Understanding Blog Posts

Overview

Blog Posts are entries that display in reverse order by default on your main page. Posts usually have comments fields beneath them and are included in your website's RSS feed.

To write a post:

1. Head over to your website's admin panel.
2. Click the "Blog > Add New" link in your admin menu.
3. Start filling in the blanks: enter your post title in the upper field, and enter your post body content in the main post editing box below it.
4. As needed, select or add a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. (Each of these default sections is explained below.)
5. When you're ready, click "Publish".

Screen Options

There are more editing fields available to you than you might see at first login. The "Screen Options" drop-down panel allows you to choose which Post Fields are displayed or hidden from your editing area, which allows you to minimise clutter and customise according to your needs.

You'll find the Screen Options tab at the very top of your screen on the right-hand side. Clicking on it will reveal a list of available editing boxes that you can use. Check the box for each Post Field you want displayed, or uncheck the box to hide that module. Click the Screen Options tab again to close the panel.

Once you've customised how your editing screen works, your options are saved for next time so you don't have to repeat the process again next time you log in.

Post Fields

Title/Headline
The title of your post. You can use any phrases, words or characters. Avoid using the same title twice. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hyphens/dashes and other typical symbols in the post title.

Text Editor
The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display or share on your website. You can use either the Visual or the Text view to compose your blog posts. For more on the Text view, see the section below: Visual vs Text Editor.

Publish box
Contains buttons that allow you to preview the blog post before officially publishing it, as well as controlling the state of your blog post. The main states are "Published", "Pending Review" and "Draft". A Published status means the post has been published live on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor or administrator prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you to continue editing later. If you select a specific publish status and click the "Update post" or "Publish" button, that status is applied to the blog post. To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click "Edit" in the Publish area next to the words "Publish immediately". You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the "Publish" button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date. "Visibility" determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you. Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.
A list of all revisions made to the current post is also displayed in the publish box. Clicking on a revision will open a dedicated revision change where you can compare the current version of the post with any previous versions. There is also an option to restore any previous versions.

Permalink
Permalink stands for "permanent link". That means a post URL, and contains a user-friendly post name derived from the post title. The permalink is automatically generated based on the title you set to the post and is shown below the title field. Punctuation such as commas, quotes, apostrophes, and invalid URL characters are removed and spaces are substituted with dashes to separate each word. This post name (also referred to as "post slug" or just "slug") can be edited, depending on your Permalinks settings, using the "Edit" button.

Categories
The general topic the post can be classified in. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the "Add New Category" link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to "Blog > Categories" in your admin panel.

Post Tags
Refers to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking "Add".

Excerpt
A summary or brief teaser of your post which may be featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages.

Send Trackbacks
A way to notify legacy blog systems that you've linked to them. If you link WordPress blogs, they'll be notified automatically using pingbacks. No other action is necessary. For those blogs that don't recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, separating each one with a space.

Custom Fields
Custom Fields offer a way to add information to your website. These are primarily used by addons, but you can manually edit that information in this section.

Discussion
Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: "Allow Comments on this post" and "Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post". If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to that particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to that particular post.

Post Author
A list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights for your blog. To view your list of users, head over to the "Users" menu item in your admin panel.

Note: You can set basic options for writing, such as the size of the post box, how smiley tags are converted, and other details by going to "Settings > Website Settings > Writing".

Visual vs Text Editor

When writing your blog post, you have the option of using the Visual or Text mode of the editor. The visual mode lets you see your post as is, while the Text mode shows you the code and replaces the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor buttons with quicktags.

Note: - With Quicktag buttons that insert HTML tags, you can for example click "i" to insert the opening <em> tag, type the text to be enclosed, and click "/i" or "Close Tags" to insert the closing tag. However, you can eliminate the need for this "close" step by changing your workflow a bit: type your text, select the portion to be emphasised (that is, italicised), then click "i" and your highlighted text will be wrapped in both the opening and closing tags.