This is the sixth and final part of my Introduction to WordPress series. The full thing:

1. Logging in and getting around
2. Creating and editing posts and pages
3. More aspects of posts and pages
4. Inserting images into posts and pages
5. Comments and your account
6. Widgets (sidebar content) – you are here

Widgets (sidebar content)

Depending on your theme, various locations of your site will be “widgetized.” The sidebar is the most common location, followed by the footer, but there may be others. The content of those locations consists of a collection of widgets, which are chosen and edited under Appearance → Widgets.

On the left side you’ll find your widget options. Many will come from WordPress itself, shown below, and others may be added by your plugins and even your theme. On the right will be all of your widgetized areas; some may need a click on their title to open the box in which you actually put widgets.

Widgets can be added in two ways: drag the widget into the location you want it (this also works to rearrange widgets within locations), or click on the widget you want and select the location from the list that appears. The second one can be easier if you have a lot of widget options and your locations have scrolled off-screen by the time you get to the widget you want.

Once the widget is in place click its title bar to open up the settings and content editing box. That box also has the option to delete the widget if you’ve changed your mind. Make sure to click save after editing.

More on widgets from iThemes:

Most of the built-in widgets are self-explanatory, but here’s a tip for Text widgets: you can put anything into your sidebar that you could put into a post (except for shortcodes) using a Text widget. They have to be written in HTML, though. The easiest way to put images into your sidebar (and formatted text, if you aren’t comfortable with HTML) is to create a new post, add an image via the “Add Media” button, and with the Text editor tab selected, copy the HTML code WordPress generates for you. Paste that text into the widget and delete the post draft. If you find parts of your content are running together despite being separated by blank lines in the widget, check the box underneath the content that says “Automatically add paragraphs.” That should help.

There’s one last location available in the Widget screen: Inactive Widgets. This is at the bottom of the left side and you can drag widgets here to hold them (with their content and settings) for later.

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The fifth part of the Introduction to WordPress series covers two topics: comment management and account-related activities such as changing your password. These are together because there’s less to say about them, not because they go together thematically. The whole series:

1. Logging in and getting around
2. Creating and editing posts and pages
3. More aspects of posts and pages
4. Inserting images into posts and pages
5. Comments and your account – you are here
6. Widgets (sidebar content)

Managing comments

Comments live on their own admin page, but their settings are under Settings → Discussion. There you can choose whether comments are allowed or not by default on new posts (you can change this on a post by post basis), set your desired level of moderation (I like to approve posts by new commenters but then let their comments be approved automatically), paginate comments if you get enough to be necessary, limit the duration post-publication that comments are allowed, forbid use of certain words or phrases, and choose the kind of avatars your site uses – those little graphics by commenters’ names.

For comments themselves you have three options: approve, mark as spam, and trash. You can also reply to comments from the Comments page. Having a spam filter plugin is highly recommended; the two I’ve used most often are Akismet and WP-SpamShield. Hopefully your developed already set one of those up for you.

iThemes has a video about managing comments:

Your account options

Your user profile page is accessible from your name at the right-hand side of the Toolbar, or from Users → Your Profile in the admin sidebar. You can select an admin area color scheme (though on the front end the Toolbar will still be black), hide the Toolbar on the front end to get a better sense of what your site looks like to visitors, and change your account information, including your password. There’s not much to say about this page but it’s important to have a secure password, and to change it whenever there’s any chance it’s been compromised – you get a virus, your site is hacked, you have to make a software update that fixes a big security risk.

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Images are a topic we could spend a lot of time on, but I’m just going to cover the basics. The videos and links included go into more detail on certain topics. As usual, the whole Introduction to WordPress series:

1. Logging in and getting around
2. Creating and editing posts and pages
3. More aspects of posts and pages
4. Inserting images into posts and pages – you are here
5. Comments and your account
6. Widgets (sidebar content)

Inserting images into posts and pages

WordPress has a nice automatic way to manage images. All of the images and other files you’ve ever uploaded into your site via WordPress will be in the Media Library, available to be used again later if you’d like. You can upload them either from Media → Add New or from the Add Media button above the editing box for any post or page; the latter allows you to choose previously uploaded images as well.

Clicking Add Media brings up a large box overlaying your editing screen. After you upload or when you select an image from the library, the right side of the box will give you options for the image and how it appears, shown below. The first four options are Title, Caption, Alt Text, and Description; they stay with the image from use to use (though they can be altered at any time). The alt text is perhaps the most important – it appears within the HTML image tag and appears if the image somehow can’t; it is also used by screen readers and search engines as a description of the image. The rule of thumb is that if the image is wrapped in a link, the alt text should describe the destination of the link. If the image conveys information, the alt tex should repeat that information. If the image is purely decorative, however, feel free to leave the alt text blank.

The Caption is optional but will display with the image in your post or page if it is filled in. The Title and Description are used in the Attachment Page; Attachments, of which images are one kind, are actually in the same class as Posts and Pages, and so each has an individual page devoted to it. For more on the first four options, collectively called metadata, see Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s post Harnessing the Power of WordPress Image Metadata.

After those four options there are three more, which only affect this particular use of the image: Alignment, Link To, and Size. Alignment is the left-right positioning of the image. Left, Center, and Right are fairly self-explanatory; for Left and Right the text will flow into the empty space next to the image, if there is enough of it. None is like Left but without text flowing into the space. Link To is for images that should be clickable. A logo for an event you’re planning could have a Custom Link to the event page; if you’ve gotten into writing good descriptions you could link to the Attachment Page; purely decorative images or those already shown at their largest size could have no link; or you could link directly to the largest size of the image. That last is often required for lightboxing to work.

A word on image sizes: when you upload, WP will generate a bunch of smaller size options for the image, which you can then use in your posts and pages (along with the full-size one). This lets you put images into smaller spaces without forcing visitors to load a file that is way bigger than necessary. You choose which size to insert with the last option in the image insertion window.

If you decide to change the size or link, I find it quickest to delete the inserted image and reinsert it. If you want to change the alignment, it’s quick to go into the Text editor and change among alignnone, alignleft, aligncenter, and alignright.

iThemes has two relevant videos here, the first about inserting images and the second about the Media Library:

And as a final note, remember to make sure you have the rights to use any images you want to put on your site. The easiest way to do that with images you didn’t create yourself is by drawing from a stock of freely licensed photos. The sites I use for that purpose most often are Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons (the former you can use with abandon; the latter generally require attribution), and you can find a huge number of additional options on my Pinterest board Color & Images.

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Part 3 of Introduction to WordPress discusses additional settings and bits of information associated with posts and pages: excerpts, comments, featured images, and (for posts) categories and tags. The full series:

1. Logging in and getting around
2. Creating and editing posts and pages
3. More aspects of posts and pages – you are here
4. Inserting images into posts and pages
5. Comments and your account
6. Widgets (sidebar content)

More aspects of posts and pages

What about all those other boxes on the page? While title, content, and publication are vital, the rest of the options are important too. What you see will depend a bit on your theme and on whether you are editing a post or a page.

Both posts and pages will have Excerpt and Discussion below the main content box (even if you have to go to Screen Options to get them to appear), shown self-referentially in the screenshot below. Discussion is where you can change whether the post or page allows comments. The relevance of Excerpt will depend on your theme. WordPress generates an automatic excerpt by cutting your content off after a certain number of words; the automatic excerpt strips all formatting and other HTML such as links. You can create a custom Excerpt to be used instead, if the excerpt is used at all. The manual excerpt can include HTML and be longer; you may also wish to create one if the beginning of your actual content is not a good blurb for the content as a whole.

At the bottom of the right column, again true for both posts and pages, there will be a box to set the Featured Image. This is the primary image you want associated with your content; however, whether and how it is displayed is up to your theme. Many themes insert it at the top of the content somehow.

For pages that’s about it. You can read about Page Attributes under the Help tab at the top right of the screen, but they aren’t crucial.

Posts, however, get categorized and tagged. These are both ways to label your content so it can be found more easily and so search engines get the sense of the main ideas of it; more below. Your theme may also support Post Formats, which display the post differently to suit different content.

Categories are intended to be more high-level and non-overlapping – like a table of contents. They can be nested like sections within a chapter, as well. Tags are smaller-scale and can cross category boundaries; they are more like entries in an index, though that is a poorer analogy than the table of contents/category one. The idea is that a given post is in one category but can have multiple tags. You can read more about WordPress categories and tags on Socialbrite.

iThemes has a video about categories and tags:

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In Part 2 of Introduction to WordPress we start talking about the main activity of most website owners: creating and editing content in the blog and elsewhere. The full series:

1. Logging in and getting around
2. Creating and editing posts and pages – you are here
3. More aspects of posts and pages
4. Inserting images into posts and pages
5. Comments and your account
6. Widgets (sidebar content)

Creating and editing posts and pages

One of the user-friendly aspects of WordPress is that different kinds of content are (mostly) edited in the same way. If you click “Add New” from the Posts dropdown or the Pages dropdown, the screens you get will be quite similar. The main portion of the screen will have a title entry box followed by a content entry box; the right sidebar will begin with a Publish box.

We’ll begin with those three pieces. First, an iThemes video about creating posts:

The title (starred in the screenshot below) will show at the top of the page or post and be part of the name in your browser history when you visit the page or post. Right below it will be the permalink, the address you can use to visit the post or page directly. You can edit the permalink manually with the Edit button next to it, or visit a preview of what you’re writing by clicking the permalink itself (conveniently the preview opens in a new tab).

[Note: this screenshot does not show a permalink editing box because the page shown is set as the home page of the site, so its address must be the main address of the site.]

Below that is the main content box, also starred. It has a lot going on along the top (circled). There will be an Add Media button on the left (possibly others depending on what plugins you have) and your choice of Visual or Text on the right. Below that will be formatting buttons, different for Visual and for Text. The “Add Media” button is how you insert images; more on that later.

Visual is the Microsoft-Word-esque editor: your formatting shows to you. If you make something bold you’ll see it bold. Text is the HTML editor: if you make something bold you’ll see it with HTML “strong” tags around it. Just to note: Visual won’t always show your formatting exactly as it will show on the front end – your theme has to have told it to do so. However, it should be close enough to see what you’re doing unless your theme does very unusual things.

I won’t exhaustively cover the buttons across the top of the main content box; if you hover your mouse pointer over them a little tooltip will pop up and tell you the name of the button. However, a few are worth mentioning: the last two buttons insert a “more…” break, limiting the amount of your post that shows in the blog archive page, and show or hide a second row of buttons. In that second row, the middle two buttons are “paste as text” and “erase formatting.” If you paste formatted test in, for instance from an RTF file or a Word document, WordPress will do its best to replicate the formatting. If you don’t want it, you can click “paste as text” before pasting and get only content, no formatting. If some formatting doesn’t translate correctly or you decide to take formatting in a completely different direction, highlight the text and click “erase formatting” to clear it back to plain old content.

Now, an iThemes video about adding links:

They have one about formatting generally, but it won’t embed, so you’ll have to watch it on Vimeo: WordPress post formatting video from iThemes.

From the Publish box in the upper right (shown below for a draft and in the screenshot above for a published page), in addition to actually publishing the post or page, you can save your post or page as a draft to work on later, edit its privacy settings, preview it, and schedule it to publish at a later time. That last happens by clicking the “Edit” link at the end of the “Publish immediately” line. That will open up a spot to put in a date and time for publication. If you put in a future time you should see the “Publish” button change to “Schedule” after you click OK. Once a post or page is published that button will become “Update.” To get back to a post or page’s editing screen, you can find it in the list of all posts or pages and click the title or the “edit” link that pops up below the title; or while viewing the post/page or a preview thereof, click the edit link that appears in the left half of the Toolbar or at the bottom of the post or page content.

Finally, there is an iThemes video about scheduling posts for later publication:

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Did you have a WordPress site set up for you? Are you now in charge of keeping it up to date? I have a series for you. Over this week and next we’ll cover the basics of using WordPress, including short videos from iThemes. All of the videos plus other information are in my Pinterest board WordPress Tutorials and Tips, and if you are starting a site you may also be interested in my boards So You Want To Get A Website and WordPress Plugins We Use. Pinterest can be a little harder to sift through, so this series puts the videos in order and adds more context and my own tips.

The plan:
1. Logging in and getting around – you are here
2. Creating and editing posts and pages
3. More aspects of posts and pages
4. Inserting images into posts and pages
5. Comments and your account
6. Widgets (sidebar content)

Logging in and getting around

The login page of your site is at your-site-address/wp-login.php, and once you are logged in you’ll be at your-site-address/wp-admin/. That is where all the action happens. In fact, you can use the wp-admin address directly; it will sidetrack you to the login page if you are not logged in.

A little vocabulary: The front end of your site is the part visitors see; the back end is the part that makes the front end happen. You’ll make changes to your site from the admin area. The first page you reach in the WordPress admin area is called the Dashboard (screenshot below), and you’ll sometimes see the entire admin area referred to as such (though properly it is just that one page). At the top of the screen when you are logged in you’ll see the Toolbar, which is basically a menu bar.

One general principle: in the WordPress admin there are a lot of drop-down and pop-out submenus. In every case, clicking the item that has the submenu is the same as clicking the first entry of the submenu. For instance, clicking “Posts” is the same as clicking “All Posts”.

The Toolbar has some convenient quick links. Your site name, on the left, will take you between the front and back end of the site. Your user name, on the right, drops down a menu that includes “Log Out”. The following is a screenshot of the left half of the Toolbar from a page on the front end of the site.

Admin pages consist of a collection of content boxes called panels. Panels with titles can be collapsed and expanded by clicking on the title bar; there’s a little arrow on the right that changes direction accordingly. Panels as a whole can be shown or hidden from the Screen Options box, which you’ll find at the top right of the page, just under the Toolbar. Not every page has Screen Options, but you’ll always find a Help box in the top right, which will give you page-specific extra information.

Videos from iThemes: first about the WordPress Dashboard, second about the Toolbar.

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