WordPress is a dominant content management tool with millions of users worldwide. The platform currently powers over a third of the entire Internet because it offers a broad scope of practical features and functionalities.
Bloggers particularly enjoy publishing content through WordPress, although some of them still find it difficult to figure out the platform to the fullest extent. How come?
While the whole system is indeed user-friendly, it comes with so many options that can help you to improve the content. This is why we decided to show you how to add a new post in WordPress and utilize all the features. Let’s take a look!
WordPress Editors: Classic and Gutenberg
Before we begin our content creation story, we should explain the difference between the two versions of WordPress editors – classic and Gutenberg.
The classic editor has been around for years and it used to have functionalities similar to Microsoft Word. On the other hand, the new concept is based on the so-called blocks, which is also why we call it the Block Editor.
Gutenberg replaces traditional formatting with a separate block for every little piece of content such as image, paragraph, or list. Although it may sound more complex than before, it actually isn’t. Namely, now you don’t need to install a special plugin to add an unusual element to the post – a chart or a table for example. Instead, you can simply add a new block and set the chart or table dimensions.
The bottom line is that WordPress recognized the need for media rich pages and posts: “Blocks are a great new tool for building engaging content. With blocks, you can insert, rearrange, and style multimedia content with very little technical knowledge. Instead of using custom code, you can add a block and focus on your content.”
How to Create a New Post in Block Editor
Now that you know the purpose of Gutenberg, it’s time to check out how it really works. We will start with the basics
– how to create a post title and a content block.
As for the headline, the procedure is easy because you will find a title box at the top of the user interface. All you have to do is to enter the headline the way you want it.
Block creation is where things get more interesting as there are multiple solutions depending on content formats. Namely, you should add a block for each segment of the content by choosing the + feature in the upper left corner.
There is a separate block option for each type of content, including simple textual paragraphs, images, widgets, columns, embeds, and many more. Besides that, there are many WordPress plugins that you can install and use to create new blocks for alternative formats like search engine optimization elements or contact units.
What about images?
Once again, the process is very simple – add a separate image block and choose a photo that you would like to add to the post. You can also combine images with textual content by clicking the option entitled “Media & Text.”
But that’s not the end of image-related features. There is also the option of creating image grids through another block button (called Gallery). The idea is the same – click the block button and upload the targeted images. If you need more solutions for sorting and rearranging image galleries, then you’ll need to install one of the WordPress gallery plugins.
You can count on a video-embedding feature, too.
Gutenberg contains a special block that enables users to embed videos from YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, Flickr, and many other popular providers.
You can also upload a video to the Block Editor directly, but we are not crazy about this feature because it could seriously slow down your website and even jeopardize its functioning in case you are not using a reliable hosting.
A much better solution is to upload your content to video-streaming platforms such as YouTube and use the URL to embed it into the new post in WordPress.
There are so many other functionalities to test in Gutenberg, so let’s discuss each one in a separate section.
• Tags and categories
As a content creator, you probably want to sort fresh posts based on different tags and categories so as to ensure easier website administration. You can do it by adding tags and categories in the right-hand Document section of the writing interface. Such an option doesn’t only help you to improve website organization but also enables you to optimize content and improve search engine ranking.
• Thumbnails
You can add a featured image (also known as a thumbnail) to the post in order to make it look more attractive in the eyes of a typical visitor. This feature is also available in the Document setting, so you’ll just need to choose the “Set Featured Image” option.
As soon as you do it, you can access the image gallery and choose the best photo for your post. After that, website visitors will see the thumbnail in each post individually, in blog archives, and in the homepage sections.
• Blog post summary
A lot of webmasters want to create blog summaries, which is why the excerpt feature comes in quite handy. Once again, you can find it in the Document section under the Excerpt option. The vast majority of WordPress themes can create article summaries automatically based on the opening paragraphs of your post, but you can also choose to write it manually.
• Change URLs
WordPress is known for being an SEO-friendly platform, but you can still choose to improve a post URL in order to optimize it perfectly for search engine algorithms. If you click the headline, you will see the permalink up above. You can change it manually over there, but you can also find the same permalink in the Document setting.
• Change post author
Sometimes multiple authors contribute to the same WordPress website, so it’s important to have the option of changing the name of the content creator. To do so, you should go to the Status and Visibility feature in the Document column.
• Disable comments
Every WordPress website comes with a default commenting system that makes it easy for visitors to leave their opinions and ideas below each article. However, sometimes you might want to disable comments for certain posts, so make sure to do it in Document → Discussion.
At the same time, you can allow or disable pingbacks and trackbacks. We recommend you to turn off this option because spammers mostly use it to deliver their irrelevant messages.
Gutenberg Publishing Options
You’ve probably figured out by now that the left column of the WordPress editor is dedicated to content creation, while the right one is reserved for various publishing options. We mentioned some of the features available in the Document setting, but let’s see other publishing options you might want to check out.
– Save draft: It enables content creators to save changes on the go and prevent possible problems with the existing content.
– Preview: If you want to test the post before publishing, you can do it using the preview feature. It opens a new tab to show you how a given post would look like after going live.
– Publish: Now that you have everything in place, you can publish the post with this function.
– Visibility: Another thing you can do with Gutenberg is to control the visibility of a new post. Each post is public by default, but you can also make it private or even protect it using a password.
– Publish: The vast majority of webmasters want their posts to be published immediately, but there is also the delay option. It means you can schedule a post and order WordPress to publish it later.
– Stick to the front page: If you write a really important post that you would like to share with every website visitor, you can highlight it using the “Stick to the front page” option. That way, you will put the targeted post atop of other articles on your site.
– Pending review: Sometimes you or your colleagues will need to review each other’s posts, so you can let fresh content rest for a while with “Pending review.”
– Move to trash: You can also delete a post and send it to the trash folder. The post will stay in the recycle bin for 30 days.
The Bottom Line
WordPress is by far the most popular content management system globally because it offers webmasters a wide range of practical features and functionalities. However, publishing a good-looking new post can be a little tricky if you are not familiar with that many options.
In this article, we showed you how to add a new post in WordPress and utilize all the features. Now it’s your turn to take action and create some amazing content in WordPress!
