Chapter 4. Creating Posts
Now that you’ve signed up for a WordPress.com account (Chapter 2), or installed the WordPress software on your web host (Chapter 3), you’re ready to get started publishing on the Web. In this chapter, you’ll go to your fledgling WordPress site and start posting content, which can be anything from bracing political commentary to cheap celebrity gossip. Along the way, you’ll learn several key WordPress concepts.
First, you’ll get comfortable in WordPress’s dashboard—the administrative cockpit from which you pilot your site. Using the dashboard, you’ll create, edit, and delete posts, all without touching a single HTML tag (unless you really want to).
Next, you’ll learn how to classify your posts by using categories and tags, so you can group them in meaningful ways. WordPress calls this art of organization taxonomy, and if you do it right, it gives your readers a painless way to find the content they want.
You’ll also take a hard look at the web address (URL) that WordPress generates for every new post. You’ll learn how to take control of your URLs, making sure they’re meaningful, memorable, and accessible to search engines. You’ll also learn how to shorten the web address of any post, which is handy if you need to wedge a link to your post into a small place (like a Twitter message, Facebook post, or a bit of bathroom graffiti).
Introducing the Dashboard
The dashboard is the nerve center of WordPress administration. When you want to add a new post, tweak your ...