Let’s Look Inside Your Blog
Once you set up your blog on your chosen platform, you will soon be ready to start posting. Before you do, take some time to understand the basic structure of your blog. This information pertains mainly to self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.com, but you will find that most platforms have similar features.
Your Blog Components
Posts
Posts are individual entries that you will write on your blog. They can include content in the form of text, images, or videos. In your WordPress dashboard, there is a tab labeled “Posts” that you’ll click on to write your new blog posts. This area is where you will spend most of your time working. As an example, here is a link to a chronological series of blog posts from “Artisan Advantage”.
Pages
As I posted about last week, your blog is a website, and as such, there are some traditional web pages that you should add to it. You should find a tab labeled “Pages” where you can add them to your site. Pages are for more static, timeless content. On Artisan Advantages, I have pages such as About, Resources, and Contact.
Media
This section is the library where all of the images that you upload to your website will be stored. You can add, delete, or edit images, video, and audio right here. When you add an image to a blog post, you will retrieve it from your Media gallery.
Comments
Read, moderate, or respond to comments posted on your blog in this area. Comments are optional, and you can decide whether or not you want to enable them.
Appearance
For WordPress, this is where you will manage the entire look and layout of your website. Manage themes, widgets, menus, and customization in the Appearance section.
Plugins
A plugin is a piece of software that acts as an add-on to a WordPress website. For self-hosted WordPress, you must set up specific plugins for your site, which I will go into more detail in a later post. Plugins are one of the most important benefits of using a self-hosted WordPress blog. Plugins can extend functionality or add new features to your blog. For WordPress.com, only certain packages give you the ability to add plugins.
Learning Curve
Don’t be discouraged if some of this seems confusing or overwhelming when you open up your blog dashboard. If you work at your blog consistently, over time, using these components will become second nature to you.
For a more detailed description of the inner workings of self-hosted WordPress, download my Artist Blog Set-up Guide.
If you are not using WordPress, then visit the Knowledgebase or Help Center of your chosen platform to review how each of these components works.
For a quick session where I can answer some of your questions, consider a complimentary “ask me anything” Consulting Hour.
For more intensive help, consider my Artist Blogging Services.
Thank you to KOBU Agency on Unsplash for the photo!
