One of the things that Author Buzz offers is a free WordPress blog. Which is all well and good if you know how to use WordPress. What do you do if you find figuring it all out far too stressful? You read this guide, of course.
What is WordPress?
Something that does not help is that there are two different things and they are both called WordPress. The first is WordPress.com which is a hosted version of WordPress with limited themes and plugins. The second is WordPress.org (sometimes called self-hosted WordPress) which is the software run on your own hosting.
Both version are run by the core WordPress files but the way you interact with them differs.
Both the dot com and dot org versions of WordPress are a blog like content management system. In other words they are a tool for managing content and making a website quickly with many of the harder bits taken care of by code.
Let’s take a deep dive into WordPress starting with the easy stuff.
Your WordPress admin area
The admin area is where you will do a lot of your content creation. You probably wont has as many tabs open as me and some menu items will be different depending on which plugins you activate.
Take a look at the menu (that’s the black bar down the left hand side). Here are the things you will be looking for most often.
Picking a WordPress theme
The theme is what determines what your site will look like and how it will behave. Themes will usually have somewhere for a custom menu to go and somewhere for you to put widgets (little bits of content).
If you are running you own WordPress install, you have a huge library of free themes to choose from and just as many paid options too. If you have an Author Buzz blog, your choices are limited to the themes we have already installed.
About halfway down you will find the Appearance menu.
This is where you will want to go to customise your theme, add widgets, and do a few other things.
Let’s start with the theme. There is a lot to chose from. Fortunately, you can preview what they will look like and change the theme at any time. If you don’t like the one you have, you can just pick a new one.
When you find one you like, click the activate button or select “Live Preview” which will launch the interactive customiser. This lets you see changes on your site before you make them.
Most themes have options. You can adjust these until you are happy with the outcome. This includes searching through the available widgets to add content to footers or sidebars.
Widgets
There is a widget to add a picture, another to add text, more that show your blog’s authors, recent posts, recent comments, and so much more.
If you activate plugins, they may offer you more widgets to play with.
Try not to put too many widgets on your page as they can slow the site down after a certain point.
URL structure and permalinks
One of the things you can do with your WordPress blog is to alter the way links look. You do this by editing the permalink structure. Something that is best done before you have much content. (If you do have a lot of content, try redirection which will point visitors coming in on old links to the new address; redirection is available in plugins for Author Buzz bloggers).
We have an entire post about URL structure. So maybe check that out if this interests you.
Posts vs Pages
Out of the box, your WordPress blog will have two types of content – posts and pages. While they are very similar they serve very different purposes.
Pages, like the name suggests are for adding pages to your site. Pages do not tend to change. Common uses include an “about me” page, a contact form, or a privacy policy.
Pages are hierarchical. Which means that a page can have child pages. Think of child pages as chapters in a wider book. I like to put contact, press, and other things as a child of the about page.
Posts are (again as the name suggests) your blog posts. These are flat but have categories and tags.
Categories are your broad topics. It is best not to have too many to start with. They too are hierarchical and can be organised as pages can.
As you can see, categories can be grouped together. This is part of the category structure for the muse blog.
Think of categories as a filing cabinet where you put your blog post in a draw that makes sense given the post’s topic.
Tags are free-form and are just keywords that describe what your post is about. It is a good idea not to use terms from your categories in your tags. Tags work in much the same way that hashtags on Twitter work.
Writing a post
Most of your blogging will be in the form of writing posts. So lets take a look at the post writing area.
Composing
The most important part of your post is the title. This will (more than likely) determine the permalink for the post. The rest is the content you want to share.
Posts are composed of “blocks”. By default, the editor will assume you want to write a paragraph but you can change that for a large number of other block types. For example, image, gallery, heading, columns, youtube videos, and lots more.
The best way to learn about blocks is to just mess about with them and discover what they do. If you get a block you don’t want, you can remove it just as easily.
Formatting and links
No post is compete without linking out to thinks that are relivant.
For example, in this post, I have linked to posts that go into more detail and I have added embedded links too (the pretty ones with the picture). Lets look at links first.
When you write a post, you can highlight some text to make it bold, italic, or a link. Links are what connects the internet together.
Links have a secondary function in WordPress. If you link to another WordPress blog, your blog will tell the other blog about your post. The “ping” will appear as a comment linking back to your post.
If you write stories and use The Muse of Last Resort for ideas, you can link to the writing prompt and your post with your story will appear at the bottom of the prompt. Pretty cool, right.
This is what a Pingback looks like on Author Buzz:
Embedded links
One of the things that WordPress blocks can do is embed content types. This is an embedded link:
To add one, simple past the link to a post, youtube video, tweet, etc. into a blank block. WordPress will figure out how to make it the right kind of block for you.
Have a browse of all the block types. You will see that WordPress knows how to embed a lot of different types of content.
Post composer side menu
To the side, you will see the menu. This will change for each block showing the block’s settings and options. As I say, play about with them and see which ones you like using.
In the picture, you can see the menu is showing the document tab (as opposed to the block tab). The document tab is where you pick category, add tags, and assign a featured image (more on those in a bit). There are other options (more with some plugins) but those that the really key options.
Featured image
Your featured image is shown (depending on your theme) at the top of your post. It is also the picture that Facebook or Twitter will show when your post link is shared on social media.
It helps to pick a picture that summarises and hints at what your post is about. You can have more pictures in your post but there is only one which will represent your post on social media – the featured image.
To add a featured image press “Select Image”. This will allow you to open the media manager. Your media manager is where all your pictures live. If you had a play with adding images to your post, this will look familiar. This is because the media manager is also used to put pictures in your post.
If you gave your pictures sensible names, the search bar can help you find the image you want.
All the pictures you have ever uploaded to your blog are here. There is also a tab (top left) to the add images page. You use this to add more images.
If you need some pretty images that are free to use, try pixabay.com.
Publish or schedule?
Now that you have a stunning post with a good headline, a category or two, some tags, and a featured image, you are ready to publish.
In the top right are “Save draft” if you are done for now and want to come back later and finish it off; “preview” if you want to see what it will look like first; and “publish” when your post is ready to meet the world.
There are a few other options you might like to look at first.
Right now, you post is set to public and to publish right away. You can change that. If you want to password protect a post, or show it only to admins – click public and change to one of the other options.
If you want to publish later, click “Immediately” and change it to a time and date that suits you.
“Pending review” stops a post going live until another admin looks at it. If you allow other people to have contributor status, all their posts will be marked pending review until you allow them to go live.
Planning your posts
Planning and scheduling your posts in advance is one of the best ways to maintain consistency. So, of course, we have a tool for that. The editorial calendar – which you can read about here.
Conclusions
I hope this guide has been helpful in teaching you a little bit about WordPress and what it can do. I have not covered everything – for example, you can change paragraphs into headings with a few clicks. In fact, it might be fair to say, I have covered only a tiny fraction of what your WordPress site can do for you.
If you have questions about blogging, our Blogs and Blogging forum is a good place to find answers. I regularly check the forums to find out what would be useful for me to write about.
If you have any questions about anything in this post, you can use the comments and I will try to give helpful answers.
A very easy to follow explanation about blogging. I look forward to trying this out.
I am delighted to have been helpful. Please let me know how you get on.