Don’t be Scared to Add a Picture

I’m super determined to insert a photo today, because I feel like that’s one of the best ways to highlight what you want to say on your blog.

OK, I inserted it successfully not by using the tree icon, which remains a mystery to me, but by using the grey button beside the heading “Add media” on the “Write Post” menu bar. Want to know how I knew to do that?!? By watching a WordPress video on the topic.

To find the video, follow this path: My Dashboard>Help (upper right)>”How do I upload pictures [Screencast]” which is a non-intimidating video tutorial. Hooray!

Formatting Your Post #2

I’ve clicked on that far right button (in the “write post” menu bar) with the colourful dots (Canadians spell it “colour”)…and it’s launched that second row of buttons I’m going to explore today.

“Paragraph” offers a drop-down menu of formatting options for writing something that looks more formal:

Address, address

Pre-formatted (which has the cursor dancing back and forth…not sure what that’s about?!?!)

Heading1

Heading2

Heading3

…and so on, to Heading 6.

Now I’m back to the “paragraph” font. All of the above I achieved just by highlighting the bit I wanted then clicking on the “Paragraph” scroll-down menu.

You can also underline…

…justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content justify a whole bunch of content….. so that it aligns along each side of the page evenly.

Oh my gosh we can change the colours of the font on the button with the big A!

The next two buttons let you paste words from other places, which I don’t need right now.

If you want to erase the formatting you’ve done, there’s a handy eraser button you can click on (after highlighting the area you want affected).

Oooh! That OMEGA button or whatever it is lets you insert a custom character! (I don’t see why I’d need this right now.)

There’s a nice indent button available.

Also - THERE THEY ARE! - the “undo” and “redo” buttons…two of my faves!

And at the end of the row, a help button that goes into all of what I’ve said in more detail, courtesy of the official peeps at WordPress.

Formatting Your Posts

I’m writing a post… and today I’m feeling ready to try using that array of buttons that appear at the top of the window. To see all the ways you can get to this page, see my previous posts about the WRITE function.

I can make words bold, italicized, scratched out…

• bulleted like one
• two
• three

…indent a quotation by hitting the quotation marks icon…

…flush something (by highlighting it and clicking the button):

…to the left…

…(then hit enter) and centre it (I’m Canadian, so “centre it”, eh)…

…(then hit enter) and flush it right.

The “link” and “unlink” buttons I’ll leave for later. They’re not even highlighted so I don’t think I can do anything with them at this point.

What’s this tree icon mean? Oh goodie! We can add pictures! (Turns out this isn’t as simple as I’d hoped, so I’ll review that later).

“Insert more tag” button? I don’t get that… so I’ll ignore that button, too.

At the end of the row of buttons are options to “spellcheck” (choose from various languages!), choose “full screen mode” (looks more like your old familiar word processor this way) and on the far end it’s a button where you can add a whole other row of buttons (gasp!) That row I’ll leave for later.

So we’ve learned some things about formatting our entries. More to come in formatting lesson #2.

My OOPS regarding WRITE function

I hope you find this funny because I’m feeling pretty bad that I somehow posted WRONG information…already!!

To write a new post, there are indeed lots of ways you can go about it, but the routing I thought was correct a week ago seems to be wrong. The correct path to finding where you can write could be any one of the following six:

1.New Post (upper left corner)

2.My Dashboard>WRITE

3.My Account>Tag Surfer>WRITE

4.My Account>My Comments>WRITE

5.My Account>Edit Profile>WRITE

6.Press This (upper right corner)

All the other routing I indicated below seems to be accurate at present. The most important distinction here is that the “Global Dashboard” is not the same thing as “My Dashboard”.

Sorry if I led you astray - told you I was learning!

Navigating Your WordPress Blog

I just spent a while going over our options here on WordPress, and noticed there are lots of ways to do the same things. I’m going to review some of the most relevant ones to a first-timer like you, who just wants to get their thoughts out there!

From your personal blog page, there are going to be options at the top left corner: My Account, My Dashboard and Add New Post.

“My Account” has a drop-down menu where you can choose various options, and the ones you’ll be using first-off are most likely the following:

MY ACCOUNT>GLOBAL DASHBOARD>where you can choose from WRITE, MANAGE, DESIGN, COMMENTS, UPGRADES;

MY ACCOUNT>EDIT PROFILE>where you can make various adjustments to things about your online persona;

MY ACCOUNT>CONTACT SUPPORT>use this path to get help Monday thru Friday during working hours, otherwise there’s a Frequently Asked Questions part;

MY ACCOUNT>LOGOUT>logs you out immediately!

NOTE on April 4th the WordPress people made adjustments to the look of the Dashboard, so if you’ve noticed things have changed, you’re right! It’s not you!

“Dashboard” is another option at the top left corner of your page, and if you click on that, it’ll take you to that same page with the options of choosing WRITE, MANAGE, DESIGN, COMMENTS or UPGRADES. Notice you can also get there via MY ACCOUNT>GLOBAL DASHBOARD (same thing).

“New Post” takes you to the page where you write a new post. Notice you can also get there via MY ACCOUNT>GLOBAL DASHBOARD>WRITE (same thing).

It’s all inter-connected.

Blogging Takes Time

OK, it doesn’t take a helluva lotta time, but as this is only my second post in a month, and third since I started, this is the most prominant thing I’ve learned: you really have to make time for it.

Upon finding my wordpress username and password in the nether regions of my email inbox (because, face it, don’t we all face some sort of challenge in keeping alllllllllll of our passcodes and usernames straight these days?!!) I’ve logged on to find my next challenge: navigating wordpress.

When you log on, having successfully found your username and password, you’ll arrive at a perhaps unfamiliar page. The only thing you might recognize is your username (lennyjester, in my case) and perhaps an invitation to change your theme (called dashboard, is it?)

I’d been wanting to play around with mine, so I clicked affirmative and it allowed me to change the look of my blog by following the directions. So that was pretty easy.

If you want to deliberately find the page where to do that, you can get there by going into the screen that allows you to “add a new post”… and at the top, click on the tab that reads “design”. In there should be options to change the look of your blog.

I hope these two things I learned today have YOU feeling like you KNOW IT ALL in comparison!

My next mission is to change the name of my blog to better reflect what I’m writing about…

What I learned about blogging today

I’ve decided on a theme I shall explore: how to blog.

Anyone who’s stumbled here by accident because they haven’t yet learned to navigate the blog-o-sphere - good news! I’m stumbling, too! So you can learn with me.

 Here on my wordpress.com blog, I’ve learned to post things I want to say, invent and change the categories of my posts, decide not to bother with tagging for now, looked into and decided against an upgrade for now and altered some of my blogging “options”, all within the past hour or so.

The main tool I’ve used to do this is the handy “My Dashboard” link, which you can click on whenever you want to do these things and others.

Have fun!

First blog post makes headlines

I can’t believe this is my first blog post EVER! Already I think it’s gonna be a lotta fun!