Adding content to your site is an easy process no matter whether you’re creating a Post or a Page. The procedure for both is almost identical. Apart from how they display on your site, which was described earlier, the other main difference is that Posts allow you to associate Categories and Tags whereas Pages don’t. What’s the difference between categories and tags? Normally, Tags are ad-hoc keywords that identify important information in your Post (names, subjects, etc) that may or may not recur in other Posts, while Categories are pre-determined sections. If you think of your site like a book, the Categories are like the Table of Contents and the Tags are like the terms in the index.

Adding a New Page

To add a new Page, hover your cursor over the Pages menu option in the left-hand navigation menu and in the fly-out menu, click the Add New link. Alternatively, click the Pages menu option and then click the Add New link underneath, or the Add New button at the top of the page. You will be presented with a page similar to the image below.

Adding a New Post

To add a new Post, hover over the Posts menu option in the left-hand navigation menu and in the fly-out menu, click the Add New link. Alternatively, click the Posts menu option and then click the Add New link underneath, or the Add New button at the top of the page. You will be presented with a page similar to the image below.

Adding Content with the Visual Editor

The editor used to enter content into your Page or Post is very easy to use. It’s much like using a regular word processor, with toolbar buttons that allow you to

 or bullet points . You can even use most of the basic keyboard shortcuts used in other text editors. For example:

  • Shift+Enter * inserts a line break,
  • Ctrl+C/Cmd+C * = copy,
  • Ctrl+X/Cmd+X * = cut,
  • Ctrl+Z/Cmd+Z * = undo,
  • Ctrl+Y/Cmd+Y * = redo,
  • Ctrl+A/Cmd+A * = select all, etc.

(* use the Ctrl key on a PC or the Command key on a Mac).

When adding content to your page, the Visual Editor expands to fit your content, rather than simply scrolling. On top of that, no matter how tall the Visual Editor becomes, the toolbar buttons will be available at all times by sticking to the top of the page. With WordPress 4.3, adding content is now even quicker by making use of special keyboard shortcuts. When you want to add different size headings to your content, rather than having to select the heading size from the toolbar dropdown you can now start a line with two or more hashtags (#) and once you hit Enter to go to the next line, the Visual Editor will automatically convert your text to the appropriate heading. As an example, typing two hashtags followed by some text will convert to a H2 (e.g. ## Heading), typing three hashtags followed by some text will convert to a H3 (e.g. ### Heading), and so on, up to H6. Like headings, you can now also use * or - to create an unordered list, using 1. will start an ordered list, and > will create a blockquote.

 These switch the editor view between the Visual Editor and the Text editor. The Text view will enable you to view the HTML code that makes up your content. For the more experienced users this can be helpful at times but for those not familiar with HTML tags, it’s not recommended. When creating a new Page or Post, the first thing to do is enter in your title in the top entry field where it says Enter title here. After moving the cursor down to the editor a new Permalink is created for your page. Permalinks are the permanent URL’s to your individual Posts, Pages, Categories etc.. Though not usually necessary, you can manually edit your permalink by clicking on the actual permalink (the part after the domain name with the yellow background) or by clicking the Edit button next to it. Once you’ve modified it, click Ok to save or Cancel to cancel your changes.

At the top of the editor where your content is written, there are numerous formatting buttons. Clicking the Toolbar Toggle button ( ) ) will show or hide a

second line of formatting buttons which gives you extra functionality. The editor buttons perform the following functions:

 Add Media - Used to upload and insert media such as images, audio, video or documents

 Bold - Bold text

 Italic - Italicise text

 Strikethrough - Add a strikethrough to your text

 Bulleted List - Create an unordered (bullet point) list

 Numbered List - Create an Ordered (numbered) list

 Blockquote - Used as a way of showing a quote. How this looks will be entirely dependent on the Theme that your site is currently using.

 Horizontal Line - Inserts a horizontal line into your page

 Align Left - Align text to the left

 Align Center - Align text in the center of the page

 Align Right - Align text to the right

 Insert/edit link - Used to create an html link to another page or website. The text or image that you want to link needs to be selected first before the button will become active.

 Remove link - Remove the html link from the selected link. Your cursor must be sitting on an active link for the button to be active

 Insert Read More tag - Inserts the More tag into your Page. Most blogs only display a small excerpt of a Post and you’re required to click the Post title or a ‘Read more…’ link to continue reading the rest of the article. When you insert a ‘More’ tag into your Post, everything prior to the tag is considered as this excerpt. Most times you’d only use this button when you’re creating a blog Post, rather than a Page

 Toolbar Toggle - Used to show or hide the second row of formatting buttons on the editor toolbar

 Distraction Free Writing - Clicking this button will enlarge the editor so that it fills the browser window. Clicking the Exit fullscreen link at the top of the screen will reduce it back to its original size

 Style - Used to format the Page text based on the styles used by the current Theme

 Underline - Underline your text

 Justify - Align text on both the left and right (i.e. justify)

 Text color - Use to change the color of text

 Paste as text - Copying and pasting text from other sites or word processors sometimes leaves the text formatted differently to what you were expecting. The reason for this is that quite often the html tags or codes that formatted the original text are pasted along with the text itself. To avoid this, Paste as Text will strip all these formatting and html tags. The Paste as Text option acts like a toggle, staying on until you turn it off by clicking the button again or until you save your page content

 Clear formatting - Use this to remove all the formatting (e.g. Bold, Underline, text color etc..) from the highlighted text

 Special character - Used to insert special characters not easily accessible via the keyboard (e.g. ¼, ½, ¾, ©, , ö etc..)

 Decrease indent - Removes one level of indenting

 Increase indent - Indents text by one level

 Undo - Undo your last action

 Redo - Redo your last action

 Keyboard shortcuts - Displays information about the WordPress Visual Editor along with keyboard shortcuts

 Visual/Text - Switches the editor view between the Visual Editor and the Text editor. The Text view will enable you to view the HTML code that makes up your content. For the more experienced users this can be helpful at times but for those not familiar with HTML tags, it’s not recommended

Switching to the Text Editor

At the top of the editor there are two tabs, Visual and Text (). These switch the editor view between the Visual Editor and the Text editor. The Text view will enable you to view the HTML code that makes up your content. For the more experienced users this can be helpful at times but for those not familiar with HTML tags, it’s not recommended. The Text editor is much like the Visual Editor, only not as intuitive. The numerous formatting buttons provide you with basic HTML formatting capabilities when editing your Page or Post content.

The buttons work in two ways. Clicking a button without highlighting any text first, will simply insert the opening HTML tag relevant for that button. As an example, clicking the Bold button will insert the <strong> HTML tag into your text. Clicking the Bold button again will close the tag by inserting the closing </strong> tag. If you highlight some text prior to clicking a button, both the opening and closing tags will be inserted around that highlighted text. For example, highlighting the text, ‘bold text’, prior to clicking the Bold button will insert bold text.

The following editor buttons are available whilst in the Text editor:

 Bold - Bold text

 Italic - Italicise text

 Link - Used to insert a website link. When the button is clicked a pop-up window will appear where you type in the URL that you would like to link to

 Blockquote - Used as a way of showing a quote. How this looks will be entirely dependent on the Theme that your site is currently using

 Delete - Used as a way of showing deleted text. How this looks will be dependent on the Theme but is usually done by showing the text with a strikethrough

 Insert - Used as a way of showing inserted text. How this looks will be dependent on the Theme but is usually done by showing the text with an underline

 Image - Used to insert an image into the text. When the button is clicked a pop-up window will appear where you type in the URL of the image that you would like inserted

 Unordered List - Used to insert an unordered (bullet point) list

 Ordered List - Used to insert an ordered (numbered) list

 List Item - Used to insert a list item into your ordered or un- ordered list

 Code - Used for indicating a piece of code

 More - Inserts the More tag into your Page. Most blogs only display a small excerpt of a Post and you’re required to click the Post title or a ‘Read more…’ link to continue reading the rest of the article. When you insert a ‘More’ tag into your Post, everything prior to the tag is considered as this excerpt. Most times you’d only use this button when you’re creating a blog Post, rather than a Page

 Close Tags - Used to close open tags. If for example, you clicked both the Bold and Italic buttons to insert their opening tags, clicking the Close tags button will insert both of the matching closing tags, in the correct order

 Distraction Free Writing - Clicking this button will enlarge the editor so that it fills the browser window. Clicking the Exit fullscreen link at the top of the screen will reduce it back to its original size

Changing your Post Format

A Post Format is meta information that can be used within a Theme to style or customise the presentation of a Post. The Post Formats feature provides a standardised list of formats that are available to all themes that support the feature. There is no requirement for Themes to support every format on the list and new formats cannot be introduced by themes or even plugins. If your Theme supports Post Formats you can choose how each Post looks by selecting a Post Format from a list of radio buttons, similar to the following screen. If your Theme doesn’t support Post Formats then the Format panel won’t be displayed.

While the actual post content entry won’t change, the theme can use the selected Format to display the post differently. How content is displayed is entirely up to the Theme, but the following list of available Post Formats provides some general WordPress guidelines as to how they might be styled.

Aside - Typically styled without a title. Similar to a Facebook note update

Audio - An audio file, such as a Podcast

Chat - A chat transcript

Gallery - A gallery of images. Post will likely contain a gallery shortcode and will have image attachments

Image - A single image

Link - A link to another site

Quote - A quotation, most likely contained within a blockquote

Status - A short status update, similar to a Twitter status update

Video - A single video

Reviewing Past Revisions

When you’re editing your Post or Page, the number of revisions for that particular Post or Page is shown in the Publish Panel, if you have any. Click the Browse link next to Revisions: in the Publish panel to browse through the various revisions for the current Post or Page.

Use the slider at the top of the page or click the Previous and Next buttons to navigate through your various Post or Page revisions. Content that has been deleted will be shaded red and content that has been added will be shaded green. If there is content that is shaded dark red and/or dark green, it’s highlighting specific content that was removed or added. If the paragraph or line is simply light red and/or light green, then the whole paragraph or line was affected by the change. You can also compare two different revisions by clicking the Compare any two revisions checkbox at the top of the page. If you’d like to restore a previous revision, click the Restore This Revision button.