Creating a WordPress Site (for blogging)

Here’s a Creating a WordPress site .pdf file with directions for starting a WordPress site.

I’ll be adding specific “how to” information over the next week.

Adding categories to your posts

When you are logged into your site, you will see a menu on the left of your dashboard. Click categories (see image below) and you will be able to enter text for your custom categories. When you create posts, your category will be contained in a drop down menu, making them easy to apply to all your blog posts.

Adding categories to your menu (navigation bar)

The key to a well organized blog (meaning readers find it easy to navigate your site for relevant information), is attending to the navigational settings of your site. Sometimes the menu is referred to as a navigation bar, a dropdown menu, tabs – WordPress refers to this as a menu. To create a menu, you must first have “pages” or “categories” to select from. See the image below showing the menu options page. You will select your pages or categories from the left and then select “add to menu”. Once you have a few pages and/or categories in your menu, you can drag them up, down, and to the left and right to add levels. You will need to save these settings (and WordPress can be a little slow – don’t click off this page too quickly).

 

To make sure that the menu settings you create here show up on your home page, you will need to select one final setting. On this same menu page, you need to select your primary menu as shown below.

 

Here’s what it should look like: