Once you’ve signed into your wordpress dashboard (www.yoursite.com/wp-admin) you are face-to-face with your dashboard. Your dashboard controls EVERYTHING for your site. Today we will simply concentrate on “adding a new post”.

click on posts, then Add New

This will open the dialogue area to add a new post, make sure you are working in your “visual” mode. Working in Visual mode allows you to physically see how your post “should” appear once you have clicked publish.

OK, Now first things first. One key to creating outstanding content is your post title. It needs to be relevant to your subject, yet at the same time grab your readers attention, after all you want them to click on your post and read it, maybe even comment on it. For the sake of this tutorial we will simply title our post “Adding a new Post in WordPress”.

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Before we start adding the actual content to the post, we want to consider a few things.

• What category do we want this post added to?
• What should our post tags be? (Tags are important for search engine spiders to find relevant content and direct readers to you site. )
• Do you want comments open on this post?

For this particular post I have decided that my category should be “WordPress Tutorials, How to add a WP Post” – so I will place a check box next to the relevent category titles in the categories section on the right side of my “add a new post” screen. (If your category doesn’t exist, you can add a new category by clicking on the + Add New Category below the Categories side bar).

Post tags are up to you, but the more you have the better off you will be when it comes to google searching for content. This post I will tag as (remember to comma separate your tags as seen here)

WordPress, WordPress Tutorials, How to add a WordPress new post, Adding a New Post to WordPress, Tutorials for WordPress, WordPress Tutorials by Karen Burton

Since I like to leave my comments open on all my posts, I will leave the check mark in the box next to comments in the Discussion settings (bottom of the add new post page).

Now lets add our content.

This is really just as simple as typing a word document. You have most of the formatting features you have come to love and cherish while working in Microsoft Word;

• Bold = B
• Itailics = I
• Strikethrough = ABC
• bullets
• ordered (numbered) lists
• Blockquotes
• Alignment (left, center, right)
• Text hyperlinking (once you have typed the line of text you will highlight and click the chain icon to create a hyperlink)
• Spellcheck
• and the lovely kitchen sink (where all the really cool features are)
  • paragraph format options (paragraph, address, preformatted, H1-H6 – these are the all important headings formats -
  • underline options
  • full justify (alignment option)
  • font color
  • paste from text document
  • paste from MS Word document – this does NOT paste images – you still must upload images to (a) your server or (b) photobucket or other image host
  • custom characters (like this ©)
  • indent levels
  • undo
  • redo
  • help

Start with a h2 or h3 level heading

Then add your content, styling just as you would for a document. You can bold and itailicize elements as needed, just highlight the text and click the appropriate icon. To add an image to your document for additional “wow”, click on the upload image icon , you will get a grayed out screen with your upload options, select the appropriate file and click upload. Select your placement options, add a caption and more right from this screen, click “insert into post” and voila your images has been inserted into your post. Repeat this process as necessary to add images to your content.

To add a blockquote, simply type your text to be quoted, highlight the segment and click on the and your blockquote will be formatted automatically.

Now that you have finished entering your content and formatted to your liking, we will add the featured image for the post (featured images can be set to automatically pull into your homepage and as a thumbnail on your blog archive pages. This is one of my favorite features.

On the lower right section of your screen you will see a sidebar called “Featured Image”, click on set featured image and your upload media screen will once again appear, if you need to upload a new image follow the same steps as above BUT don’t click on “insert into post”, if you are using a previously uploaded image click on the tab “Gallery” click “show” next to the image you want to use, then click on “set as featured image”, once you have done that you can simply “x” out of the screen and return to your post.

Depending on your theme of choice, you may have additional options available, if so just play around with your different settings and see what they do. (be sure to back up your site files first).

Click on PUBLISH on the top right of the screen, refresh your home page and viola you have just created a wordpress post.

Please feel free to comment below:)

Karen offers one on one WP training, please contact Karen for details at 615-692-9193

Have a fabulous day!

studiopress enterprise theme customization for wordpress

I have been working in the graphics industry since November 1997 (that makes me feel old now) so it’s been 13 years. I didn’t start doing web design until 2006-7, why I waited 10 years I will never know. Since I have gotten into designing and customizing sites I have found a whole new world of love for designing and customizing. I won’t necessarily say its easier, because the coding part can truly be a headache from time to time, but the design element is, there don’t seem to be as many rules to follow like there are in print, any resolution from 72dpi up is suitable for web applications and as long as you can translate inches to pixels everything else seems to be a snap.

My discovery of WordPress

In June 2009 I was hired to be the communications manager of a local theater in Murfreesboro, TN. Until this point all my websites had been created using Dreamweaver (which ps I still have a great love for and use constantly) but I was introduced to my very first WordPress Website… Since then I have started creating and customizing WordPress sites pretty much exclusively (for my web work). I love the ease of the templates and how utterly customizable they are, if you understand even the tiniest bit of HTML and CSS you’ve got it made.

streamline theme customization for wordpress

I’ll admit the first month I worked in WordPress I was a little overwhelmed and even confused at times, but the more I sunk my teeth in, the more I understood.

My favorite template designers

Studiopress by far is my favorite theme designers for WordPress. Their logic and building process is second to none. There themes are incredibly clean, highly extensible and ready for any customization you can throw at them. Not to mention their support forum is UNBELIEVABLE, if I post a question it usually only takes 30 minutes before I get a response (or less, and thats even in the middle of the night!!! WOW!)
Studiopress recently stopped creating their “classic” themes and have replaced them with Genesis and “Child Themes”. What I love about the new parent/child themes is that they have even more options available to them, you can load the parent theme and get certain things set, then add the child theme and set even more. My favorite child themes include; Streamline, Agentpress, Lifestyle (ps that is the theme for this site), Serenity, and Enterprise. With their Pro-Plus membership you get all the themes FOREVER! That’s right one payment and updates, upgrades, new themes and amazing support FOREVER!!!

Lifestyle (classic) WP Theme customization, theme by Studiopress

If you can type a word document, you can manipulate WordPress

After the initial customization and layout of a wordpress site, the client can usually take over from there! That is an amazing FEATURE. More and more in this economy people want to economize and cut spending, one of the first things they cut is their advertising and web presence. The web guru is the first to go from the payroll. Well you can combat this by utilizing word press, selling the design and layout and offering a basic training on how to create pages and posts, upload images and other media, once you’ve done the hard part (smirk) you can turn it over to your client. Design and layout take probably 1/8th of the time that a traditional static site takes to create and layout, so you can lower your prices to fit your clients budget. For me that meant 8X as much work as I was getting in the past. When it took me over a month to create ONE STATIC site, now I can do 4-8 WP Sites a week (I am actually making more money this way too and not getting bored looking at the same site over and over and over again). There is no sacrifice to quality, your just adding quantity and value to your services.

executive theme customization for wordpress (theme by studiopress)

More often than not though, my clients will ask me to keep their maintenance and even create posts from content they provide me. For a small monthly fee I will gladly abide. Since creating a post can take as little as 5 minutes to create I figure I am making out in the deal.

WP Site Customizations

Typically for a basic WP Site Customization a client will receive:

• Use of a premium Studiopress Theme ($49 value)
• Custom Header
• Custom Site Colors/navigation
• Custom Favicon
• Setup of initial pages/posts/widgets
• Basic SEO optimization
• 1-hour WP Training

Add on Services include:

• basic 1 page Facebook Fan Page design based on their new website look/feel
• basic twitter/youtube skins
• additional WP training as needed
• Monthly maintenance packages
• Advanced SEO optimization
• Premium graphics/logos and print media to correlate with site design

I love to draw, that being said I’m an OK artist with a pencil, I just don’t get paint, but let me pick up charcoal and WOW! I can make anything POP! But why? I absolutely LOATHE using charcoal – its messy, it dries your skin out, its just all around my most hated media to use to drawing and creating. Is there something in our brains that tell us that what we hate is what we need to embrace? Is it God’s way of saying nany nany boo boo? I guess I will never truly understand and just stock up on hand lotions and skin moisturizing soaps to overcome this method of art.

Trouble with the new tablet

My old tablet was also a wacom, but it was 1 bigger and it just plugged up and worked I didn’t have to change anything, set anything, it was perfect out of the box. My new tablet, wow, so far I have managed to get my settings right for photoshop, but I can’t manage a straight line in illustrator to save my life. Can you say FRUSTRATION??? Now, I will admit that I haven’t spent nearly the time I should have at this point getting re-acclimated to my “supposed” new best friend, but its because I don’t like being frustrated in an area I am (or have been) competent.
If I change the settings for the tablet to work better for illustrator, they stop working completely for photoshop and vice versa, now normally I am not this computer stupid, but I can’t find where i can have dual settings for my tablet – should this be happening? or am I just a complete idiot?

Sample Photoshop Drawings

Since I have been having so much trouble, I have decided to keep my tablet set up primarily for photoshop on my main computer, and I have it set up for illustrator on my other computer – this is really a pain in the but, however, since I seem to do most of my work, editing, compositing, and so on in photoshop this is what made the most sense. I have completed two or three drawings completely tablet based (no mouse at all) to test my skills and help adjust to using my tablet once again.

Tablet based drawing of Tinkerbell

Tinkerbell is above and beyond my absolute favorite drawing so far (in photoshop). I know my technique needs to improve some, as I can see how shaky my lines are, but I am still quite proud of my effort. I have also started a line drawing of Chip and Dale, and completed a drawing of Ursula (in her human form, Vanessa) – ok yes I have a Disney Fetish .

Chip and Dale line drawing in Photoshop CS4

I would love to get feedback from any veteran tablet users, so please feel free to comment below. I have found a few training tutorials online that I am going to try in the next few days and hopefully will be able to report back with improved results.

Human Ursula - tablet based drawing in Photoshop CS4

Under Construction

Sorry for the delay everyone. I am working on some new content and a new layout for my site. Please check back later for new and exciting information.