Blogging with WordPress

Features tab
- 3 gigabytes of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!)
- You can have as many blogs as you like
- You can add as many pages as you need, making it look just like a web page but with blog features
- They say to support the service they may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, but I have never had this happen. You can also have them removed for a fee.
Blog tab
- The latest news on WordPress
Support tab
- easy to find information
- sorted by topic
Forums
- easy to find and understand
- written by users
Search box
- search for blogs like the one you are making for ideas

Lets Get Started

Select “Sign up Now” and fill out the short form.
Think carefully about a domain name, this cannot be changed.
Once you create a blog and you are signed in, it will be listed on the left sidebar and on the menu bar under “My Dashboards”. You can click either one to be taken to the Dashboard of your blog page.

Shows information relating to your account, all the blogs you have
Information that is shown on wordpress.com page
A list of the fastest growing WordPress blogs, although I have looked at some of these and do not have a clue why they are on this list

Personalizing your Blog

The top half of this page relates only to the blog name listed in the black banner.

Page down to Appearance (left side bar) and select Themes
There are over 60 themes from which to choose. You can select “Show all themes” for a drop down menu to filter your choices.
1. If you use P2, your main page will be similar to Twitter.
Preview any that interest you and the “activate” to use that theme for your blog. This can be changed later.
View your page by clicking the name on the top black bar.
Select “My Dashboards” to return to your working page.
Under Appearance, select Widgets.
“Current Widgets”, on the top right, will list any widgets that came with your theme. The dropdown menu will be different depending on how many columns you have.
1. Select where you want your Widget to appear (column 2, sidebar, etc.)
2. Look through the Widgets and select “Add” to any that you like.
3. Some widgets can be edited, remember to “Save Changes”
4. There is no limit to the number of Widgets you can have on your page. You can delete or add more anytime. To change the order, click and drag.
5. Check out your page and see if you want anything changed.
There is a page already set up called “About”, click on “About” to go to this page. If you don’t want to tell about yourself, just change the name of the page by using “edit”.
To return to your “home page” at any time, click on the header.
You should see “Hello World” on this page, it is your home page and the only page where you can make posts.

Before going much further it helps to make a plan for your blog or pages tend to get out of control.

You can just have a bunch of pages, but if pages relate to each other they can be grouped by using a parent page.
You could have an applications page and then pages that link to it for Word, Power Point, etc..
Anything you create can be edited at a later date if you decide to do something different.

To return to the Administrator pages at any time, select My Dashboard.

To return to your Blog at any time, select the black bar with your blog title and “visit site”.

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