In working with clients I’m finding business owners are ready to take their websites to the next level by connecting with their customers via. a blog. The problem? Most of them have never blogged before and feel a bit overwhelmed by the process. To get them started, I’ve created a beginners guide to posting on WordPress.
Signing in:
If your site is set up on your own domain name, and is a self-hosted version of WordPress, your login URL will look something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php
When you are prompted, enter your username and password and press Log In.
You’ll be presented with your WordPress Dashboard. While the setup of this page may vary, you’ll normally see a few boxes with stats on your latest posts and visitors, latest comments, and an overall At-A-Glance overview of post and comment numbers.
On the left is a series of navigation boxes. To start a new post, select Post to expand this portion of the menu. Then select Add New.
A text editor will open and you’re ready to begin writing and formatting your post.
Composing a Post:
The top field is for your post/article title. You’ll want to make this something informative and catchy. It is the introduction to your post and should grab your reader’s attention.
In the body of the editor, type your content. Use the toolbar to format just as you would in Word, Works, your email dashboard or any other text editor.
Important Note: If you have previously written your content in a text editor such as Word or Works, copying and pasting into the visual editor will appear to bring your formatting, but it will entirely mess up your site. Outside programs like Microsoft bring in a lot of unseen and undesirable code which wreaks havoc on WordPress. To avoid this, you can either write the content in WordPress to begin with, or copy from your document and paste into the HTML editor (see tabs at the top of the WP Editor.) Then, return to the visual editor and proceed with formatting.
When you have finished writing and editing your content, press Save As Draft in the top right of the page.
Read some of the following posts for further instruction!
New posts in this series will go live every Friday. Subscribe to the RSS Feed so you don’t miss any of them!
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Thank you for getting me started! I have a test blog, of sorts, started and at least now I have a “test” post up too.
Thanks!
Amanda,
I’ll be posting a new edition to the series, weekly, (on Friday) for the next 3 weeks. I have the content complete tho, so if you’d like a copy of the full series without having to wait, let me know and I’ll send it to you in .pdf format via. email.
wow what a great info for newbie to get started. Thank for the info
This is a great getting started post!
I wish this post had been around when I was trying to ‘talk’ (via emails) a girl I knew through posting her first post.
I know what you mean!! The creation of this series was inspired by endless chats and emails with new clients.
I love helping people, but I felt it was time to make things a little easier on myself and create a little tutorial to point people to!
Thanks for visiting my blog!
Good idea, Erica. I think that for clients one of the hardest tasks is to choose the right style in the visual editor (h2, h3).
Thanks for the info Erica… much appreciated!
The thing I love so much about WP is the fact that its so easy to work on! You can pick things up so quickly and there is no need for dreaded html!
So true. I know some HTML, from the old days when I designed HTML sites, but personally, I think PHP and CSS are more logical languages. They just make more sense and are easier to figure out!
Indeed they are… Its a whole lot easier now for folks to start up a blog and get going on it! thank god for technology eh?
Yep! I remember my days on Blogger and how starting out, years ago, everything seemed so complicated. I'm sure the 'ease' has some to do with me being more experienced, but I owe a lot to the advancements in technology and programming!!
Oh yeah for sure! Where would you be without it eh?
Your right though…. things do become a lot easier when you rinse and repeat so to speak! 
Oh yeah for sure! Where would you be without it eh?
Your right though…. things do become a lot easier when you rinse and repeat so to speak! 
Hi Erica, great post, i am also beginner blogger and look for as much as information about wordpress, thank you for these infos, Greetings from Germany
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