How to Create a Post in WordPress

“Content is king.”

I don’t know if you’ve heard this saying before.

This saying implies emphasizing the importance of content in a website.

Content is king. A website is worth nothing without content, right?

Today we go into the heart of WordPress. That is the function to create and manage Posts.

Managing and writing posts is also a daily task when you work with a WordPress website.

Now let’s get acquainted with the Post editor screen in WordPress.

Explore the post editor screen

You use the post editor screen when adding a new post or editing an existing post.

To add a post you have 3 ways. The first way, you access the WordPress DashBoard, hover over the Posts menu on the left hand side. You will now see the Add New section. Clicking on it will take you to the post editing screen.

Another way to enter the Post editing screen, you hover over the New section of the Admin Bar and select Post

The last way, you go to the Post management screen by selecting Posts -> All Posts. On this screen you have the option to add a new Post by clicking the Add New button. Or you can edit any existing Post by clicking the Edit button.

Post edit screen

Let’s explore some important parts of the post editor screen

Category : when composing a post, you must put the post in an appropriate category. Category is the way to organize posts in WordPress. For example, when you have a movie review website. You can categories like Action, Horror and so on.

If you forget to select Category, the post will receive a default Category called Uncategorized. This is not professional at all. So you can change the default category in Settings -> Writing -> Default Post Category .

You don’t need to create all categories at once when you first start building a website. Instead, you just gradually create categories according to the posts you write.

Tag : Tag is also a function to categorize posts. I noticed the trend that many famous bloggers no longer use tags. Using the wrong tag will lead to duplicate content in your site. This is not good in the eyes of Google. So you only need category to categorize posts is enough.

Featured Image : the image representing the post. This image will be used by many themes to display on the homepage.

Format : You can customize the display format of the post. The default format is Standard. Depending on the theme, each post format can be displayed in a different style.

Extend Post editor screen functionality with Screen Options

By default, the post editor only displays commonly used functions. Some other features have been hidden in Screen Options. To enable this feature, go to Screen Options and select the function you want.

Here is the meaning of some hidden functions

Excerpt

This is the part where you enter the summary of the post.

Why is a summary needed?

Because some themes will use this summary instead of displaying the entire post content on the homepage. If you do not enter the summary. The theme will automatically break the first few sentences of the post to display the homepage. This way of automatically interrupting may not be very pleasing to the eye. At this point, you can use the excerpt feature to increase the attractiveness of the post on the homepage.

Send trackbacks

When you edit a post and there is a link to another post on another WordPress site. This page also enables trackbacks. Now the trackbacks function will help you send a trackback message to that post.

The intent is that the article pointed to will display a link back to your article at the bottom of the article. So you have the opportunity to get more backlinks. But often the function is associated with spam. So bloggers often turn off the trackbacks function.

Custom Fields

If you are a WordPress beginner, the feature is probably rarely used. As it is considered an advanced feature.

With this feature, you can add metadata information to the post through data fields.

For example, your post display page usually displays the post’s name and content. But if you need to add another information such as coupon information. Now you will use the Custom Fields function to create a data field with Name as ma-coupon. And the value is (value) is ICTDB2 (an example of a coupon code). This information will display in the post content in the position you want.

Discussion

You can control the comment feature for posts in this area. If you don’t want other people to post comments on this particular post, leave both options off.

Slug

By default, your article will have a URL of the form: http://local./?p=id , where id is the code of the article. But this link is not SEO friendly. you can use the slug to manually edit it into a nice format http://local./ten_bai_viet . But the best way is still to configure in Settings -> Permalinks section .

Revisons

View information about each revisions of the post.

This is a function to help you restore a post if you accidentally damage it and cannot use the Undo function of the clipboard.

You can also access this feature in the Publish area.

Comments

Here will display the latest comment for the post. You can comment or reply to comments right here instead of going to the Comments section on the menu in the Dashboard.

Author

You can change the post author here.

Post’s publishing area

I will explain more about the features in this area

Status : The status of the post. Published is the post that has been published.

Visibility : Display options of the post

• Public : Normal display
• Stick this post to the front page : make this post always show on the top of the homepage

Password Protected : protected with a password.

Private : private post mode, posts can only be viewed by accessing the post address.

Published on: customize the post date. If you choose the time to be in the future, it will automatically post in the future.

Practice posting posts in WordPress

Here’s how you’ll practice posting your first post:

1:  Click on the title input box and type the post title you want

A : You can manually edit the permalink if you want to change from the default

2: Click on the edit box to enter the post content

B: If you want to see what your post will look like when published, click Preview.

3: You must choose at least a category to match the post

4: You choose a featured image for the post (optional)

5: When you finish the post, click Publish to publish the post. You can now see the post on your website.

After posting the post successfully:

A: If the post is successful, you will see a success message

B: The name of the screen changes to Edit Post

C: Publish button turns into Update button

Epilogue

In today’s post, we learned about the post editor screen.

You have explored all the functions inside this screen. You already know the basic steps to create and publish a post.

If you face any difficulty, leave a comment below.