Before we get started with our content creation series on Monday I wanted to just cover some information about posting to wordpress and using your wordpress text editor. Let’s take a look step by step at what you have available to you!
How to add a new post to your blog:
1. Log in to your site.
2. In the dashboard you’ll see the category options, choose Posts/add new.
3. This will open a text editor where you can write your post. 
Text editor ~ it does a lot of fun things so you want to be able to use them!
At the top of your editor you have the “upload/insert” area. This area allows you to upload and insert different types of media to your site. The first one is images, the next is video, music. While I don’t use music much, you might want to try it out if it would be a nice supplement on your site.
Add an image:
When you click the add image icon
You will be able to browse through the files on your computer and upload any image you have on your computer to your blog. When you find the image you want on your computer and click on it you will need to hit the upload button. Once you do that it will show up in the window.
If you want to make it a clickable link you just add the link where you want it to go.
Once you’ve got your link in the right spot you want to pick where the image is going to go in your post, and the size you want it to be.
When you’ve done those things you click the insert into post button and your image should appear!
Adding Video
It’s the same process adding video ~ however I usually just grab the embed code from youtube and put it in myself. (I’ve read with the newest version of wordpress there are some added media features like resizing your images, and easier video uploading but I haven’t upgraded yet to know).
If you want to add videos using the embed code you will need to copy the embed code from wherever you’re getting it. This is the embed code ~ not just the url. When you come back to wordpress you will have to click the “html” tab so you are working in the html area.
Once in the html tab just scroll down to where you want the video to show up and paste the code there.
The text editor buttons ~ what are all those buttons for??
- B ~ bold. Highlight the words you want bold and then click the B button.
- I ~ Italics. Highlight the words you want italicized and click the I
- ABC ~ strike out. Highlight the words you want to cross out and click the ABC button.
- bullet points ~ if you want to make a bullet point list click the bullet list button and it will automatically give you bullet points each time you hit enter. To make it stop hit enter twice or click the button again.
- numbered list ~ same thing as bullets but it will give you a numbered list.
- alignment buttons ~ the next three align your text ~ left, center and right.
- chain buttons ~ the first is to create an achor text link. You have to highlight words on the page before this will be lit so you can click it. Once you click it a pop up window will appear and ask you to put in the link you want people to go to. The next chain button will break a link if you don’t want it anymore. Just highlight the linked text and then click the unlink button and the link will go away.
- add more button ~ I don’t use this one at all ~ but it will make it so only part of your content shows up, then there’ll be a line that says read more that people can click on to see the whole post ~ there are plugins that will do this automatically that make it much easier.
- spell check ~ haven’t used this one either, but it’s spell check.
- The first one on the second row let’s you choose size of font/tag. Paragraph is your normal font, if you want to have a subheading you can pick heading 2 or heading 1. Heading 2 will be slightly larger ~ and may be a different color depending on how your theme manages that tag. Heading one will be the same as your title and look the same as well. Best to stick with heading 2 for subheads in your post.
- U ~ underline ~ highlight text and then click U to make them underlined.
- Align full ~ I never use this, it will make your pages aligned on both sides.
- Big A ~ color. You can choose to change you font color with this button. Don’t get crazy with the colors on your blog. Maybe if you want to make a big point you can do a word or two in red, but you want your posts to be as easy to read as possible and adding a bunch of red makes that difficult.
- The only other one I have ever used is the undo button ~ which is the little arrow. It is a useful button if you’ve done something you hate and you have no idea how to fix it. Hit the undo button and see if it will go back to how it was before you did what you did.
So that’s the editor buttons.
The right hand sidebar ~ finishing up your post
If you are using Zemanta (which I love) you will have it in the right sidebar. Here’s my full review of Zemanta. It will give you image options for your posts that you can insert with one click (the image credit will show up as well).
You will also want to choose tags for your posts. Those will be on the right hand side too. Just a few tags is wise. Make sure they are very relevant to the post you’ve written.
Category ~ also on the right hand side, choose a category you want your post to go into. Just FYI, if you create categories ahead of time they will not show up on your site until there is a post in them. 
That’s about it.
I like to hit the “preview” button so I can see what the post will really look like. I do a quick proofread for flagrant spelling/grammar/my mind went faster than my hands errors and then click “publish”. At this point I feel compelled to say something about obsession. Don’t obsess over your posts ~ this is not high school english class. You are not being graded. As long as you’re writing like you would talk to a friend you’ll be fine. Check for basic mistakes and publish! You don’t make any money if you don’t hit publish.
If you want to schedule your posts to go out at a later date (if you’re batch processing posts) you can click the edit button next to “publish immediately” and it will let you set a date you want the post to publish. Doing this you can write as many posts as you have time for and then have them come out one day at a time on your blog. If you do that the “publish” button will say “schedule” instead of publish, just so you know.
That’s about all there is to posting to your blog. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comment section. I’ll do my best to answer them. I look forward to working on creating content with you on Monday ~ take some to read the articles on content creation I posted yesterday. You will get some great ideas about content creation from them and be ready to get started!
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Hi again Jackie
I'm trying to put product image into a WP post & am following your instructions. I've got the image on my computer but can't get it into the Post. Instead I just get the image title. I should mention that when I get the unload page up, it's different to what you show - no option for sise or where it should go. I do find it strange that I click the text only option for the URL link, but am doing as you say (altho I did try the image only with no success!). Can you suggest where I'm going wrong?
Thanks, and regards ... RUSSELL
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