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If you’re new here, you’ll want to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of How to Start a Blog first.
Pages/Posts/Categories
In this part of How to Start a Blog series, we’ll walk through how to set up pages, categories, menus, and create posts. I’m not sure if this is the “correct” way to set up your website, but this is how I do it and it works for me. The following tutorial is how I have my blog set up.
TERMINOLOGY:
Pages: This is a static page, meaning you don’t assign posts to it. The only actual page I have in use on my blog is my About Me page. That’s because any new posts I write won’t be assigned to this page.
Posts: This is where you will put in new content and assign them to a category.
Categories: Categories are used to sort and group your content together.
*don’t worry, this will make sense in a minute.
You’ll start this under your dashboard and remember you can get to it by going under mywebsite.com/wp-admin (remember instead of “mywebsite” put your actual URL name).
Setting up pages:
Pages are your landing pages where I don’t want posts to be placed. For instance my “About Me”. I’m not posting any posts to this page, so I set it up as a page. I have set up several other pages (you’ll see in the picture), but I don’t use them (and I need to delete them). So for instance, if someone goes to my “about me” page they’ll see a write up about me. But if they click on Cooking Recipes, they’ll see my recent posts I’ve assigned to it. So my about me page is an actual page, not a post. I don’t assign other posts to this page.
Setting up categories:
This is how I assign all my posts to go somewhere. I set up categories. So if you hover over posts in your dashboard, categories will show up. Click on it. I have categories and subcategories. For instance Cooking. I have a Cooking category, but I have subcategories under it: “Instant Pot Recipes”, “Jams, Jellies, & Canning”, and “Old Fashioned Recipes”. To create a new category type in what you want the category to be called. The slug is what will be placed in the URL for instance I made a category of “How to Start a blog”. I put “How to Start a Blog” as the name. “Start-a-blog” as the slug (it’ll come up as https://www.honeysucklefootprints.com/start-a-blog). Remember, when you assign a slug, it cannot have spaces, but you can use dashes. I assigned it to the DIY & Crafts parent category. The parent category is telling your theme where you want this category to be. I want this category to be a subcategory under DIY & Crafts. So when viewers come to my page, they can hover over DIY & Crafts and see my new category How to Start a Blog. You can add a description, most themes don’t show this on your website.
Now you’re ready to set up a menu!
Hover over appearance, then menus. I labeled my menu as “Header Menu”. Here is where you can tell WordPress where you would like for your categories and pages to go. As you can see, nearly all of my menu items are categories except for my “About Me”, “About”, “Advertising Disclosure”, and “Contact” pages. This is because these are static pages and I do not want any posts or content assigned to them.
To assign my new category a place in my menu, I select “Categories” and then “View All” on the left hand side and find the new category I just made. I click on the checkmark and “Add to Menu”. This will place the item at the bottom of the list, and you can drag it to where you want it to be placed. In this case, I want it to be under my DIY & Crafts Parent Category. Save your menu.
Creating Posts
To write posts hover over Posts and Add New. Put a heading, and write your content. If you’ve installed YOAST you’ll have YOAST SEO at the bottom. This helps traffic come to your page. My focus keyphrase on this is start a blog. I tell it what I want the slug to be (www.honeysucklefootprints.com/start-a-blog-part-3) and I write a short description for what will pop up on Facebook.
On the side, under document, under categories, I select “Home”, “DIY & Crafts”, and “How to Start a Blog”. This means when someone goes to my home tab, they’ll see this post. When they select DIY & Crafts, they’ll see this post. And when they go to “How to Start a Blog” they’ll see this post. If they select any other tabs, they will not see this post because I didn’t assign it to any other categories. Then below that you’ll add a picture under “set featured image”. This is what shows up when someone clicks on the heading of your posts.
Adding pictures to your posts:
It’s very important to have a visually pleasing post. Most people look at pictures vs read the content. If your post is visually pleasing and catches your viewers eye, they’ll want to read your content too because its interesting. When you assign a featured image, make sure it’s a good one! I use canva to make my featured images, and I use Pixabay to get most of those images!
Once you’re through with this post you can either “save draft” (I normally schedule mine to be posted in the mornings, this is the time I have most viewers to my blog), “Preview” or “Publish” it. I highly recommend previewing before publishing.
And viola! You’ve went through creating posts, pages, categories, and creating new posts!!
