Adding Posts to WordPress is almost identical to adding pages. The only difference is that you have the option to assign the post to a category. All of the following applies to both Posts and Pages.

When you first login to WordPress you will see your Dashboard which will look something like this:

The left column has all your navigation buttons. Under both  Posts and Pages you have the option to  Edit or Add New. Under the Pages Sub-menu, click on Add New.

This will bring up the Add New Page Screen:

Enter the name of your new page in the thin white box at the top. For example: About , or Services. The larger white box below will contain the text and images for your page.

WordPress has 2 modes for entering text: Visual and HTML. Visual is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (more or less) mode, whereas in HTML mode you can see and edit the actual HTML code for the page. Simply click on each tab to toggle back and forth between modes.

Button Icons

With only a few exceptions, you should always use Visual mode. The above image is in Visual mode as there are two rows of icons. In HTML mode you will only have one row of icons.

Many of the icons you will be familiar with from using Microsoft Word such as bold, italic, underline, paragraph justification, font colour, indent and bullet list. These can be applied to any text on the page by highlighting the text, and clicking the desired button.

Hovering over the button will give you a brief description of what the button does. Here are the most common buttons you will need to become familiar with:

Read the How to add Images post to learn more about uploading photos to your site.

Block Quote

Block Quote will indent the highlighted text. Exactly how the text will appear on your website will depend on the theme you’ve chosen. Different themes handle block quotes it different ways.

This is a Block Quote.

Adding Links

Whenever you would like to add a link either to an external website, or another page or post within your website, highlight the text you would like to display for the link and click the chain-link icon.

This will bring up a mini-screen where you enter the URL of the webpage you would like to link to. Simply copy and paste the URL (including the http://) into the top box.

The drop down box below labeled Target will allow you set whether you would like to open the destination link  in a new window, or in the same browser window.

My general rule of thumb is to open external websites in a new window, and links to my own website in the same window. Click on the Insert button once you’ve set the target.

Paragraph

This drop-down menu is called Paragraph, but you only need to use it when you would like to format a heading within your page. There are 6 sizes of headings. I generally just use Heading 1 or Heading 2 and just use bold on the regular size text for smaller headings. Different themes handle block quotes it different ways:

Example of Heading 1

Example of Heading 2

As all Posts have a Title, often there is no need for an additional heading. You may wish to add sub-headings to break up a long post and divide it into sections.

Great for SEO

Another advantage of using Headings is that they are more likely to be picked up by search engines than your regular text, especially Heading 1.

Editing Pages

Once you’ve added some content to a new page it’s a good idea to save is as a draft. Pages saved as drafts will not appear on your website. You can sign out of WordPress and come back anytime to continue working on the page.

When you are wish to make changes to previously saved pages, click on edit pages under the dashboard menu. You will then see all your pages listed. Pages listed as draft beside the page title are not visible online. Only pages listed as Published (under the date column at the far right) are visible.

Select the page you wish to edit and hit the Preview button to see what the page would look like if you were to Publish it. Once your happy will your page, hit the Publish button, and the Page will be visible by anyone online.