(See my article on creating a Wordpress blog in 15 minutes)

Adding posts to Wordpress is pretty easy, but not without it’s little challenges. First thing to be aware of is that because you effectively creating content for the web, what you write ultimately gets converted into the web’s native language (HTML). But don’t freak out because Wordpress has a pretty user friendly interface to make this task as easy as possible.

Logging In

So to create a new post all you do is log onto your Wordpress blogsite either via the SiteAdmin link if it’s on your site. If not go to your blogsite address and just append /wp-admin/ to the end of it  http://embraceyourpotential.wordpress.com/wp-admin/.

Creating a Basic Text Post

Select the Posts option from the left hand navigation bar where you’ll be presented with a screen similar to above which lists all of your posts to date and gives you the option to edit / delete these or “Add New” – select this option where you’ll be presented with a page similar to below :

- Add the title of the post – make sure this is as captivating to your intended audience as possible – search engines also love to index blog post titles – so make it snappy !

- Add text – adding basic text is easy as Wordpress provides you with a farily user friendly interface which includes all the basic formatting you’d see in most modern word processors. This should keep most bloggers happy. However if you want to start incorporating more advanced formatting then you’ll probably need to take the plung into the world of HTML which I find pretty easy after the first initial shock – there’s plenty of great tutorials out there on the net.

Adding Images

Wordpress hasn’t quite reached the fully user friendly drag and drop style functionalityy so adding images is still quite a manual process.

1) Capture your image (from camera / web source etc)

2) Select the “Image” icon next to the “Upload/Insert” option where you’ll be presented with a screen similar to below.

3) Select the “Browse’ button and choose your image and upload it.

4) Fill in the remaining details (always good to put image descriptions in so it’s more easily readable by people with low vision readers and also search engines) then select the “Insert into Post” at the bottom.

Happy Blogging

Andy  !

I’ve recently discovered how easy it is to create a very effective / powerful Wordpress based blog site and I’m excited to be helping some of my friends to create their own to get their messages out to the world. So I put together this article on “How to”

1) Signup for a new Wordpress account at Wordpress.com

2) Pages – Add any specific pages to your blog (for example “About Me”, “Contact Me” via the Pages section. Pages provide easier navigation to more ’static’ style information that you might want your readers to access.

3) Themes – The beauty with Wordpress is that you can change the look and feel or your site with literally a click of the button. It comes with loads to choose from – simply select from the Themes section. Main choice apart from the actual design is the number of columns (my preference is two columns for a ‘cleaner’ view). Some themes have their own specific settings available within the Themes section.

4) Widgets – Add widgets to your site to bring it alive – caution – my recommendation is to only use widgets when they add genuine value to the end user experience. For me a clean simple but useful site is far more user friendly than an overcrowded / overcomplex one. Some of the default widgets i suggest include Categories (if you use this functionality extensively) and Recent Posts to give users an overview of what you’ve recently written. My personal favourites are category or tag clouds which provide a more graphical representation but again only use where they add value.

5) General Settings – Main settings of interest here are the Site Title and Tagline which are shown on most Themes. You might also want to change the timezone and date formats to be more reflective of where you pysically are.

6) Clear Up and Post your First Article ! – you might want to clear up a few of the default settings within Wordpress just make it that bit more professional looking – for example the initial “Hello World” posting which is automatically generated. See my separate article here on adding posts to Wordpress.

Welcome to the world of blogging which I find so satisfying to be able to share my thoughts and knowledge with the greater Global community.