Composing a blog post is a lot like typing an e-mail: You give it a title, you write the message, and you click a button to send your words into the world. This section covers the steps you take to compose and publish a blog post on your site. By using the different options that WordPress provides — like discussion options, categories and tags, for example — you can configure each post however you like.
You can collapse or reposition all the modules on the Add New Posts page to suit your needs. The only part of the Add New Posts page that can't be collapsed and repositioned is the actual Title and Post text boxes (where you write your blog post).
Follow these steps to write a basic blog post:
The Add New Post page opens, as shown in Figure 1-1.
You can use the Visual Text Editor to format the text in your post. We explain the Visual Text Editor, and the buttons and options, later in this section.
The page refreshes with your post title and content saved, but not yet published to your blog.
By default, the area in which you write your post is in Visual Editing mode, as indicated by the Visual tab that appears above the text. Visual Editing mode provides WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) options for formatting. Rather than have to embed HTML code in your post, you can simply type your post, highlight the text you want to format, and click the buttons (shown in Figure 1-1) that appear above the text box in which you type your post.
If you've ever used a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, you'll recognize many of these buttons:
You can turn off the Visual Text Editor by clicking Your Profile in the Users drop-down list. Deselect the Use the Visual Editor When Writing check box to turn off this editor if you want to insert the HTML code in your posts yourself.
If you want to embed your own HTML code and skip the Visual Text Editor, click the HTML tab that appears to the right of the Visual tab. If you're planning to type HTML code in your post — for a table or video files, for example — you have to click the HTML tab before you can insert that code. If you don't, the Visual Text Editor formats your code, and it most likely looks nothing like you intended it to.
WordPress has a nifty, built-in autosave feature that saves your work while you're typing and editing a new post. If your browser crashes or you accidentally close your browser window before you manually save your post, you can access it again when you get back.
Directly above and to the left of the Visual Text Editor row of buttons, an Add Media area has a row of four icons. These icons let you insert images/photos, photo galleries, videos, and audio files into your posts. WordPress has an entire Media Library capability, which we describe in great detail in Chapters 2 and 3 of this minibook.