Blog Guide 5: Make that first blog post!

You’ve already learned the basics of blogging and have even set up your own Wordpress.com blog. Finally, it’s time to make that first blog entry!

Fortunately for you, making a blog post is as easy as 1-2-3-4-5. Yup, just 5 steps to create a new blog entry. Read on.

Creating a Wordpress.com blog post in 5 steps

1. Log in to your account and go to Posts > Add New.

2. Enter the title of your blog article. Make sure it can catch the attention of your readers!

3. Post your blog entry in the text area. As in MS Word, you can make the text bold, italicized, or underlined, change the text color, indent a paragraph, or set its alignment. Explore! Show your readers what you’ve got!

4. When done, select the Category (on the right-hand side) where your post falls under. If you have not created a Category yet, make one and click the Add New Category link.

5. Press Publish. Voila! The post is now public. To view the published post, click the View Post or View site link at the top.

More blog post options

a. Post Tags – tags are words or phrases related to the blog entry that make the post more searchable in search engines. If a visitor, for example, searched for a certain phrase but that phrase is not mentioned in the blog post, the visitor will most likely not find the article. But if the phrase is added as a tag although it is not mentioned in the post, the article may still be found by search engines.

b. Comments and Pings – in the Discussion section at the bottom, you can manage the comments and pings your article received.

c. Password – if you want to limit access to a blog article, create a password for that post and distribute it to people you want to give access to. To set the password, choose the Visibility > Password protected option under Publish.

d. Post Slug – the post slug edits the default permalink of a post. Use it if you want to shorten the permalink or to add words not mentioned in the title. For example, if the title of a blog post is “This is a trial post,” the permalink is normally myblog.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/this-is-a-trial-post. But if you edit the Post Slug and just placed trial-post, the permalink will become myblog.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/trial-post.

e. Post Status – choose the status of your article: Published (auto-publish), Pending Review (must be approved by the admin before publication), Draft (saved as a draft, won’t be seen publicly), or Private (seen only by you or those with private access).

f. Post Timestamp – change the date and time information of an article.

Ready to enhance your blog post? Jump to Blog Guide 6: How to add a picture in a Wordpress blog.