This tutorial is a beginners’ guide to adding three major types of content to your WordPress blog: Posts, Pages, and Widgets. We’ll look at each one in detail. (If you don’t have a WordPress blog but would like help setting up one, check out my WordPress installation services.)
Before you start adding content, you’ll need to log in to the WordPress administration center. On your blog there should be a link that says “Login.” Click that, type in your username and password, and click Login.
Posts
Posts are the articles you publish on your blog, like the ones you’d find in a newspaper. The article you’re reading right now is a WordPress post. Posts are chronological (they’re published on a certain date), they can be categorized and tagged, and visitors can leave comments.
To add a post to your blog, click the “Write” button on the top administration menu.
The two most important input fields you see will be Title (where you put the title of the post/article) and Post (where you put the content).
Two other important fields are Categories and Tags. Both of them help you organize your content, but they’re not identical. Here’s a good analogy of their differences from the post Putting Some Thought Into Blog Categories and Tags:
In the simplest of terms, I think of categories as the table of contents for your blog, a kind of general outline that directs visitors to general topics that you blog about. Tags are more like the index page of a book, a list of key words people will use to search for specific terms.
So categories are more structured, whereas tags are more free-form. A post will usually have one or two categories and several or more tags. (Or you can forgo tags altogether if you wish.)
For some examples of categories and tags, have look at the sidebar of this blog (The WordPress Expert).
To add a category, first click the plus sign next to “Categories” if you can’t see the list. Then check off a category or two from the list, or type in a new one and click “Add.”
To add tags, type them in the “Tags” box and separate them with commas.
There are many other fields on the Write Post page, but you don’t need to fill them out for purposes of basic blog publishing.
If you want to save your post but keep working on it, click “Save and Continue Editing.” To save your post so you can come back to it later, click “Save.” If you’re ready for the world to see your post, click “Publish.”
Pages
Pages have a title and content like a Post, but they are static (they’re not date-oriented), by default they can’t be categorized or tagged, and visitors typically can’t leave comments on them. Pages can also be hierarchical, whereas Posts can’t.
Pages can give information about the blog, the author, or other non-article content that should always be accessible instead of being archived.
To add a page, click the “Write” button and then click “Write Page.” With the exception of the aforementioned differences, the “Write Page” panel functions very similarly to the “Write Post” section.
For more information, check out this tutorial on WordPress pages, as well as some examples of how you should NOT use WordPress Pages.
Widgets
Widgets are “blobs” of information about your blog that go in the sidebar.
Some examples: a list of your categories, a “tag cloud” (a free-form list in which the more popular tags have a larger font), a list of monthly archive links, a piece of text, etc.
To activate widgets, go to Presentation in your WordPress admin, then click Widgets.
Drag-and-drop the widgets onto the sidebar boxes to arrange them the way you want. If there’s a button to the right of the widget’s name, click it to view and edit additional options for that widget.
Note: Not all themes support widgets. If widgets don’t appear to be working, try installing a theme that supports them.
Conclusion
I hope this article provided helpful content management information for WordPress beginners out there. Stay tuned to The WordPress Expert for more WordPress tips, tutorials, and information.
If you have any questions or comments, please voice them in the comments section below.
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