of a Web page from the actual content, to make publishing content easier. WordPress is very simple for authors to use once properly configured by a Web designer. Today, I will show the basics of how to use the WordPress editor to post articles. I will go over how to get to the editor, pick categories, basic formatting features, linking, adding photos, and a couple more important features.

The first step is to log into WordPress. To do this, go to www.your blog name goes here.com/wp-login.php. Once logged in, click on the “Write” tab to start writing a new post.The first step to a new post is to give the post a title. When giving a post a title, it is best to give a very descriptive title to help search engines index the post. The next step of creating a post is to give the post a category. This is done by scrolling down to the Categories section of the editor and check marking existing categories that match the content of the post. If there are not any categories that match, click the “+ Add New Category” link to create a new category (depending on your permissions, an administrator may have to create the category for you).

Once the meta data is done it’s time to start writing the post. The first buttons that appear on the toolbar are the the bold, italic, strike through, unordered list, and ordered list buttons. Like any other editor click the button and start typing or highlight the text that is to be changed and click the button to apply the changes. The next button is the block quote button. This button is used for quoting a large chunk of text such as a whole paragraph (a block quote can look different depending on the design of the blog). Next is the link button(this button is only active when text is highlighted). Highlight the text that is to be made into a link and click this button to make a link. When the link button is clicked a dialog box will pop up that will ask for the details of the link. The next button is the unlink button, highlight a link and click this button to remove the link. The “Insert More Tag” button is used to keep a long article from taking up too much real estate on the front page. Using this will add a “more…” link to the article, when the link is clicked it will reveal the whole article. The “Toggle spellchecker” button turns the built in WordPress spell checker on or off. The WordPress spell checker underlines any misspelled words with red. To correct the the spelling click on the misspelled word and select the proper spelling. The second to last button is the “Toggle full screen mode” button. Click this button to put the editor into full screen mode and click it again to go back to the regular screen mode. The last button on the standard toolbar is the “Show/Hide Kitchen Sink” button. This button toggles the secondary toolbar, I will go into the details of the secondary toolbar in a different article.

Above the standard toolbar there is the insert media toolbar. This toolbar is for inserting photos, video and audio into the page. Today, I’m only going to cover the “Add an Image” button, as it is the most commonly used. To add an image click the “Add an Image” button. After this button is clicked the add an image dialog box will pop up. In the add an image dialog box, click the “Choose files to upload” button to find the desired picture to be uploaded. Once the desired picture is found any options can be set and the photo can be inserted by clicking the “Insert into post” button. Additionally, files that have already been uploaded can be inserted by going to the gallery tab (all of the pictures that have been uploaded for this post) or the media library tab of the add an image dialog box (all of the pictures that have been uploaded to WordPress).

The last thing I’m going to cover is the tool box to the right of the editor. The first button in this section is the “Preview this Post” button. Clicking this button will open the article in a new window and display it as if the article were published. I try to do this a couple of times while writing articles to make sure that everything is being formatted correctly. The next option is the Publish status drop down box. This drop down box allows users to change the status of the article to Unpublished, Pending Review, and Published. The pending review status is commonly used to let the the editor know that the article is ready to edit. The last two buttons I’m covering today are the Save and Publish buttons. Use the save button frequently when writing an article to make sure that no work is lost. Use the Publish button to publish the article. When a article is published it is sent to the to the top of the front page of the blog.

I have covered some basic features required to enable users to write content rich and well formatted articles. There are many more features available in the WordPress editor and I will most likely cover them in later articles. Until then, keep busy writing and don’t be afraid to explore all of the features WordPress has to offer.