Simple WordPress Tips

Hi Papa, I understand that you’re having trouble editing posts and positioning images so this is a tutorial to help you out. I have included images and video to make it easier to understand.

  1. Editor Mode: I noticed that you have switched the editor from Visual to HTML in several posts and that is probably confusing you. This option allows you to edit the code of your posts but if you forget to switch back to visual it will be missleading because you can’t see your images and you may mistakenly think you’ve deleted content or broken something. Look at the two images below, the first one shows a post in the HTML mode and the second shows Visual mode, you just click the tabs on the top right (I have red arrows pointing to them) to switch back and forth.

    HTML Mode:
    wordpress-html-editor

    Visual Mode:
    wordpress-visual-editor

  2. Uploading Images: I want to give you a few tips for positioning and sizing images, it looks like you’ve been doing a good job at this so far but this will help to clarify it for you. These are the steps you will take to upload and position an image:

    Click the “Add and Image” icon on the Upload/Insert menu:
    wordpress-upload-image

    Click the “Select Files” button if the file is on your computer (this is the most common use), if however, the image is somewhere on the web (like a friend’s website) you can click the “From URL” tab at the top of this page and enter the address (I personally think it’s better to download the image from your friend’s site and rename it then upload it to your own blog, just so that you own the image and don’t have to worry about them taking it down). To get an image from the web you can usually right click it and choose save as. Aside from uploading images or getting them from the web you can also choose a picture from your “Gallery” one that you uploaded for this specific post earlier, or from your overall “Media Library” which contains all of the images you have ever uploaded to your blog. Both of these options are at the top of the “Add an Image” screen shown below:
    wordpress-select-file-upload

    Assuming you chose “Select Files” you will see a popup window allowing you to navigate to the image you want to upload, either on your computer, desktop, or a flash drive or CD… just find the image you want on your computer as shown below:
    navigate-to-image-mac

    Now that you have chosen your image we have to adjust the display settings so that it appears correctly in your post. There are several options on this page and each is numbered below. The first is the caption, this bit of text appears below the image and is a way to tell your users what is going on. The second is the link URL, where the image will link to when clicked. I usually click the second button “File URL” which links the image to a full larger version. The third thing is positioning, I usually like to right justify my images but if I have several in one post I alternate right and then left justified (Note: you can always re-edit these options by clicking the image once it’s in a post). Fourth is the thumbnail size option. I usually choose “Medium” which scales the largest side of the image to 300 pixels. This way readers can navigate around images easily but if they want a larger view they can simply click it and see the full size shot. The final step here labeled “5” is “Insert into post” this is important because if you hit “Save all changes” at the very bottom the image will just go into your gallery and not appear in the post.
    wordpress-media-options

Hopefully those instructions have helped you edit your posts and insert images effectively. Remember that each time you edit a post you need to click “Update Post” on the right hand side of the page for it to be re-published. Just below is the other fake post I made for you earlier. I am leaving this content and the video for you to explore at your convenience.

Example post for papa, old content:

This is ocean beach near San Francisco

This is Ocean Beach in San Francisco

now when I type the text goes around the image, I set the image size to medium and I made the image link to the larger version. I will now publish this so you can see how it will look on the final post on your website.
I just removed the image, now I am going to show you how it looks in the gallery. This is how you would add images to posts you have already made with images you already uploaded. I am going to make it left justified this time. I also click where I want the image to go… I am clicking in front of “now when” just above ^

Now let’s pretend I wanted to change the caption of the picture. I just click the image once, then click the icon that appears, that takes me to the editing area in wordpress. All done! You can watch the full video of this tutorial by clicking here or on a PC here or youtube here

Comments are closed.