How To Add Posts To WordPress: Ultimate Beginners Guide

Posts are the backbone of any successful WordPress website, giving you the chance to share your expertise, opinions, and experiences with your customers and website visitors. They are key to building your online presence and creating a community around your brand.

With posts, you can add all sorts of great content to your website such as:

• Sharing the latest news and updates about your business.
• Sharing insights about your industry.
• Showcasing your products and services.
• Sharing personal experiences and stories.
• Sharing tutorials, how-tos, and other helpful information.

By consistently creating high-quality, engaging posts you can attract people to your website and establish yourself as an authority in your field.

In this tutorial, we’ll go through how to add posts to your WordPress website and how you can organize your posts using categories and tags. By the end of this tutorial, you should have a good understanding of how to add posts to your WordPress website. Let’s begin!

What are WordPress posts?

Posts are one of the main content types on your WordPress website. They are used for writing dynamic content such as blog articles, tutorials, reviews, and news updates.

Posts can be organized using categories and tags which makes it easier for your website visitors to find the content they are interested in. The great thing about using categories and tags is that you can use keywords that are related to your business to name them.

What Is The Difference Between A WordPress Post And Page?

In WordPress, posts and pages are similar but different! Pages are used to create and display static content on your website such as the About Us, Contact Us, and legal pages while posts are used to create and display dynamic content.

For a full breakdown of their differences check out the following article: WordPress Posts vs Pages: Understanding The Differences

How To Create A WordPress Post

To create a WordPress post, go to the WordPress admin dashboard and click the “Posts” menu item.

The Posts menu item will expand with “All Posts“, “Add New“, “Categories“, and “Tags” options.

Click “All Posts“.

The post’s dashboard will open where you will see a list of all the posts that have been created on your website.

To create a new post click “Add New” at the top left-hand side of the page.

From here you will be taken to the Gutenberg Post editor which looks very similar to the WordPress Page editor which we covered in a previous tutorial.

Getting To Know The WordPress Post Editor

The WordPress post editor is where you will be creating all the posts on your website. It is pretty easy to use especially once you are comfortable working with Gutenberg blocks.

The Post editor is broken down into a couple of sections:

1. The Post Title.
2. The Post Editor.
3. Publishing Settings.
4. Post Settings.

1. The Post Title

You will begin any WordPress post by giving it a title. By default, WordPress will use the title of your post to create the post URL. For example, if your post title is “What are dogs”, your URL will look like this:

www.awesomewebsite.com/what-are-dogs

Don’t worry you will be able to change the URL later if you would like to.

2. The Post Editor

The Post editor is where you will create all your content. You will see a line that says “Type / to choose a block“. You can simply begin typing here. By default, WordPress creates a paragraph block at the beginning of posts or when you press enter.

To add content to your post, simply add the blocks you need for your article.

For a full tutorial on how to use Gutenberg blocks, check out this article: How To Add Content To WordPress: The Gutenberg Block Editor.

3. Publishing Settings

There are three buttons in the publishing settings:

• Save draft – Save drafts of any posts that you create.
• Preview – Preview a post in your browser before publishing it to your website.
• Publish – Publish your post.

4. Post Settings

There are quite a few options under post settings. Let’s work through each of them.

Summary

In the “Summary” section you will find the following options:

Visibility

Here you will be able to control how your post is viewed. There are three options:

• Public – your post can be viewed by anyone who visits your website.
• Private – your post is only visible to site administrators and editors.
• Password protected – your post is only visible to anyone who has a password.

Publish

Here you will be able to specify whether you would like to publish your post immediately or whether you would like to schedule it for a later date. If you’d like to publish it at a later date then select a date and time on the calendar that pops up.

URL

This is where you will be able to specify what you would like your post’s URL to be. Note that this option might not be active when you first start creating your post.

Later on, if you decide to use an SEO plugin, you will also have the option to change the URL there.

Template

Depending on what WordPress theme you use, there may be a couple of templates that you can use to change the look and feel of your posts.

Stick To The Top Of The Blog

If you would like to create a sticky post that always stays at the top of your blog page, then you can select this option.

Author

If you’d like to change the author of the blog post you can do so here.

Move to trash

Not happy with your blog post? No problem, you can move it to trash by clicking this button.

Categories

What Are WordPress Categories?

WordPress categories are used to sort your blog posts into different groups and are a helpful way to keep related blog posts together.

For example, if you are a wedding planner you might want categories for venues, entertainment, decor, and photographers. When you create content for each of these topics, you can group them under their respective categories.

Categories of great because they help your clients and website visitors easily find related posts on your site. You can also use categories in your menus to make your site navigation more user-friendly.

Another great thing about categories is that you can have subcategories as well. For example, in our wedding planner example, under the Decor category, you could have categories for “Modern”, “Traditional”, and “Classic”.

To all the wedding planners out there, please forgive my complete ignorance about wedding planning!

How To Add A WordPress Category

If you would like to add a new category for your WordPress post you can simply click the “Add New Category” option.

Tags

What Are WordPress Tags?

In WordPress, tags are another way of organizing and categorizing your posts based on specific keywords or topics. Although they are similar to categories, they are a lot more specific. Think of them almost like hashtags in social media posts.

For example, if you are a wedding planner, you could have a post about a specific venue. This post would fall under the “Venues” category.

You could then add tags such as “Traditional”, “Romantic”, and “Vineyard” to your post (often just by looking at a post’s tags, you will get a good idea of what the post is all about).

Keep in mind that you can add as many tags as you would like to a post, obviously don’t go overboard though! You can also use the same tags for multiple posts.

How To Add WordPress Tags

It is really easy to add tags to your post. Simply type the tag names into the “Add New Tag” text box separating them with commas or pressing the enter key.

If you have used a specific tag previously it will automatically pop up when you start typing. WordPress will also display a list of your most used tags just below the tag text box. Simply click on any of these tags to add them to your article.

If you would like to delete any of your tags, simply click on the “X” to remove them.

Featured Image

Here you will be able to upload the featured image for your post using the media library.

Excerpt

Adding an excerpt to your post is optional. An excerpt is basically a short summary of your post and gives visitors a brief preview of the post’s content.

By default WordPress usually generates excerpts for you based on the first few sentences of your post. Using the excerpt box allows you to create your own custom except if you would like to.

Discussion

The discussion dashboard allows you to specify whether you would like website visitors to add comments to your posts. There is also an option to allow pingbacks and trackbacks. Trackbacks and pingbacks are ways of letting other blogs know that you have linked to them.

How To Create A Post Using The Gutenberg Block Editor

The Gutenberg block editor makes it really easy to add content to your WordPress website.

I have created an entire tutorial devoted to how the Gutenberg block editor works, check it out here: How To Add Content To WordPress: The Gutenberg Block Editor.

Managing WordPress Posts

Once you have created a few WordPress posts you will most likely need to edit them or even delete them. To do this head on back to your WordPress admin dashboard. Click “Posts“, “All Posts” in the admin menu.

You will now see a list of all the posts that have been added to your website. You’ll also see a menu at the top of the post list showing “All“, “Published“, “Draft“, and “Trash“. This menu shows you how many posts have been published, how many are drafts, or how many have been moved to trash.

When you hover your mouse over any article on this page, a popup menu will be displayed with options for “Edit“, “Quick Edit“, “Trash” and “View“.

Edit

The edit option will take you back to the Gutenberg post editor.

Quick Edit

The quick edit option allows you to modify the details of your post such as the title, date, author, etc. This is especially helpful if you are wanting to make quick changes to your post settings without going back into the Gutenberg editor.

Trash

The trash option allows you to move any of your posts to trash.

When you trash a post, it isn’t deleted from your website. To delete it completely you must click on “Trash“, select the articles you would like to delete, and select “Delete Permanently“.

If you would like to delete all the articles in trash, can click the “Empty Trash” button and all the articles will be permanently deleted.

View

If you click “View” you will be taken to that particular post on your website.

How To Manage WordPress Categories

When you are creating posts in WordPress using the Gutenberg block editor, you will only be able to add new categories directly from that post. If you would like to edit or delete categories, you will need to visit the categories dashboard.

From the WordPress admin dashboard click “Posts“, and “Categories“.

When the Catetories dashboard opens, you will see all the categories that you currently have on your website. You will also see an option to add a new category.

If you hover your mouse over any of the categories listed on the right-hand side of the screen, a pop-up menu will be displayed with “Edit“, “Quick Edit“, “Delete“, and “View” options.

How To Add A Category To WordPress

It’s pretty easy to add a category to WordPress from the categories dashboard.

In the “Add New Category” section complete the following:

• Name – The name of your category.
• Slug – A slug is the URL-friendly version of the category name (see below).
• Parent Category – WordPress you can have both categories and subcategories. Use this option to select a parent category if you are creating a subcategory.
• Description – A short description of what your category is about.

Click “Add New Category” when you are done.

What is a slug?

I know what you are thinking, a slug is pretty much a snail without a shell! You are quite correct and if we were talking about gardening, then you would be right on the money!

However, because we are talking about WordPress, a slug is simply the URL-friendly version of your category name. What does this mean?

For example, if your category name is “Wedding Venues’, your slug could be “wedding-venues”.

So, if you were creating an article about titles, “Best Spring Wedding Venues”, then your URL would look like this:

www.awesomewebsite.com/wedding-venues/best-spring-wedding-venues

Pretty nifty right? Remember though that you will need to set how your URLs are displayed in your WordPress settings.

How To Edit A Category In WordPress

If you would like to edit a category in WordPress, hover your mouse over the category you would like to edit and select “Edit” from the popup menu. You will be taken to a new screen where you can edit the details of your category. Click “Update” when you are done.

How To Delete A Category In WordPress

If you want to delete one of your categories, again just hover your mouse over the category you would like to delete and select “Delete” from the popup menu. An alert window will pop up asking you to confirm that you would like to delete the category. Click “Okay“.

How To Manage WordPress Tags

You can find the tags menu just underneath the categories menu item.

How To Add, Edit And Delete Tags

When the tags dashboard opens you will see that it pretty much looks exactly the same as the categories dashboard. If you would like to add, edit or delete tags you would follow the same process as with categories.

Conclusion

WordPress posts make it really easy to add content to your website. In this tutorial, we covered all the ins and outs of the post editor and all its features. But if you need more information on how to actually use the Gutenberg post editor then check out this tutorial: How To Add Content To WordPress: The Gutenberg Block Editor.

I hope that this tutorial has helped you get a good understanding of how to add a post to WordPress. If you have any questions though, please let me know in the comments section below!