This post is targeted to users who have never used WordPress before, but find they need to do it as part of their corporate roll. It can be as simple as typing a few words and hitting Publish, but if you use the tools in this tutorial, you’ll find your posts have a much more polished look, and your boss is going to like that.
One of the primary reasons businesses implement blogs is because it creates new content on their Web site. That only helps if people can find your content. As such, WordPress, different themes, and plugins all offer tools you can use to improve your sites ability to be found on the Web. This is the dark art of search engine optimization, or SEO. If you’re going to blog regularly, you can and should become more familiar with SEO, but that is not what this post is about. A good place to get started is here.
When you first visit your WordPress blog, you may or may not be logged in from your previous visit. If you are not logged in, you will likely find a “Log In” link in the “Meta” section of the front page.
If you’re already logged in, you will find an “Admin” link instead of a “Log In” link. In order to create your first post, you will need to either log in or click the Admin link. Either way, you will be taken to your site’s “Dashboard” view. Your Dashboard may look different than this depending on how your blogmaster has the site set up. For this lesson, we’re going to concentrate on adding a new post.
Click to enlarge - new post screen
After clicking “Add New,” you will be taken to the “Add New Post” screen. There are a lot of options you can customize here! The more you know, the more you’ll be able to customize your posts. It’s important! If your copy doesn’t look good, who will read your posts?
Your initial view shows you in “Visual” edit mode. Next to the “Visual” tab you’ll see the “HTML” tab; something we’ll cover in a future lesson. This lesson will focus on your initial tool bar and what tasks the following buttons perform.
Bold – Switches your editor to bold text.
Itallics – Switches your editor to itallic text.
Strikethrough – Switches your editor to strike through text. In blogging ettiquette, it is considered bad form to remove text from a post once other people have had the opportunity to read your posts. While there are obvious exceptions to this rule, it is most common for editors to leave text in place but use the strikethrough option if a published post needs to be edited.
Unordered List – This is Web speak for bullets; a list that is not in specified order. This section of the post is an unordered list.
Ordered List – Also known as a numbered list.
Blockquote – Commonly used to differentiate your text from another source.
For example, if you are blogging about an article you read, and you want to include some of the text from that initial article, you should utilize the blockquote feature to differentiate the other person’s content.This text is added using the blockquote function. Most blogmasters will have this text automatically formatted to look different than the rest of your post – makes it easy for you to write and quickly publish. While you’re typing in “Blockquote” mode, your text will look indented in your text window, but when you publish, the text will be formatted as a quote.
Your basic alignment controls; left, right, and center.
Insert/Edit Link – Use this button to insert a link. This button will be inactive by default unless you have some text highlighted in your post, or your cursor is on an existing link within your post.
Insert/Edit detail
Clicking the Insert/Edit Link button will bring up the following box.
The Link URL box should include http:// at the beginning of each Web address.
The Target setting determines if your link will open up in the same window or a new window. It’s common practice to set this to “new window” on a corporate blog when the link takes your visitor to another Web page.
The Title setting is text that the user will see when their mouse is pointed at the link. Think of it as “pop-up” help to describe your link.
For text links, leave the Class as “Not set.”
When you want to add a link, type the words you want to show up in the post that will be the link, then click the Insert/Edit Link button to access this menu. Add the Link URL, set the target, and add a “title” (optional), and click Insert. That’s all there is to it!
Unlink – To remove an existing link, place your cursor in the link (no need to highlight), and press unlink. The entire link will be removed.-
Insert More Tag – This adds a dividing line in your post. In the main page of the blog, only the portion of your post before the “More” tag will show up, and your readers will be invited to [click to continue...]. This is a good practice for posts of more than a few hundred words; it keeps a single lengthy post from overpowering your blog’s home page. 
Toggle Spellchecker – Clicking this will turn the spellchecker on and off. Using the drop down you can choose the default language for your post.
Toggle Fullscreen Mode – Clicking here will expand your text window to cover most of your Web browser’s window. Very handy for longer posts.
Kitchen Sink – The Kitchen Sink opens up an extra set of buttons. This will be the topic of another post.
The fun is not over once you finish writing your post. Assuming you have everything to your liking, you’ll want to at least save your post, and maybe even publish it.
The Publish Box
At the top right corner of your Add New Post screen is the Publish box. Some of the highlights here include:
Save Draft allows you to save your work so you can come back and continue your post later.
Preview shows you a sample of what your current post will look like by opening it in a new window.
If you routinely write posts that someone else will review and edit before they are posted, you can change the Status from Draft to Pending Review. This is not a common selection.
In the Visibility section you can set a post to utilize a password or remain private. Most users will not use this option. You can also set your post as a “Sticky,” meaning it will stay at the top of your blog’s home page.
You can also select when your post should be published. Clicking the Edit link next to Publish Immediately will allow you to set your post to publish in a few days while you’re on vacation, or you can back-fill a gap in your post history by setting it to publish before you even wrote it.
It’s a good idea to save your posts as drafts when you first start out. By doing this, you can then get the opinion and advice of more experienced bloggers within your company before you publish your content. Once you are completely satisfied with all of your selections in your post, and get to thinking about the content of your next post.
This tutorial continues with the kitchen sink explained.
