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In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial on how to create a new post in WordPress, we covered the following:

• Types Of Content You Can Publish In WordPress
• WordPress Post Section Features

To review Part 1 of our tutorial, go here: How To Create A WP Post – Part One

As we state repeatedly throughout this site, WordPress provides an easy-to-use, powerful and flexible content management system tool to publish information about your business online.

The more you understand WordPress, the better you can use it as a business marketing tool to help you grow online.

As you will soon discover, creating a new WordPress post is very easy. In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to actually create a post in WordPress that will help you grow your business.

Let’s begin by reviewing some useful guidelines for adding content to posts.

Posts – Content Guidelines

Here are some helpful guidelines and best practices for posting content:

• Practice Accessibility: Stay compliant with web standards for accessibility and help your users by including ALT and TITLE descriptions will all images and links (e.g. <a title=”Add Descriptive Title Here” href=”http://yourdomain.com/”>Your Link</a>).
• Use Paragraphs: Break up your content into paragraphs to make it more readable. Tip: If double spacing is used between your paragraphs, WordPress will automatically detect these and insert HTML paragraph tags (<p>) into your writing.
• Use Headings: If you plan to write a long post, consider using headings to break up your post sections. In HTML, headings are set using tags like h1, h2, and so on. You can also add headings by highlighting content in the body of your post, and then selecting one of the heading options from the “Format Style” menu in your WordPress Content Editor.
• Use HTML: You don’t have to know HTML to create richly formatted posts, as WordPress will automatically do this if you use the Content Editor. Having a little knowledge of HTML, however, allows you to control different styling elements in your content (e.g. styled sections and nested layouts).
• Spell Check And Proof: Check your spelling and proof everything before posting your content live. There are a number of WordPress spell check tools available.
• Focus On Content Quality: An excellent way to focus only on the content with no distractions is to write your post drafts in a plain text editor, then copy and paste your content into the WordPress editor.
• Think Before You Publish: Anything you make public can be viewed by many people and picked up by search engines, making it harder to take things back. Take a moment to think about what you are planning to write and review everything before publishing. Don’t rant … think!
• Consider Who You Are Writing For: Think about who will read your posts and take any appropriate measures and precautions that you think will be required to ensure that your privacy and the privacy of others is protected.
• Make Use Of Commenting: Comments allow site users to interact with you and share their ideas. You control what gets posted on your website and you can delete any comments that you don’t want displayed in your posts, so consider this when deciding whether you will or will not allow people to comment on your site. Also, make sure that people can contact you privately if required (e.g. use a contact form).
• Worry About The Design Later: How your website looks is important, but it’s often not essential in terms of getting your point across. In fact, because WordPress is so flexible when it comes to web design, you can just start writing to grow a readership, and then change your entire site’s design with a couple of mouse clicks whenever you want, using Themes. Remember that it’s great content that will attract and keep your readers engaged, so focus on publishing quality content and worry about little things later – With WordPress, you can change anything and everything you want any time!
• Use Graphics And Videos: Videos and graphic elements help make your pages and posts more eye-catching and help readers engage better with your posts. We provide additional tutorials on adding images and embedding videos to your posts and pages.
• Save As You Go: Save your posts frequently to avoid losing your work to accidents or computer errors. You can even do this without publishing your content, as you will see in a moment.
• Post Often: We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with limitless content ideas for your site:
  Email Address *
  
  

  First Name *
  
  

Next Step …

Now that we have gone over a few useful guidelines for posting content on your site, the next step is to look at different options available for saving a post.

Saving A Post In WordPress – Options

After adding content to your post, it’s time to save it.

WordPress will auto-save your posts at regular intervals …

(WordPress autosaves your posts at regular intervals)

The WordPress autosave feature helps to prevent losing your content if something unexpectedly happens to your computer, or if you happen to click something and accidentally close your post, or terminate an application while you’re working.

The date and time of your post is automatically recorded when the post is first autosaved.

You can modify this record in the “Published on:” options …

(Post Publisher – Published on: options)

Until a post is published, it will not be visible to blog readers. Instead, the post will be saved in Draft status until published …

You can save your post in ‘draft’ status or publish it online using the “Save” and “Publish” functions in the Publish box …

To save a post as a “Draft”, go to the Publish > Status section of your Post editor and click on Edit …

Choose Draft from the options menu and click OK…

With Draft displayed in the “Status:” field, click on Save Draft…

Your content will be saved as a draft post. Click on Preview post to preview your saved content …

You can see what your post will look like when published in ‘Preview’ mode, but your content will not be visible to site visitors …

(In ‘Preview Mode’ your content is not visible to your web visitors)

Your content can be previewed in a new window without saving or publishing it first by clicking ‘Preview’ in the “Publish” box …

Once your post is ready for publishing, click the ‘Publish’ button …

After publishing your new post, click View Post to open the post in a new browser window …

The published post will now be visible to your web visitors and can be accessed via its unique web address …

Make sure that your content has been added and formatted correctly …

Note: After publishing your post, the button changes from ‘Publish’ to ‘Update’ …

You can change the status back from ‘Published’ to ‘Draft’ or ‘Pending Review’ by clicking on the Edit link in the Status field and selecting an option from the Status drop-down menu …

For example, to resave a published post as a ‘draft’ post, go to the Publish > Status section of your post screen and click on Edit …

Choose Draft from the drop-down menu and click the ‘OK’ button…

With ‘Draft’ displayed in the “Status:” field, click the ‘Save Draft’ button …

Your post will be saved as ‘draft’ status and no longer be made visible to site visitors.

Note: typing in the URL of posts that were previously published will lead to a “page not found” page (called a ‘404’ page) …

(‘404 Not Found’ page)

Next Step …

Now that you know how to create, save and publish a post in WordPress, let’s summarize all the steps involved in creating a new WordPress post.

How To Post Content To WordPress – Review

In this final section of the tutorial, we review the steps involved in creating and optimizing a new post using WordPress.

As mentioned in Part One of this tutorial, with WordPress, getting your content published online is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Think …
2. Write …
3. Publish!

After deciding on the topic you will post content about, the next step is simply to write, and then get it published. With WordPress, publishing content is really easy.

Note: Optimized WordPress posts help your site perform better with search engines. We provide separate tutorials and articles on optimizing content for SEO.

The screenshot below provides a summary of the steps involved in creating, optimizing and posting new content to your WordPress site:

(How To Create A New WordPress Post – Recap)

1. Choose Posts > Add New in your WP dashboard menu to bring up the ‘Add New Post’ screen.
2. Add your post content (title & body). Also, make sure that your Permalinks are already set up and modify the Post Slug if required.
3. If you have installed an SEO plugin, complete this module. This only takes an extra couple of minutes, but it will help your content rank better in the search engines.
4. Type or paste your Post Excerpt in the ‘Excerpt’ box.
5. Select a Category to file your post under.
6. Add tags to your Post Tags section (tip: you can use the same keywords you entered into the SEO section in Step 3).
7. Publish your post.

Congratulations! Now you know how to create and publish a new post in WordPress! In a separate tutorial, we’ll show you how to edit and delete WordPress posts, if you want to make changes to your content or remove a post that you no longer want to display on your site.

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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product images used in this review have been sourced from the plugin’s own website.

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