WordPress 101 – Categories and Posts

So — Pages and Posts make up the content of your WordPress website and blog.  They are similar in how you create content for them but very different in how WordPress handles them.

WordPress ‘Page’ titles not only title the page but also create the menu heading for the ‘Pages’ menu bar… Posts however are different.  Posts are effectively database records and stored under Categories.

A Category is really a subject heading.  Posts get organized by Category and Sub Category, so it’s important to structure your Categories.  You can create complete hierarchies with Categories going from Parent Categories, Sub Categories, Sub-Sub Categories etc.

Note: Not all themes work the same.  The suggestions expressed in these articles assume a well developed theme.  Most of our websites are based around the ‘Studiopress’ premium themes; which are professional, very solid and highly customizable.

Let’s assume you’ve read the previous article and your WordPress site now has a set of menus created from Static Pages.  The Page’s menu bar displays ‘Home’, ‘Services’, ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact Us’ with associated drop down menus from the Child Pages.

Now we want to introduce dynamic content to the mix.  Remember, you can title a Post however you want but it will be organized by Category and not the Post title.

So let’s create come Categories.

You can create new Categories from the main Dashboard ‘Posts’ menu or directly while creating a Post.  The Posts menu shows, Edit, Add New, Post Tags and Categories.  So, choose Categories.

As WordPress began its life as a blogging tool, let’s start by creating a Category called ‘Blogs’.

For Category Name enter: Blogs

For Category Slug enter: author-blogs
(note: the category slug is for creating user friendly URLs.  The default for a WordPress URL would be something like www.mydomain.com/?cat=187 but with your Permalinks (more on those later) set to Friendly URLs, your Post’s URL would be www.mydomain.com/author-blogs; which is way more effective to the search engines.

Leave Category Parent as None

WordPress is a multi user system which enables you to assign many contributors to your website/blog.  To facilitate these blogs, you can create several users for your WordPress system and assign each one a Sub Category in which to post their Blog.  We’ll come back to Sub Categories shortly.

Now let’s create a Category called ‘Articles’… Again we’ll be creating Sub Categories shortly.

Now a Category called ‘Events’…

You can create as many categories as you wish but they will not appear on your website until you assign live Posts to them.  So you can effectively create the whole structure and plan your site before you write your first article or blog post.

Remember that WordPress stores Posts as database records; which is important as it means there are no limits to the number of Posts that can be created and organized.

Posts are organized chronologically within Categories.  The newest Post is on top and moves down the list as new Posts are created.  The Time and Date stamps of Posts can be changed which effectively reorders the Posts within a Category.  Posts can also be scheduled to appear at a later date. (More on that later).

Now, if you create a lot of Posts and just put them all in the Blogs Category, they would be ordered by Date but nothing more.  Regardless of subject matter, newest would be on top and oldest on the bottom.  That’s not what you want, so this is why we create Sub Categories.

Ok, Let’s say we have 3 ‘Authors’ that we want on our blog.

Their names are:

‘John Doe’, ‘Jane Smith’ and ‘Cathy Taylor’.

We can create a Sub Category for each of these.

Back to the Categories menu.

Create a new Category: John Doe
Slug: john-doe
Category Parent: Select Blogs from drop down list.

Create a category for Jane Smith, slug: jane-smith, Parent: Blogs

Create a category for Cathy Taylor, slug: cathy-taylor, Parent: Blogs

By assigning a Category to a Parent Category, it automatically becomes a Sub Category.

Now let’s create a couple of Posts and allocate them to the Categories.

From the Posts Menu, select Add New.

Creating a Post is just like creating a Page.  You have the same interface and tools for editing.

Give your Post a Title:  ‘Hiking Mt Rainier’.  Enter some text…

Once you have entered the content for the Post, you can allocate it to a Category.  You’ll see to the right of the Post, there are 3 areas to update, (although the location can be changed under ‘Screen Options’).  These are Publish, Post Tags and Categories.  If you look at the Categories section, you’ll see the Categories you created earlier.  The Sub Categories are indented under the Parent Categories.  For this Post check the John Doe check box.

Once the Post is as you want it, click the Publish button.

Now create another Post called ‘Mountain Biking’. Enter some text, allocate to ‘John Doe’ Sub Category and Publish.

Let’s now create another Post called ‘Theater in Seattle’, enter some text then allocate to ‘Cathy Taylor’ and Publish.

One more Post called ‘Cloud Computing’, enter text, allocate to ‘Jane Smith’ and Publish.

When you publish a Post or a Page from WordPress, it goes live onto the Web.  Remember, this is ‘cloud computing’.  When you create, update and publish, you are doing so live to the web.

So check out the live version of the website.  You see that four Posts have been published but they are organized by Category and Sub Category.  Two posts appear chronologically in the John Doe Category and one each for Cathy Taylor and Jane Smith.

The same could be done for the ‘Articles’ and ‘Events’ Categories.  If you were creating a series of events, each Post could be allocated to the Event Type.  For example, you could create Sub Categories for Biznik Events, BNI Events, Meet Up Events and so on.  As you post to the Categories, the Posts will appear chronologically within their respective Sub Categories.  WordPress makes the organization of these Posts a total breeze.

So to recap.  Pages are for static content.  Posts are for dynamic content.  Both are created in a similar manner but handled and organized differently by WordPress.  If you want to create a lot of content which will be constantly updated or added to, do that with Posts.

WordPress is a state-of-the-art web development and publishing platform. It is comprehensive, extensible and free. WordPress adheres to all major web standards and so is compatible with all modern browsers. It is a cloud based (online) system so is independent of operating systems; you view it, update it and develop it through your browser. So whether you use Mac OS, Windows or Linux, WordPress is the ideal solution for you.

WordPress and other OpenSource technologies are giving non technical and technical people alike incredible tools to communicate and interact with the rest of the world as never before. Ask anyone in the know and they will tell you… WordPress is one of the most important technologies on the web today!

So what is WordPress?

A WordPress web/blog site is a full development platform for your online presence. WordPress gives you the tools to maintain and update your site without having to hire expensive web developers, graphic designers and consultants. It just takes a little imagination and some computer know-how.

Your WordPress site can reside anywhere, just like a regular website. Most people using non WordPress.com version of WordPress now do so as their primary website but it can also be used to complement and enhance an existing site with blogging technology.

For most of us there are 2 versions of WordPress that are freely available.

1. A blog/website available at WordPress.com
2. An independent web and blog site using the downloadable WordPress software available from WordPress.org

This article deals with the WordPress.org edition although there are many crossover and similar features.

From the outside WordPress looks very much like any other website but inside it is very different.  The primary difference is that WordPress sits on top of a database.  Behind every WordPress website sits MySQL, the open source database that powers a huge proportion of online activity and processing.  In days past, having this amount of intrinsic power would have cost a fortune and required skilled developers to manage.  Not so anymore.  WordPress harnesses and manages that power through a clearly defined and easily learned ‘Dashboard’.

So, you have WordPress installed.  (This article does not cover WordPress Installation).

So let’s log in.

To access the dashboard, simply add /wp-admin to the web address. E.g. http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/

You will then be asked for your user name – default: admin and your password.

The WordPress Dashboard is the mechanism that allows you to turn your creativity into a real tangible website and blog that can potentially be viewed my countless millions of people.

At the heart of WordPress are Themes (which interpret the WordPress engine and provide an Interface that your visitors will see), Pages and Posts.

Choosing a Theme is important, in fact it’s crucial.  There are literally thousands of themes available but are of mixed quality, support and documentation. More later…

WordPress manages content through Pages and Posts; which are created in a similar manner but are handled in a fundamentally different way.

Pages are like regular web pages.  They are static.  You can have one page per subject heading.  You’ll see the difference when I discuss Posts. However, static though they may be, they are still way cleverer than the average web page.  So let’s say you are going to create a web page.

From your ‘dashboard’ you’ll see a menu down the left hand side (I’m assuming here that you’ll all be using an up to date version of WordPress) and half way down is a heading that says Pages. Each menu is collapsible so you may just see Pages.  You should open the menu and then you’ll see Pages, Edit, Add New.

So let’s add a Page.

Adding a New Page should land you in familiar territory.  It looks like a Word Processor interface.  You’ll see an icon bar with various buttons (icons) to help format your page.  If you see only one line of icons, you can expand this by clicking on the ‘Show/Hide Kitchen Sink’ icon which opens/closes the second line.

You’ll also notice that there are two tabs in the edit window, the first one being ‘Visual’ and the second being ‘HTML’.  Right now you’ll work in the Visual tab.

Start typing something into the page.

You’ll notice that it behaves very much like a regular word processor.  You can bold, underline, and italicize your text and more.  You can use bullets, number lists and styles.  But it may be that you prefer write your copy using Microsoft’s Word (or an open source equivalent).  No problem with WordPress.  There is an icon for taking Word formatted documents and pasting them into the page.  Just look on the second line of the icon bar for ‘Paste from Word’.  Pasting a Word document directly into a WordPress page can and invariably does lead to highly unpredictable results.  Use the ‘Paste from Word’ option!

Once you have created a page, just click to the HTML tab and you’ll notice that WordPress has converted everything you have typed and formatted into ‘HTML’, the native language of the web browser.

Let’s go back to the Visual tab.  WordPress also enables uploading of pictures directly into a WordPress page.  You’ll see above the icon bar it says Upload/Insert followed by a series of small icons; the first being ‘Add an Image’.  Let’s do that…

Click on the icon and you’ll see a number of choices of how you can insert an image.  This article only deals with the first of these, Select Files (From Computer).  Click Select Files and browse your computer for a picture you’d like to include on your page.

(Important Note: your website doesn’t need massive pictures being uploaded.  The average digital camera nowadays can take 12+ mega pixel pictures.  They are huge and cannot possibly be viewed on the average computer monitor.  Keep your pictures under 1024 pixels wide. A huge proportion of the visitors to your site still have a monitor that only displays 1024 x 768 pixels, and with Netbooks and smart phones, that is even less. The bigger the image, the longer it takes to load and WordPress has to deal with storing and crunching it. So in the case of pictures, Less is More…  Keep the size down).

WordPress has a built in FTP (File Transfer Protocol) facility that allows you to upload images (and for that matter, whatever else you may wish to upload), so no external programs are required to get your images into your web pages.  There are tools that can enhance WordPress, which will be dealt with later.

Once uploaded, you can format the picture directly from WordPress.  You can change the size, you can justify to the left, right or center.  You can place a caption on the image and you can create a link so that when a visitor clicks on that image, it will take them to another or another website.

Everything you need to do to create visually pleasing content that communicates with your target audience and other sites, is contained within the Page Editor but of course there is much more.

The Page Titles (in most themes) create the Menu Heading for the page.  So for example, if you want to create an ‘About Us’ page, you’ll title the page ‘About Us’ and that’s what the menu will show.  Of course, you could easily run out of space on your website if you displayed each page horizontally… so WordPress has the Parent/Child page relationship.

Let’s say you create a page called ‘About Us’ but you also want a page about each individual member of the company.  You wouldn’t want them all displayed next to each other.  So you create the ‘About Us’ page as a Parent Page then the page about the individual would be created as a ‘Child’ of the ‘About Us’ page.

Using the system of Parent/Child Pages gives true structure and organization to your pages.

A simple example:

Parent Pages

• Home | Philosophy | About Us | Contact Us

Child Pages

• Mission Statement – Child of Philosophy
• Company Ethics – Child of Philosophy
• Locations – Child of About Us
• Key Personnel – Child of About Us
• Etc…

The Child Pages become drop down menus of the Parent Pages.

WordPress contains a treasure chest of features that allow you to create, modify and manage your website and blog.  This series of articles will cover many of those features.