As promised, here is a follow up to this morning’s talk. An idiot’s guide to posting a blog entry. As with the talk, I shall begin with creating the blog post itself. I’ll talk about logging in and registering for an account further down this post.
For posting a blog, you will need to log in. When you first log in you will see this screen. Put your mouse on Posts then click Add New.
This will bring up this screen. Type in a suitable title (remember Claire’s advice), and then paste in the content that you prepared earlier in Word or your favourite text editor. The whole process of posting a blog can be done within WordPress, but we recommend preparing it offline and then pasting it here.
Use ctrl-A to select the whole of your content and then use the eraser button to remove any unwanted formatting.
Don’t forget to select your chosen categories from the column on the right.
Use the “Insert Read More tag” button to limit how much of the post appears when it is in a list of posts.
Format headers and sub-headers within the text using the style dropdown box. When posting a blog, this will help structure your post and assist search engines with indexing. Start with “Heading 2” as “Heading 1” is reserved for the blog title.
Add a “Featured image” to the blog
Add further images to the blog where you position your cursor. You can upload images from your device, add them from the library of images already installed on the site, or add them from the Pixabay royalty free library.
When adding images, consider what size they are and, if possible, re-size them to something appropriate before uploading them to the site. Large images slow the site down considerably. When posting a blog remember that images never need to be more than 1024pixels wide. 300-500 pixels wide will be quite adequate most of the time.
If you don’t have the tools to do this, you can do it within WordPress.
Click on the image, then click on the pencil
Then click “Edit Original”
This will allow you to change the size of the image.
Once you have placed your image within the content. Consider whether you would like it to have text flowing around it.
You can save your post at any time without publishing it.
If you get stuck, refer to the video user manual, which includes simple two minute instructional videos on how to do pretty much anything you’re likely to need.
Once you’re ready, you can publish your post. If this is your ten minutes and you’re preparing it on Thursday, you might want to delay it going out until 9am on Friday. You can do this by editing the “Publish Immediately” and setting a time and date for your masterpiece to go live.
Improving your post’s SEO
Before posting a blog, you may wish to see if you can improve its searchability with the search engines. Scroll down to just below where you entered the blog content.
The snippet preview allows to dictate exactly how your blog will look in search engine results, and if you enter your Focus keyword in the field provided, your post will be analysed and you will get some useful tips to help improve your search engine ranking. Try to gain a green dot in the black bar at the top of your window.
Logging in and Registering
If you enter https://croydonrx.co.uk/login into your web browser address bar, you should get the following page.
Click on “Log in with username and password” to get …
If you are registered with the site and you know your username and password, login.
If you are not yet registered, click the “Register” link at the bottom and follow the instructions. Once you have done this, give me a call and I will upgrade your account to editor, then you’ll be set to go.
If you have forgotten your password, click “Lost your password?” at the bottom and follow the instructions to set up a new password.
That’s it! You’re now ready to start posting your blogs.
GET BLOGGING!
