WordPress Guide

the blog studiodesign & development for the social web WordPress 2.7 Walkthrough

Welcome toWordPress 2.7A few notes to start us off...Welcome to The Blog Studio’s guide to WordPress 2.7. This guide is meant for users who are just start-ing out working with WordPress, and also for users who may have had experience in the past with previ-ous versions of WordPress.

Please note: » There are some major layout and design chang-

es in WordPress 2.7 - however, you will find that after you spend some time with the new inter-face you will grow to love it - just like we do.

» This guide was created viewing WordPress 2.7 in Firefox v3.1 - depending on the browser you’re looking at, it may appear slightly differ-ent. If you’re not using Firefox, we suggest that you do! Download the latest version of firefox at www.mozilla.org.

» We encourage you to share this guide with your friends!


1. Welcome to WordPress 2.7

2. Table of Contents

3. Login Screen

4. The Tool bar - Entry Tools

5. The Tool bar - Settings & Options

6. The Dashboard

7. Right Now & Recent Comments

8. Quick Press & Recent Drafts

9. Add a New Post - Writing Your Entry

10. Excerpt

11. Custom Fields

12. Categories / Tags

13. Uploading Media #1

14. Uploading Media #2

15. Add a Page

16. Comment Moderation

17. Site Backup - Export


Login Screen

Username & Password:You should have your user name and password handy. You can type them into these fields, this form also gives you the option to “remember” your user name and password. There’s also a link down at the bottom that will let you request a new password if you have forgotten it.


The Tool bar - Entry ToolsYou can see here that the tool bar is very versatile, it expands and minimized - and when its minimized, it has fly out menus - so you always have access to its functions.


The Tool bar - Settings & OptionsThe bottom 5 tool bar sections mostly control how your site looks, the various preferences you have set up, also if you have any plugins installed that add menus for options - this is where they will appear. We like to keep the tool bar minimized and use the fly out menus - as this is a great space saver, if you’re working on a smaller screen.

Its good to be familiar with each of these menus and what they contain in case you need to change some-thing quickly, like widgets on your sidebar, adding or removing plugins, any kind of user administration you might need for your site, backing up your site’s entry, and many other things.


The Dashboard

Welcome to the Dashboard!This is the new WordPress Dashboard or landing page. You can easily drag and drop each module, as well as click to expand them to see their contents.

Heres a quick intro for each of them: » Right Now - gives you a quick look at statistics

specifically from your blog, including, number of posts, number of comments - and a few more.

» Recent Comments - lists the most recent com-ments on your blog.

» Incoming Links - displays other sites linking to yours.

» Plugins - Lists the Most Popular, Newest, and Recently Updated plugins available to download.

» QuickPress - Allows you to quickly write a new entry without having to open the entry window.

» Recent Drafts - Displays entries that you have started written but have yet to publish.

» WordPress Development Blog - Displays the most recent news items from the WordPress Development site.

» Other WordPress News - Lists other sites that have written articles about WordPress Recently.


Right Now & Recent CommentsRight Now:Right Now gives you a quick look at statistics specifi-cally from your blog. Its more of a fast overview of your site, telling you if you have any pending com-ments that need to be approved, how many posts you’ve created, etc. You probably wont spend much time using this Module, but it does contain some useful information.

Recent Comments:Recent Comments lists the most recent comments that have been made on your site. Hovering over the box will reveal an actions menu enabling you to Unapprove, Edit, Reply, Mark as Spam, or Delete that comment. There is also a button at the bot-tom that will bring you to the comment Moderation page which will allow you to do the same actions in bulk - this is useful if there has recently been a lot of comments to your site.


Quick Press & Recent DraftsQuick Press:QuickPress is a great little module that allows you to quickly write a new entry without having to open the entry window. Below the title field there is also an option to access WordPress 2.7’s fantastic new Media Upload features.

Recent Drafts:Recent Drafts will display entries that you have started to write but have not yet published.


Add a New Post -Writing your entryTitleWrite your post title here.

Add MediaClicking one of these buttons will allow you to add images, add videos, and add audio. These will be explained later in this guide.

Visual/HTMLClicking one of these will change the input box into HTML or Visual formatting - We suggest that you use the HTML editor - our clients have had better results with consistent formatting.

PostWrite your post content here. There are some quick buttons above the input box that allow you to do basic formatting to your posts.

For Windows users - Please note: if you are using a text editor like Microsoft Office to write your posts before pasting into this text box - in Internet explorer, there will be a quick button that is called “Insert as normal Text”. Please use this, as most formatting is-sues are a result of using characters that are unsup-ported by web browsers.


Add a New Post -ExcerptExcerptIf your theme has excerpts enabled, use this field to type a short paragraph about your full entry. This is often used on your home page search pages, and archive pages, so the user knows what the article is about before it is clicked on.


Add a New Post -Custom FieldsCustom fields allow you to add special content to your site, for example if you would like to associate an image with your entry, you could use a custom field for this. If you wanted to associate a video to your entry, this would also be possible using custom fields.

NameUse this field to target the custom field that has been created - please note, if your blog hasn’t been enabled with a custom field - these settings will not effect anything on your blog.

ValueThis field is used to display information associated with the custom field. Example, if you had a custom field that associates an image with your entry - you might put “entryImage” in the Name field - and then use the Value field to link the image with a full URL.

Below, is an example of a custom field that has been filled out. Note the buttons that allow you to Delete, and Update your fields, if you need to change the information in them.


Add a New Post -Categories/TagsCategories and tags are a way to organize entries into different groups. They’re essentially the same thing - but the added ability of having two grouping methods gives us added power.

Generally we like to look at Categories as if they were big buckets, collecting large general categories - Think of it as if you were to Categorize a group of entries with “Sports”.

Within the sports category there are a bunch of dif-ferent entries about different sports, like Basketball, Baseball, Soccer and Football. These entries could be tagged using the tag module with Basketball, Baseball, Soccer and Football.


Add a New Post -Uploading Media #1One of the most used features of WordPress is the media upload features. This screen allows you to easily upload, re-size, and place your images, vid-eos, and audio that is saved on your computer and also around the web.

Our example will show how to upload an image, uploading video and audio is very similar.

Selecting your FilesAfter clicking the Upload/Insert image button above the write panel, a new screen will come up, asking you to select the files you wish to upload. Click the Select File button, and a browser will appear. Browse to where the image file is stored on your computer, and click select.

The screen will quickly change and will say “Crunch-ing” this simply means that the image is being uploaded and stored on your web server.


Add a New Post -Uploading Media #2Adding InformationOnce you have uploaded and saved your image on your web server in the previous step - the screen will change to show a number of fields - including: Title, Caption, Description, and Link URL. It’s important that you fill out these fields, it helps identify the im-ages later on - however, its not necessary to fill all of them out.

Below you also have radio buttons giving you the option for image alignment, and size.

Once you’re finished choosing your alignment and sizing, click the Insert into Post button, and it will automatically insert the code into the entry field.


Add a New Page

Adding a new Page to your blog is exactly the same as creating a new post, except you do it through the Add a Page tools in the tool bar. Instead of repeat-ing the instructions on entering your title and content into the page, I’m going to skip that part and go into the items that differentiate a Post from a Page.

Please note, pages can not have Categories or Tags applied to them.

ParentChoosing a page parent will display the page in a nested order - ex: child > parent > etc. etc.

TemplateIf your theme has custom templates for pages, this is where you would choose those templates. For example, many pages have a different template for archive pages, or link pages.

OrderPages are normally sorted in alphabetical order - however, if you’d like to specify the order - you can set it here - 1, 2, 3, 4.


CommentModerationMuch like on the Dashboard, the Comment page gives you the ability to moderate comments that have been made to your blog.

At the top there is a small sorting navigation allowing you to view All, Pending, Approved, and Spam com-ments. Clicking these links will change the list view to those particular comment entries.

Hovering over the box that contains the comment will reveal a menu giving you options such as Unap-prove, Spam, Delete, Edit, Quick Edit, and Reply.


Site Backup -ExportBackups are important for everyone. Much like a photo album, its important to keep records of your site - because you’ve put so much work into it.

WordPress makes it very simple to backup your site, simply by clicking the backup tab in the tool bar, selecting “All Authors”, and then clicking Download Export File.

You never know when your server will crash, so periodic backups are recommended. Performing this simple action once a week, or even once a month, will protect you from loosing months worth of hard work.

Documents

WordPress Guide