Pages are static content that are not time dependent. Normally, your website’s “static” content is used on Pages, like the About, Services, Contact etc. pages.

Posts are a dynamic content type. They have a timestamp and will be listed on your website in reverse chronological order. Each post is assigned to a Category. You can also Tag your posts. Posts are displayed in an RSS Feed.

Blogs use Posts as they can be organized in a manner so the reader easily can find a post about a specific subject or from a specific time.

Add a page

• Go to “Pages —> Add New”
  

  

• Follow these steps to add and format your page’s content:
  • Add your headline (this is also what the page’s name will be)
  • Add the page’s content in the content area
  • Format your content using the formatting tools
    
  • Click “Publish” when done — you have now created a new page!
• Do you want to add your new Page to your site’s navigation bar? Instructions here.
• Full instructions here »

Add a post

• Go to “Posts —> Add New”
  
• Follow these steps to add and format your post’s content:
  • Add your headline (this is also what the post’s name will be)
  • Add the post’s content in the content area
  • Format your content using the formatting tools
    
  • Select the Category this post will go in (your website will have other categories than what’s shown here — select the category where you want your post added)
    
  • Click “Publish” when done — you have now created a new blog post!
• Full instructions here »

Formatting

There are two modes of editing: Visual and Text. Choose the mode by clicking on the appropriate tab. Visual mode gives you a WYSIWYG editor. The Text mode allows you to enter HTML along with your post text.

Our instructions below are based on using the “Visual” mode so make sure that tab is active before you move ahead.

In Edit Page or Post view, you have a formatting panel that you use to format your text.

When you highlight a selection of text, you can apply various formats or functions to that text using the tools in the formatting toolbar. Note! You must have the text highlighted for the formatting to apply to it (see sample below).

These are the available options, top left to bottom right:

Top row of tools:

•  – Bold
•  – Italic
•  – Strike through
•  – Bulleted list
•  – Numbered list
•  – Quote (creates a block of text that stands out – the look of this on your own website may look different as each website has its own custom fonts and layout:)

Quote Sample: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

•  – left, center and right justified.
•  – Link and unlink tool. More info here »
•  – Read more link and distraction free writing – not used much.
•  – Show/hide second row of formatting (click this if you don’t see the following tools)

Bottom row of tools:

•  – explained in detail below
•  – Underline
•  – Justify text (even right and left margin)
•  – Text color
•  – Paste as Plain text (T) or Paste from Word (W). Copy text from RTF or Word files and paste into these tools to keep formatting when inserted.
•  – Remove formatting. If you paste text directly from another webpage or Word it sometimes bring with unwanted formatting. Highlight the text and use this tool to remove all formatting.
•  – Inserts special characters into your text.
•  – Indent/outdent one step
•  – Undo, Redo and Help

Paragraph format samples – NOTE, each website has it’s own custom formatting set for these formats. But this gives you the idea even if your website’s fonts might be very different from what’s shown below:

Paragraph: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy.

preformatted

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

To add a link in your text that links a word to another page or website, do the following:

• Highlight the word or name in your text that you want to hyperlink
  
• With the word highlighted, click the “Link” icon
  
• In the Link window, either select an existing page to link to:
  
• OR, an external website (copy and paste the url from the site you want to link to, don’t forget the “http://”) — it is recommended you select “Open link in a new window” for all external links so people don’t get linked away from your website.
  

To add an email link like this:

hanna@highmarkdesigns.com
or
email me

Follow these steps:

1. Type the text you want as your email link.
2. Highlight the text
   
3. With the text highlighted, click the “Link” symbol in the formatting bar
   
4. Insert the following in the url field — mailto: followed by the email address:
   
5. Click “Add Link”
6. Your email link now has an underline to indicate it’s been linked:
   hanna@highmarkdesigns.com
7. You can also add an email link the same way to an image or a word.

1. Place your cursor in the text where you want your file link to be
2. Click “Add Media” to upload your PDF or Word document
3. In the “Add Media” window, type a title for your download link
   
4. Click “Insert into post” and you will have a link like this in your text:
   My Word Doc
5. If you want your file to open in a new window (preferred) instead of opening in the current window, do the following:
   1. Highlight your file link
   2. Click the Link tool in the toolbar
      
   3. Check the “Open link in a new window/tab” option
      
   4. Click “Update”
   5. Done.

Note! There is a difference between uploading a PDF v.s. a Word document. Web browsers can’t open and display a Word document, and will download the Word file directly to the user’s desktop instead.

If you upload a PDF to your page, the PDF will open in the browser window instead of download when clicked. The user then has the option to download the PDF if he/she wants to.

You can choose the layout of your page based on what’s available for your specific theme. Most theme has a default layout set that includes a sidebar. The “default” means that each time you create a new Page or Post, the default Layout is used.

But let’s say you are creating a page with something wide in the content and you don’t want it squeezed in next to a sidebar. Instead, you can select a page layout that doesn’t have a sidebar.

There are two ways to change the Layout Settings:

1. In “Edit” or “Add New” view for your Page or Post, scroll down below the text editor window to the “Layout Settings” area* and select the layout that fits your content. Your options in the case below is Content/Sidebar, Sidebar/Content or Full Width.
   
   * If you don’t see the “Layout Settings” area, go to Screen Options and make sure Layout Settings gets enabled.
2. Under “Page Attributes” in the right sidebar. Click the drop-down under “Template” and select the template (layout) you want for your current page. The selection might vary from theme to theme.
   
   * If you don’t see the “Page Attributes” area, go to Screen Options and make sure Page Attributes gets enabled.

Add an image or media

• You can upload and insert media (images, audio, documents, etc.) by clicking the Add Media button
  

  

  You can select from the images and files already uploaded to the Media Library, or upload new media to add to your page or post.

• If your site is updated to the latest version of WordPress, you can just drag/drop your image into the content area (in Edit view) without using the “Add Media” button.
• To create an image gallery, select the images to add and click the “Create a new gallery” button.
• Full instructions here »
• You can also embed media from many popular websites including Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and others by pasting the media URL on its own line into the content of your post/page. Please refer to the Codex to learn more about embeds.

Add a photo gallery

1. In “Page Edit” view (or “Post Edit” view)
2. In the text content area, place your cursor where you want your gallery
3. Click “Add Media” button
   
4. In the pop-up window, click “Create Gallery” tab
   
5. If you are using images that you already uploaded, click the “Media Library” tab and select all the images you want in your gallery. If you are uploading new images, see 6. below.
   
6. If you want to upload images for your gallery, click the “Upload Media” tab and upload your images. Your uploaded images will automatically be selected for you to create a new gallery in the next step.
7. When your images are selected, click blue button “Create a new gallery”
8. In the next window, you can rearrange the order of your images as well as add captions to your images.
   
9. “Columns” selects how many columns you want your photos to display on the page, the more columns the smaller the thumbnails will be in live view).
10. “Link To” — Select how you want the gallery to open if an image is clicked; in a new page (with all your usual page elements like navigation bars and headlines etc.), in a new pop-up window or not open at all.
11. NOTE. There is a plugin you can install that open your gallery in a “Lightbox” — it will pop up over the web page and put a dark “film” over the web page behind and then run a slideshow of your gallery (slideshow is optional). If your existing galleries does this, we have already installed this plugin for you. It’s called “Simple Lightbox” and you can read more about it here.
12. When you have arranged your images in the order you want, click blue button “Insert gallery” and it will insert on your page. In Edit View, the gallery will look like this:
    

Edit an existing gallery

If your website has a photo gallery on one of the pages, this is how you manage your gallery.

1. Navigate to the page that has the photo gallery
2. Click “Edit Page”
3. In Edit Page view, inside the content area click on the light blue rectangle that represents the gallery. When you click on it, the Edit Gallery button will appear (the other, red button removes the gallery)  (gallery shows as a blue box like below if you don’t have the latest version of WordPress).
   
   (gallery shows as a gray box [after you click on it] with images visible if you have latest version of WordPress — click “pen” icon to edit:)
   
4. In edit gallery view, if you want to add images, follow the steps above for adding images (5 and 6).
5. To remove images, just click the “X” in the top right corner on the images you want to remove from your gallery (you see the “X” if you hover over the image).
6. When done, click blue button “Update Gallery”
7. Update your page when done editing.

Edit an existing page (or post)

• Go to “Pages —> All Pages” (or “Posts —> All Posts”)
  

•  OR, you can also click on your website’s name (or “Visit Site”) up in the left corner of the screen and navigate to the page you want to edit by browsing your website.
  
• When you find the web page on your site you want to edit, click Edit Page (in top dark bar above page)
• In Edit view, edit the content on your page as you wish.
• When done, click “Update” — your revised page is now on your website.
• Full instructions here »

Some of the instructions here might ask you to find a specific area on your screen. If you are in the correct screen and don’t see the requested area, the area might be “turned off” in the Screen Options.

To turn an area on, do the following:

1. In most screens while in the WordPress Dashboard (you’re logged in), find the “Screen Options” tab and click it.
   
2. When the tab is expanded, look for the area you need to “turn on” and select it.
   
3. You can also “turn off” other areas if you don’t need them and want to keep your screen clean.

If your website has a blog, you might want to separate your blog posts — or content — into categories to help people find what they are interested in quicker.

Let’s say you post information about travel. Then you might want your subject to be “Travel” but divided into sub categories like “Europe,” “Asia,” “America” and “Africa.”

This means that if someone clicks on “Travel,” they will see all your posts whether they’re in sub categories or not. However, if they’re only interested in travel in Africa, they click Africa and only see your information pertaining to Africa.

So structure your content before you start adding it so it makes sense to your audience.

Here’s how to create categories:

1. Go to “Posts —> Categories”
   
2. Add the name of your main category — In this case it’s “Travel”:
   
3. Save your new category by clicking the blue button “Add New Category”
4. Add your sub categories — In this case “Africa” — select “Travel” as the parent category so this gets organized under Travel as well.
   
5. Save your new sub category.
6. Continue adding until you have the categories you need for your content.

You can rearrange your categories by selecting them and changing the “parent” category to a different category or none (then the sub category becomes another main category).

You can also add new categories “on demand” when you are in Edit or Add Post view. Simply click “+Add New Category” in the “Categories'” panel in the right sidebar:

Don’t forget to click “Add New Category” link to confirm your addition.

More information on Categories.

Your WordPress website has blogging built in already! But was is a Blog and how do you Blog? Is it right for you? Does it add to your business’ website?

Here’s an introduction to Blogging »

And watch this video. It explains it plain and simple.