A short guide to getting your first post on a Wordpress blog

1. STARTING TO BLOG Introductions

3. Remember this is an exercise – we’ll be deleting the blog at the end but don’t use your usual username or a similar password to any others you have. Make sure this option is selected

4. Untick this box – as it is an experiment, you don’t necessarily want to be visible

5. Use a fake profile for the time being – your name will be added to comments on other posts.

6. Click on the link

7. Have a look at “View your site” to see what you start with.

8. Dull, eh? Let’s get some content in there, and customise it a bit. Click on “Log in” to start

10. This is your blog’s control panel. You can start to enter content and customise your blog here.

11. These panels give you information about the social side of your blog – who has commented and what they said and any incoming links you have gathered. This panel tells you about the content and design of your blog. We’ll look at themes and widgets in a bit. It also gives you an overview of your blog. It’s pretty quiet at the moment, but it will show some interesting stuff sooner or later…

12. Click on “Write a new post” or “write” to start entering content

13. This page is fairly easy as well – you can see where the content goes… Apart from these two, which I’ll come onto later These buttons do what they do in most word processing packages.

14. I have added some content to mine and now I am ready to publish it. However, there are a few things to do before I can.

15. First, add some Tags. Tags are there to pick out key themes or subjects in your post. They are important for search engines and can provide some interesting information about the content of your blog. Tag your post with some of the important themes. Categories and tags can be added or deleted at any time. The blog software will automatically update the site to reflect your categories, tags and any changes you make to them. Categories are more formal. They allow you to cover a smaller group of key topics. You can easily add categories to keep a neat index of your subjects.

16. We’ll come on to the advanced options later. However, make sure pings and comments are allowed. Allowing pings mean that if someone links to your site, you’ll be able to see that link. You may choose to disable comments of your real blog, but we’ll use them for the time being. Note – you may get “comment spam”, which looks a lot like email spam. It is there for the same effect – ignore or delete them unless you are getting a huge amount.

18. When you are done, click “Preview this post”. A preview of how the post will look on the blog will open in a new window. Check it again, and if you are happy, click “Publish”

19. See how the categories have automatically updated All being well, you should see your first post! And my tags are added to the post

20. Next – customise your blog