Blogging 101

This tutorial is a modification of a Posting Entries 101 page that I published in Pinoy Moms Network so the graphics will show a different dashboard. Don’t worry. Except for the name of the blog, the procedure is just the same.

Log in to your account. In the main menu, click the “Write” button highlighted by a red star in the screen shot below.

On the “Write” page, click on the “Post” button in the sub-menu.

Click the “Write” button (highlighted by a red star in the photo above) to enter the “Write” post.

Below is a screenshot of the pertinent portion of the “Write” page which will need a little explaining.

Type the title of your entry in the Title box and the text of your entry in the Text box. I’ve labeled the functions so let’s discuss them one by one.

To understand this better, I have to tell you about some basic HTML stuff. Nothing earth-shattering but just so you understand how the whole thing happens.

Let’s do this with an exercise. Open your “Write Post” page in another browser window or tab so you can switch back and forth from this page to that one.

In your “Write Post” page, let’s try to post an entry. Click the B icon (labeled #1) then type whatever you want to appear bold. Then, right after the word you want to appear bold, click the B icon again. For instance, I want to type my username in bold letters. I click the B icon, I type Webmissy, then I click the B icon right after typing Webmissy.

Why click the B icon before and after Webmissy? Because HTML, or web, pages work with tags. Every command is executed with an opening and a closing tag. The opening tag starts the command, the closing tag ends it.

In the case of bold letters, you are actually enclosing the letters in tags. Just to show you what I mean, switch from “Visual” to “Code” by clicking the “Code” tab on your “Write Post” page. “Code” view allows you to see what you have typed so far in HTML format. You will see that the word you want to appear bold is enclosed in tags — there is an opening < strong > tag and a closing < /strong > tag. The same principle applies if I want to italicize a word (the I button labeled #2) or if I want to strike it through (the ABC labeled #3).

In short, you have to do the same thing with the function you use. You click the icon before and after. You click the icon labeled #4 above to create an unordered (bulleted) list.

• example
• of an
• unordered list

Then, you click the same icon to create the closing tag.

You click on the icon labeled #5 above to create an ordered (numbered) list.

1. this
2. is
3. an
4. ordered
5. list

And you click it again to create the closing tag.

Oh, those little graphics in the list above go with the Wordpress theme that I’m using. Your theme might not provide similar ones, in which case, you will just see the usual discs or squares in your unordered list.

I’ll leave it to you to try the icons labeled #6 through #10. Note, though, that #6 and #7 must be used as a pair. I challenge you to discover how to use them.

In the next tutorial, we will create and remove hyperlinks using the buttons labeled #11 and #12.