Wordpress has a few different types of content:
- Posts – dynamic, chronologically presented, the original daily blog item
- Pages – rarely changing, essentially a static Post
- Links – web addresses and descriptions of sites that relate to your content
Each item of these types of content may also have one or more Categories associated with it. Categories are less important, in my opinion, for Pages than they are for Posts and Links.
Note: There are two different sets of data for Categories. Pages and Posts share the same tables in the WordPress database and have their own Category table. Links use a separate and different Category table – its a Link, not a Post! Read more about Links in this article.
Remember, Pages are simply “static” Posts.
To start adding content to your blog, login to the Admin (yourblog/wp-admin) page and click on the Write Panel. It will default to writing a Post but this is also where you would write a new Page. Just fill in the blanks, type “My Test” in the Title field and then type “This is my first test post.” in the post window (also known as the body of your Post). Now click on Publish and wait a few seconds while WordPress stores this in the database (and makes it available to the world!)
Now click on the “View site” link which always lives at the top of the Admin page next to the name of your blog. Tip: Use tabbed browsing from Firefox. It rocks! You can right click on “View site” and choose Open in New Tab and easily switch back and forth between managing and previewing your content.
Now return to the Admin site and choose the Manage panel. Using the tabs under the Manage menu, you can manage the posts and Pages in your site. That is, you can Edit them, change the title, text and Categories assigned to the Page or Post. Heck, you may even occasionally want to delete something!
You can read more about using WordPress at the very helpful WordPress Codex. Of particular importance is the section on Planning.
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