If you manage your site or blog with WordPress, the following author’s checklist might be very helpful. It covers all the steps you may want or need to cover when posting pages or entries. To begin, we will offer the post/entry steps. This will be followed by the differences you need to be aware of when creating a new page. Please note that not all steps are required, and some only apply to custom features incorporated into our custom version of WordPress.
Creating a New Post or Entry
A post, versus a page, is not fixed content. Instead it is permanent content that will move through the system as it ages, becoming a chronological archive changing the way the content will be accessed over time. What follows is a checklist of steps you may want or need to attend to.
- Create a descriptive Title. Don’t make it too long (try to make it a one-liner), but do make sure it says what you mean. Creative page and chapter titles work well in print, but on the web, you should be more clear and less obscure and creative.
- Select a category or categories that best bracket the content of your post. Think log-term findability and organization. Try not to blur lines by putting a post into too many categories. The category selection checkboxes are found on the admin post page sidebar under Categories.
- Write your post content being careful to spell check, test readability, and not insert illegal characters from Word, etc. To preview your post, scroll down to the Preview pane below the post, and using a link to the post, open it in a new tab or window (right-click with your mouse to reveal link options). This make editing easier.
- Optionally float a decorative or editorial embedded image. You can do this using the img button on the “Quicktags” menu. Just follow the prompts supplying the information requested. For posts/excerpts, be sure to supply full URLs so feed subscribers will get the image and working links.
- Instead of an image, you may choose the post a pullquote using the
pullquotekey in the Custom Fields located just above the preview pane. Please note that the pullquote needs to come from the post itself and should be from a section of the post other than the first paragraph/excerpt. - If you accept comments, make sure the Discussion checkboxes are ticked. If you support comments, these will already be checked, but check once to make sure. This is editable globally (for new posts) under Options > Discussion.
- Edit the Post Slug (which, with the date, makes up the URL) if needed. WordPress creates this automatically so you probably don’t need to deal with it. In fact, only edit the post slug if you’ve changed the title of a previously published post. The best way to do this is to clear the old post slug and just re-save the post.
- Be sure to select the correct Post Author if you have more than one blog author/editor. This is important if you mark author comments as we offer with our BeastBlog v2 theme. This, of course, is not applicable to most blogs/sites.
- Edit your Post Time Stamp if you need to post it in the past or in the future (if a future posting, it’ll show up on the site/blog once that date and time is reached). Most times this isn’t needed. The time stamp will be produced when you post, but this is handy if you do need to change it from the default. Be sure to check the Edit timestamp box else the changes won’t go into effect.
- If needed, also manage Post Status, Password-Protect Post, and, if applicable, RunPHP:
- Post Status would be changed only if you need to change the status of a post. Normally you won’t touch this.
- Password-Protect Post is used if you want to reveal the post only to only those to whom you’ve given the password to.
- RunPHP is a plugin you may or may not use. If you have it, you only need it if you need to process PHP scripting within your post.
- Be sure to add a meta Description (supported with our custom version). To do this, use the
descriptionkey in the Custom Fields located just above the preview pane. This is an important step to further the search engine indexability. - Be sure to add a meta Keywords (supported with our custom version). To do this, use the
keywordskey in the Custom Fields located just above the preview pane. This step isn’t as important as the one above, but we still recommend it. - Once you are done with all these step and completely satisfied with your post, select and copy the first paragraph — including image code if you added a floated image to your first paragraph — then paste it into the Optional Excerpt box located under the upload tool area.
- Once all these steps are done, Publish the post. If using a current or past time stamp it’ll show up on your blog/site (in chronological order). If you do allow comments, you may want to close comments on an older post. This seems to be a sound practice.
- Once done, perform a system Backup provided your installation features this (our custom version does). To do this, in the admin navigate to Manage > Backup and tell it to backup to your computer (default). Do not store backups online. It’s not safe.
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