WordPress Posts

Posted by Madhavi on Dec 1, 2010 in WordPress 101 | 2 comments

WordPress, as you might already know, is primarily a blogging system. Therefore, it goes without saying, that there would be a variety of Blogging related features within WordPress. One of these features is the ability to create Blog Posts.

WordPress Posts are the backbone of the blog that you would be running on your website. As such the interface is the same as that of the WordPress Pages - which, essentially, makes using it a snap. Typically, the blog posts are arranged in a ‘newest first’ fashion on any given blog, and therefore you always see the oldest posts much further on in a blog.

Let’s look at the different things you can do while creating Blog Posts in WordPress!

Getting Started

Getting started with creating a blog is simple enough. Just click on the disclosure triangle near the ‘Posts’ menu item in your dashboard. There you will see a variety of options: ‘Add New‘ (which lets you add a new blog post), ‘Categories‘ (which lets you add and manage categories that you frequently use to classify your blog posts) and ‘Post Tags‘ (where you can add / manage the tags which you use for your blog post).

The main option called ‘Posts‘ will present you with a list of your posts in an admin interface. This lets you have a birds-eye view of the different posts you have written so far, for your blog.

In order to start writing your new blog post, all you have to do is click on the ‘Add New’ link and it will take you to the familiar content writing interface.

Writing The Blog Post

Again, this should be a familiar interface for those who have created Pages in WordPress.

All your standard bells and whistles are here – the ability to add images, HTML code snippets, text editing features and a nifty little word-count counter at the bottom of the text box.

Naturally, you can easily format your text with colors, add links, bullet points and blockquotes to make your content look real nice.

More Options

Of course, you also have a bunch of publishing options.

With the ‘Save Draft‘ button, you can save your in-progress blog post as a Draft and keep working on it till you are satisfied, at which you can click the ‘Publish’ button to publish your blog post on your site.

While writing your draft, you might want to see how the published version might look like. Clicking on the ‘Preview‘ button will help you get that idea.

With the ‘Status‘ option, you can click the ‘edit’ link to set the status as ‘Draft’ or as ‘Pending Review’. The ‘Visibility‘ option gives you the ability to make the post either ‘Public’ (which means everyone will be able to see it), or ‘Private’ (which means only the people you decide can see it), or even add a Password to protect who gets to see that particular blog post. If you click on the ‘edit’ link near the ‘Publish Immediately‘ option, you will be able to set a date and time when this post will go ‘live’. Once you set that option and click on the ‘OK’ button, the blue ‘Publish’ button will change to a blue ‘Schedule’ button.

Another thing you can do during the blog post writing process is give your blog a ‘Category’ and a ‘Tag’. [More about this coming up in the next post.] Categories and Tags help you organize your blog posts in subject-based groups.

WordPress Blog Posts

As mentioned before, the WordPress blog posts are arranged in a ‘newest first’ manner. This ensures that visitors to your blog will always see the latest / newest information or updates. WordPress blog posts are also a very nice way to keep adding non-static content to your website, and showing off your knowledge about your subject.

Read more information about why blogs are so great!

WordPress Blog posts can also be made ‘Sticky‘ – that is, a blog post or two or three can be set to always appear on the top of the blog page. You can find this option when you click on the ‘edit’ link for ‘Visibility‘ under the Publish options. Having Sticky Posts can also be very useful, especially, if there is certain information that will never grow old / stale.. or say, when you are making some offers etc on your site that are going to last for some time and you know that you will most likely be making new blog posts before that.

In Conclusion

Creating blog posts in WordPress is just as easy as creating pages in WordPress. As such, WordPress as a CMS is simply marvellous and creating blog posts with it is a snap!

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