The most common way you will be adding content on your site is publishing or editing a POST, or a custom post type if we have set that up for you. You can add and edit content from both the admin area and the front end of your site when you are logged in.
Posts are stored in CATEGORIES so that related topics are kept together.
Adding a New Post
Log-in to your dashboard and click on Posts and then Add New. This will bring up the editor, where you will write, categorise and publish your content.
First of all enter a title for your post, then simply add your your content in the main editorial area. The editorial area has icons for bold, italic, bullet points, etc., in order to format your post. The default view is to show just one line of formatting icons, but if you click the very last icon it will show another line with more options. Experiment with them! Then, just to the right of the formatting icons are two tabs, Visual and Text. The visual tab means that you will be writing your post in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), and this is the one you will be using most, if not all, of the time. The Text tab is simply unformatted text, and in order to format it you must write a bit of html code, so, unless you know html, you are better off to just ignore this tab!
Inserting a Link
Inserting a link is so easy! With your cursor placed on the wording that you want to make a link, click on the formatting icon that looks like a chain. A small box will pop up. Simply type in the url you want it to link to. For more options, click the cog on the right of the pop up box.
Adding an Image
In order to add any type of media (image, pdf, etc) to a post, make sure your cursor is where you want the image, or other media, inserted in your post and then simply click the Add Media button just above the editorial box.
This opens up the Insert Media area. At this moment we will just discuss adding a single piece of media, and will discuss making a gallery later on.
In the pop-up window, just below Insert Media, you will see two tabs – Upload and Media Library. The window usually opens up with Media Library selected and you will see thumbnails of all the images you have uploaded. Just above the thumbnails you will see filter and search parameters, so, if you want to add an image you have uploaded previously you can find it easily, even if you have hundreds of thumbnails showing!
To upload new media, if you have your computer’s file explorer open you can simply drag the file you want and drop it into the thumbnail area. It will then proceed to upload it to your website. If you are unable to have file explorer open as well as your browser, then click on the Upload tab. This will give you a ‘Select Files’ button in the middle of the screen. Click that, locate your file and the click the Open button to upload.
Once it has uploaded you will see on the right hand side of the screen Attachment Details. The first section shows details of the file you have just uploaded. Next is the URL (where the image is stored on your site). NEVER edit this and just skip to the next, which is Title. This will simply fill in the name of your file, but you need to change it to a good title that describes what the image is, although keep it short – it’s a title not a full description! If you want your image to have a caption below it, add it to the Caption box. You can also add a brief description if you wish.
Next you have the choices of how it is displayed in your post. Choose how you want it aligned with the surrounding text, always have it linked to Media File and then choose which size you want to display. Linking to the Media file will allow your visitors to click on the link to enlarge it.
Finally click the Insert into Post.
When you want to insert media, be it an image, pdf, etc., into a post, ALWAYS use this way, as opposed to clicking on the Media button in the Main Navigation of admin. We will cover this point later on.
Publishing
OK, so we’re nearly there! So far your post has been saving itself in the background as a draft while you work. This means that it cannot be seen on the front end of your site. So we now need to publish it to the front end so that your visitors can see it. But before we do that there is one more step – to assign it to a category.
To the right of the editorial box is another column. The top section is ‘Publish’, but we first need to look at the second section entitled ‘Categories’. Simply select the category your post should be assigned to from the list of All Categories. If you need to make a new category, click the link +Add New Category, and type in the name. If it is to be a sub-category then select the Parent Category from the drop down box, otherwise ignore that. Then click Add New Category. It will add the category and automatically select it for your post. To learn more about categories, click here.
Once you have selected the category you can go back up to the Publish section. If you want to schedule it to be published on a future date, click Edit below the ‘Published on:’ part and select the date you want it to go live on your site. Otherwise, simply click Publish.
That’s it! You’re done! Now go to the front end of your site and admire your handiwork!
Custom Post Types
If you have specialised content then I may have created an additional way to add that content. So instead of clicking Post to create, you will click the custom post type, for instance you may have Photography, Portfolio, Dogs, Products etc. In all these cases adding content is the same as above, except you click the custom name instead of Posts.