Beginners guide to WordPress

Hello everyone. After I wrote the last article about creating a website I wanted to write this next tutorial to help people use WordPress. If you happened to miss the last article about building a website you can find it here. These instruction will be for the current version of WordPress (at the time this was written) 1.1.7.

Creating blog post and pages

Now there are 2 ways to post your article in WordPress, a blog post or by creating a page. A “blog post” will go on your main page and a “page” will be linked to from your sites navigation bar.
First thing you will need to do is log in to your WordPress control panel by going to your site and clicking “log in” in the Meta widget in the sidebar.

Creating categories

Next you will want to create categories for your post. To create your categories simple click “post” in the top left box and then click on categories. When the next page opens up this is where you will enter your category name. In the first box you will enter your category name as you want it displayed on the main site capitalizing the first letter. In the second box you will enter the same name just all lower case letters cause this is what will be used in the address for the category page.

Creating a page

In your WordPress control panel, click on “pages” in the top left box. This will open up another menu under it. Then you want to click “add new”. This will bring up your text box where you will enter the page name and text for your page. Keep in mind that whatever you name the article that’s what goes in the navigation bar on your sites main page.

Creating a blog post

This time you want to click “post” in the tool box in the top left corner. A menu will drop down below it, now click “add new”. In the top box you want to enter your post’s name. In the second box you will enter the text for your post.
After you have completed your post look to the right side of the screen and scroll down to the bottom 2 boxes. These boxes are for tags and categories. In the tags box enter some keyword that are related to the article you just wrote. In the category box you want to check all the categories you want your article to show up in.

Add an image to your post or page

Want to add an image to your post? Images make your site more attractive and colorful. You can add an image or video to your post by simply clicking on the icon next to “upload/insert” above the post box.

Changing your wordpress theme

Ready to change your theme? Check out the next page on “changing your wordpress theme“.