Add New Post

The Add New Post screen is one of the most important and most used screens in your WordPress installation. From here, you draft and create the various Posts you write for your blog site.

To access the Add New Post screen, click on "Add New" under the Posts header in the left hand column (sidebar).

Clicking "Screen Options" will allow you to view both the "Show on screen" and the "Screen Layout" options.

• Show on screen - Items checked here will be displayed in the Add New Post screen. These items give quick and easy access to additional features that are commonly used when constructing your blog.
• Screen Layout - The amount selected here determines the amount of columns displayed in the Add New Post screen

Format

Post Formats are used by themes to create different styling for different types of posts and are only visible if the current activated theme supports the Post Formats. The following are available default post formats included with the default theme assigned to the original installation of WordPress 3.2.1. If you are unsure of which format to select, then select "Standard" as it can always be changed anytime.

• Standard - No special format.
• Aside - A short piece of content, typically styled without a title.
• Link - A single link to another site.
• Gallery - A gallery of images.
• Status - A short status update, similar to a Twitter status update.
• Quote- A single quotation.
• Image - A single image.

Categories

Every Post in WordPress is filed under one or more Categories. Categories allow the classification of your Posts into groups and subgroups, thereby aiding viewers in the navigation and use of your site.

Note: The list of categories will increase in the next two options as you add more categories, either here, or in the Category Screen.

• Select the "All Categories" tab if you wish to select a category for your post from a presently available list of categories.
• Select the "Most Used" tab if you wish to select a category for your post from a presently available 'most used' list of categories.
• Click the "+ Add New Category" link if you wish to add a category.
• A Parent category is a main group.
• A Child category of a Parent category is a subgroup of a main group.

Post Tags

Tags are the keywords you assign to each post. They have no hierarchy, meaning there's no relationship from one Tag to another. They provide another means to aid your readers in accessing information on your blog.

Featured Image

The Featured Image option allows you to include an image with a Featured Post link. To add the image, click the "Set featured image" link.

If the image you wish to use already resides in your Media Library, skip this step and go to the next step. If the image is on your computer and not in the Media Library, click the "Select Files" button, navigate to the image and upload it (if this method doesn't work, use the "Browser uploader" link). Once uploaded, the image will be placed into the Media Library..

Click the "Show" link for the image you wish to use.

Enter the following information and/or select the appropriate options:

• Edit Image - Click this button if you wish to edit the image. Editing functions are limtited, so it is suggested that you edit the image prior to uploading it.
• Title* - Enter a title for your image.
• Alternate Text - Enter a brief description of the image. This feature is for those who are visually impaired and are using a text reader.
• Caption - Enter a brief description of the image (optional). The caption willl appear below the image wherever it is displayed.
• Description - Enter a brief description of the image (optional).
• Link URL - Enter a web address here if you want to set the image as an active link. Anyone who clicks on the image will be taken to that address.
• Click the "None" button to not have the image set as an active link.
• Click the "File URL" button to link to the original image.
• Click the "Post URL" button to link to the original post.
• Alignment - Select either None, Left, Center or Right to align the image to that position in the post. Image positions and sizes can be changed at any time.
• Size - If possible, select either Thumbnail (150 × 130), Medium, Large or Full Size to set the dimension size of the displayed image. If you edited (pre-sized) the image for an exact fit before uploading, select Full Size.
• Insert into Post - Click this button to insert the image into your post.
• Use as featured image - Click this link to include the image with a Featured Post link.
• Delete - Click this link to delete the image.

Excerpt

If you wish, enter in a brief summary of your post here. It will replace the full content in RSS feeds when the option to display summaries is selected in Dashboard › Settings › Reading and it can be displayed in places where quick summaries are preferable to full content, if your current theme supports it.

Send Trackbacks

Trackbacks help you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what they have written on their blog, even if you don't have an explicit link to the article. Because of spam, very few people use trackbacks for legitimate reasons anymore. Most will use pingbacks as their primary ping method.

When you want to trackback, you will need to use a special link provided on the blog you want to reference. Most trackback links appear just after the blog post content and before the comments. This is the link that needs to be copied and pasted into the above field.

Custom Fields

Custom fields can be used to add extra metadata to a post that you can use in your theme.

Discussion

• Select "Allow comments" (also called discussion) to allow others to comment on this post.
• Select "Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page" to allow this function. The pingback is generally displayed on Person A's blog as simply a link to Person B's post, while a Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what they have written on their blog, even if you don't have an explicit link to the article.

Slug

A slug is a few words that describe a post or a page. Slugs are usually a URL friendly version of the post title (which has been automatically generated by WordPress), but a slug can be anything you like. Slugs are meant to be used with permalinks as they help describe what the content at the URL is. Enter a very brief description of your post here to have it appear in the URL pointing to your post or leave it blank to use the WordPress generated URL.

Author

Select an author for the post.

Add New Post

The above is where your post is entered. The title of your post goes into the "Enter title here" field and the main body of your post goes into the text field. Unless you know HTML, it is strongly suggested you use the "Visual" text field as ant text entered here will appear as it appears on the front page. Standard text formatting buttons appear by default.

Clicking the "Show/Hide Kitchen Sink" button will show an extra row of formatting buttons as shown below.

To apply a format to text, select it and then click the appropiate format button.

Publish

Once your post is completed and ready for publishing,

• Clicking the "Save Draft" button will save your post until you are ready to publish it.
• Clicking the "Preview" button will display your post as it will appear to the reader.
• Clicking the "Publish" button will immediately publish your post and make it available for public viewing.
• Clicking the "Move to Trash" link will delete your post.

• Clicking the "Edit" link for Status will give you the choice of saving the post as a draft or save it for administrative approval for publishing.

• Clicking the "Edit" link for Visibility will allow you to set the post as public viewing, password protected viewing or private viewing.

• Clicking the "Edit" link for Publish will allow you to set a date for auto-publishing.