After getting a Wordpress Blog, you will want to make a Post. Here are the steps after logging in to your Blog.

From the Dashboard, you can add a post in one of three ways. Click the image here to see a larger version.

We recommend using #1 or #2 as they give you more layout and embedding options, but if you only have a brief “shout-out”, go ahead and use #3, the “QuickPress.”

Once you are in the “Add New Post” screen, add your title and the content you want to appear in the post.

Use the “Rich Text” / WYSIWYG editor (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) to format the text the way you want. Highlight sections, for example, and then click the “Bulleted List” icon to do just that. Play around. Experiment. The exact way your text appears once you publish the post depends on the IWB Blog’s style sheets, so don’t fuss things too much – some is out of your control…

The colorful icons starting with YouTube are all for embedding videos from a range of Web sites. Use the right one for the video you want to embed and it will play right in your post.

To add other media, you can upload / insert it. Use the clip below as a guide.

Once you have the content the way you want, it’s a very good idea to add Tags/Categories so that your post can be filed and retrieved more easily. Use the boxes to mark your post appropriately.

The first time you post your page, you’ll use the “Publish” button. Every time after that, the button turns into “Update Post.”

To see your post actually online, I like to use separate browser Tabs for the Dashboard and the published blog. To do this simply right-click on the link at the top of the Dashboard to open the Blog in a New Tab.

You can see a video from YouTube that covers roughly the same process

Why Wordpress.com?

Wordpress is the best free blogging software and it just keeps getting better. There are three main ways to get a Wordpress blog:

1. from Wordpress.com
2. through a Web Host with a Wordpress.org installation
3. with a free educational version of Wordpress MU (multi-user)

After many years helping educators get started with a ClassPortal / Blog / Web page, I’ve found that beginning with Wordpress.com is the best way. The main reason is that you can get started easily, have access to the very latest version of the software, and can easily export your information if you ever want to host the blog in any other way.

Let’s Get Started

1) Go to Wordpress.com

2) Click on the “Sign Up Now” button.

3) Completely fill in the fields. Use the hints from Wordpress and those in the graphic below to have the greatest success.

4) Chances are that the name you chose might already be taken. Consider adding numbers or varying your username to increase its uniqueness.

5) Once you have a unique username, you can see how it becomes the main part of your Web address. You can change the Blog Title to anything you want. It usually appears quite large at the top of the Web site.

6) To make sure that the person creating the blog is you, Wordpress sends a confirmation email to your account. Click on the link to activate the blog.

7) When you click on the link in your email, you are greeted by the friendly message below. Keep your username and password handy and private. Beneath this information, you’ll see two links to your blog: basically the “behind the scenes” Dashboard where only you create content and the “public” face of the site that everyone sees.

A handy way to work on the blog is to use the right-mouse click to open each of the links in a new Tab (or window if you don’t have Tabbed Browsing). This way you can flip between the “inside” and outside” of your site as you build it to see if it looks the way you want.

9) Clicking on “View your site” reveals it in all its “default” glory. You’ll soon learn how to change the “look-and-feel” to something the you like better.

10) Entering your username and password logs you into the Dashboard.

Note: a new Dashboard looks like this:

The “Dashboard” you see may be a slightly different versions than this, everything works the same. Tthe functions are just slotted into slightly different places.

Either way, take a look around and explore.