Guide for New Bloggers

WordPress Blogging 101

  1. Once logged into the LITA blog, click the “Write” tab.
  2. Under “Title”, write a title for your post. This should be snappy and informative: it’s sort of like an email subject line.
  3. Under “Post”, write or paste your post.
    • The “Visual” tab looks like an abridged version of the MSWord toolbar: you can make your typing bold or in italics; add bullet points, numbering, or indentations; and justify your post however you like.
    • The “Code” tab shows all of this in HTML (if you’re familiar with HTML, you can also do a bit more there, and clean up any code that looks funny from the Visual tab).
  4. Creating Links: Highlight the language you wish to link from, click the small chain symbol in the “Visual” tab, type the URL for your link, change the Target to “Open in a New Window”, and add a mouseover title if you wish.
  5. Images: Unlike Word, you’ll need to upload an image to the Wordpress website before you can see it on the blog.
    • Scroll down to “Upload”, click “Browse”, and find the image you wish to use on your computer.
    • Type a Title that describes the image,
      and add a description if you’d like (this helps those with vision disabilities who use special software in their web browsers).
    • Then click “Upload”.
      Choose the size you want to display in the post, and change the LinkTo to “Page” (if it’s Page, remember to add a hyperlink to the image once it’s in your post) or “None”. Then click “Send to Editor”.
    • Once the image is in the blog form, you can adjust and adapt it by clicking the small picture of a tree in the “Visual” tab.
  6. If you need to stop in the middle of writing, click the “Save” button under the “Post” section. This will save without posting the draft. You can also “Save and continue editing” if you want to be sure your draft isn’t deleted while you’re working online.
  7. Once you’re finished, you can “Preview” your post by clicking the button above the “Post” section; if everything looks all right, you’re all set to “Send for Review”.
  8. Wordpress has a very active user community, and most questions about writing for the blog will have been answered on the Frequently Asked Questions page.
    You can access this page at http://faq.wordpress.com

Tips for Conference Bloggers

Are you a first time conference blogger? If so, check out “Tips for Conference Bloggers” from Bruno Giussani’s Lunch Over IP blog.

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