How2: Use the WordPress Visual Text Editor.

This is a short tutorial intended to instruct the authors of ProjectsInMetal.com (many of whom are new to WordPress) on how to write their first post.

Step 1: Log into Wordpress

Here’s the link: www.projectsinmetal.com/wp-admin

Step 2: Create a new post by clicking on Posts (click the image to enlarge)

Step 3: Click Add New

Step 4: Begin Typing Your Article

Give your post a unique title (type the title where it says “Type The Title Here” in the image below). Type the body of the post in the section below the icons. If you can’t see all the icons shown in the picture below, click “Show/Hide Kitchen Sink” to make them visible. Also, make sure that you’re typing in the “Visual” tab. Don’t mess with the HTML tab unless you need to modify the HTML of your post, which is usually not necessary.

Just like any word processor, you can use Bold, Italic, etc in your text. If you’d like to change the size of your text you can pick from the dropdown below the Bold and Italic icons. Normally you’d leave it set to “Paragraph” but you can choose other font sizes for title headers, etc.

Step 5: Uploading and Image

Try to give your images a proper descriptive name before you upload them. For example, a name like DCM001 doesn’t tell Google what the image is. Descriptive titles on images help Google understand what the article is about, which helps drive quality search traffic to the site. Image titles also allow visually impaired users to “hear” the title of the image if they are using a Text-To-Speech browser.

Once you’ve got your images named, click on the Upload/Insert Image Button (shown in the image above) and make sure that the “From Computer” tab is active. Then click “Select Files” to navigate to your files on your computer’s hard drive.

Once you’ve selected an image the software will compress the image (it might call it crunching). Once it’s done compressing the image you should see an option panel like the one below.

Step 6: Choose your Settings and Insert Your Image (see an explanation of the settings below)

Alignment: I usually Choose None.

Left, Right, and Center make the text wrap around the picture. Sometimes that looks ok, but usually I like to put images between paragraphs (like I’m doing in this post). To do that, choose None.

Size: If the image is larger than 300px, choose Medium. This will insert a small version of your image (300px wide) into the post. When users click the image they will see a full size view. If the image is smaller than 300px, go ahead and insert it using the Full Size option.

Click “Insert Into Post” to insert your image.

Step 7: Editing an Existing Image

Once you’ve inserted an image, you can either edit it or delete it by clicking the image and hovering over it until you see the Edit and Delete icons appear.

Step 8: Preview and Submit for Review

In the upper right corner make sure that your Status says “Pending Review” and not “Draft”. If it says “Draft” click edit and change it to “Pending Review”. That way you can click Save as Pending (instead of Save As Draft) once you’re finished with the article so that I can review the post before publishing it.

Please use the preview button to see what your post will look like once published (it will open up a new browser window which you can close once you’re done previewing). Please do not click publish! If you were to hit Publish I wouldn’t be able to review the post before it went live (which would mean that everyone could see it). Saving it as Pending will allow me to review the article, make any minor format changes if necessary, check for errors (by viewing the post in several different web browsers including IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome), and adjust the publish date (if I decide to schedule the article to post sometime in the future).

Remember to click Save As Pending before you close your browser or log out, otherwise your changes won’t be saved and you’ll have to re-write the article. Send me an e-mail once you’re ready for me to review. I will assume you’re still editing your article until I hear otherwise from you. So feel free to Save As Pending as often as you like. If an article takes several days to finish that’s not problem, just e-mail me when it’s done.

If you do hit publish by mistake, you can change the status from “Published” back to “Pending Review” to un-publish the article. But this doesn’t always work right, so just try not to click publish.