To start writing posts you need to go the WordPress dashboard and then press the Write button and then the Write Post button.

In the Title area go ahead and type in a title for your post. For this exercise your title is not that important. In the future you need to make sure you use good titles for your posts so that people will read them. We will talk more about that in a later post. I typed in “Using the WordPress “Write Post and Write Page” Editor” as my title for this post.

Working with the Editor

Now that you have a title put the cursor in the text area. The WordPress editor works a lot like most word processing programs you might have used. Once you master a couple of basic skills you will be well on your way to writing comfortably. There are two ways to look at what you are typing. The Visual mode is the setting most like what you are probably used to using for word processing. The Code mode lets you see the actual code that is being generated as you type. As you learn to use the WordPress editor don’t be afraid to try things. Switch from one mode to another. Press the buttons on the toolbar to see what tools are available to you.

There is also a hidden toolbar that can be very helpful. Click on the last icon on the right side of the toolbar and you will get another toolbar.

Check out the options on this toolbar as well. I use the option on the left of this toolbar often. You can use it to make the headings in your post larger than the rest of your text. Check it out by pressing on the down arrow next to where it says Paragraph. You will get a drop down menu with a lot of options.

I have been using the Heading 2 option for my headings in the posts and I like the way it looks. I am going to put a new heading in here, check it out.

Saving, Previewing and Publishing

As you write the WordPress editor is automatically saving your draft. What you write is called a draft until you publish it. As you are writing you should routinely hit the Save and Continue Editing button.

Once you have hit the Save and Continue Editing button you will also have an option to Preview the post on your blog. This option will show up just above and to the right of the toolbar. By hitting Preview you can get a loook at your post before you Publish it. If you need to take a break from writing hit the Save button and you will be taken back to the WordPress dashboard. When you have completed your post hit the Publish button and you will see the post on your blog. Don’t worry if you need to make changes after you publish the post, you can go back and edit it at any time.

Write Pages

When you are adding pages you use the same editor to enter your information. Take some time to get familiar with the editor because you will be using it a lot.

Links

It is a good practice to link information in your posts to other posts that pertain to the same thing or to places on the internet. To make a link all you need to do is highlight the text where you want to put a link. For example, I will put a link in that will take readers to a post I wrote called Starting a Blog from Scratch. To insert the link I first highlight Starting a Blog from Scratch. (To highlight text, put the mouse cursor to the left of the text you want to highlight, then hold down the left button on the mouse, and with the button down move the cursor to the end of the text you want to highlight. Let go of the mouse button and you will see your text highlighted.)

With the text highlighted press on the icon in the toolbar that looks like a chain link.

When you press the link icon you get the following screen.

After the http:// in the Link URL type in your blog URL followed by the name of your post. If you changed the Permalinks like we discussed in a previous post you can just enter the title of your post with each of the words separated by a hyphen. To make my link I typed in mynewbieblog.com/Starting-a-Blog-from-Scratch/

Click on the insert button and you have a link. Go to Preview and check it out to see if it works. If it doesn’t work you may have typed in the URL wrong or missed or mistyped a letter. I am going to go back and insert another link in this post before I finish. I am going to make a link to the post I wrote about Permalinks. I also am going to add a few Tags down in the Tag area. I will add Permalinks, links, and pages to the tag area.

That’s it. Now I will go back and see if there are any mistakes in spelling or grammar. When I feel like the post is in good shape I press the Publish button and the post is then on the blog. I check it again for any errors and fix anything I see. Go ahead and take some time to practice with the WordPress editor until you feel comfortable with the way it works.