Quick guide to WordPress blog posting – Part 1

Your first paragraph is the most important one of all.  This and the featured image will be the only content from your post that will be displayed on the blog front page.  For instance this one would probably read along the lines of: Learn how to create professional looking blog posts with this quick and easy guide to the default WYSIWYG (WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET) editor in WordPress.  In this post we cover the basic formatting menu of the WYSIWYG editor.  This includes basic text formatting, creating lists, aligning paragraphs and inserting links and Read More tags.

To insert the Read More tag, click on the Insert More Tag button on the Formatting menu and continue with the rest of your post below the More line.Insert More Tag button

This is what your post editor would look like now.

Insert More Tag inserted into WYSIWYG

Sometimes the more tag disappears from the editing area.  Do not worry about it, it is merely a bug in the WYSIWYG editor, the tag is still in the background but for some reason the WYSIWYG editor doesn’t always generate the image.

Because many of the posts on maak’it are how-tos or recipes, knowing how to use ordered and unordered lists are important.

To insert an unordered list (no numbers, bullets)

  • Press Enter and click the Unordered list button in the Formatting menu.Unordered list button
  • To continue with the list press Enter and continue typing
  • To end the list just press enter twice

Now for a numbered list we do exactly the same

  1. Press Enter and click the Ordered List button on the Formatting menu.Ordered list button
  2. And that is it, ordered and unordered lists done.

I want to tell you at this point press the save button, but I am an obsessive Save button presser, however if you are not don’t sweat it. WordPress automatically saves posts every minute or so.  If things go wrong you can always retrieve an earlier draft.  But more on that in a later post.

Now just for a quick rundown on what the rest of the buttons on the formatting menu do:

  • BOLD.  Shortcut for using bold : CTRL+B
  • Italics. Shortcut for using italics : CTRL+I
  • Strikethrough – Shortcut for using strikethrough : ALT+SHIFT+D
  • Blockquote – Indents and italicises the text

    This is what it looks like when a paragraph is blockquoted.  The keyboard shortcut for this is ALT+SHIFT+Q.

  • For the different alignments, we’ll end this list and continue with paragraphs.

Paragraph alignment

This is a left aligned paragraph.  All the text tries to get as close as possible to the left margin of the page.  When you reach a new line all the text will automatically start on the left side of the page and sentences will end closest to the left.

This is a centered paragraph.  The text starts in the center of the editor and moves to the left.  When a new line is reached, the text will be in the center an thus sentences will also end with their last words centered.

This is a right aligned paragraph.  The text tries to stay as close as possible to the right margin of the page.  When a new line is reached the text will start at the right side of the page and sentences will end closest to the right.

Inserting links

I prefer the type out what I would like to say and then highlight the text that is supposed to link to another page.  For instance w3schools is a great way to teach yourself the basics of HTML and other web technologies.  I highlight the text and press the Insert/Edit Link button.

Inserting links

A popup window will be displayed where you can enter the URL and title of the link.  Always make sure you select the Open in a new window/tab option.Inser tLinks pop up window

To remove a link click on the link and press the Unlink button.Remove links

Okedokes, that is it as far as the formatting options go on the basic menu.  The rest of the buttons allow you to toggle the spell checker, use a full screen editor and display the kitchen sink, which is just a cute name for accessing more formatting option buttons.  We will tackle those in the next post.  Until then happy blogging.

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