Last Updated on November 3, 2021 by Kelly Thoreson
Are you ready to write your first blog post? Great! I’m here to walk you through the WordPress posts page so you can get publishing!
Below we will cover all the features of the WordPress posts page in stunning detail, and the sooner you get to know this page, the easier and quicker blog post creation/publication will be for you.
However, if you would like to skip the details and jump straight to the guided first post walkthrough, click here.
Alright, bloggers, let’s get going!
How to Access the WordPress Posts Page
To get to your WordPress posts page, you must first access the WordPress dashboard.
Getting to your dashboard is super easy! Just log in to your WP admin account by going to yourdomain/wp-admin/.
For example, if Google were to have a WP admin page it would be www.Google.com/wp-admin/.
This is what the login page looks like:
Once you’re in, you’ll see your WP dashboard! So exciting!
As a brand new blogger, the WordPress dashboard may be a little overwhelming at first.
I understand because whoa mamma, look at all those buttons!
Today, we’re just going to focus on the WordPress posts page so we can get you on your way to publishing your first blog post!
Related reading: 13 Must Have Plugins for Your New Blog
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Posts
The Posts icon is going to take you to the WordPress posts page and all the places you need to go to create and maintain your posts!
It is also where you will generate tags and categories (I’ll explain those in a minute).
This is what the Posts Icon looks like:
From the Post icon you can:
- See/manage all your posts (drafts & published)
- Create new posts
- Create/manage your categories and tags
Like I said, this is where you will be spending much of your time because content creation is so important to your success as a blogger.
Below, I’ll breakdown the Posts pages for you in so much detail it will make you want to puke.
Grab a bucket cause here we go!
Related reading: Your First Blog Post: 7 Tips You Must Know
All Posts
The All Posts page is jam-packed with features.
There’s so much that you can do from this page that I’ve broken it down into main features and sub-features.
This is what the All Posts page looks like:
All Posts Page Main Features
See what I mean? There’s nothing post related that you can’t do from the All Posts page!
Next, we’ll explore the sub-features of the All Posts page.
All Posts Page Sub-Features
I love how many ways there are to view and sort posts!
As you publish more posts, this feature can help keep you organized when you go to update old articles.
An additional feature of the All Posts page is the Quick Edit option. You can reveal Quick Edit by hovering over the title of the post you’d like to edit then click, “Quick Edit”:
This is what Quick Edit looks like:
The Quick Edit option is useful when you want to make small changes to your post without leaving the All Posts page.
Here’s what you can do with Quick Edit:
- Edit the post title
- Edit post URL slug
- Change the date of the post
- Password protect your post
- Add/remove categories from the post
- Add/remove tags from the post
- Change the post template
- Allow/disallow comments
- Allow/disallow pings
- Change the status of the post (published/draft/awaiting review)
- Make the post, “sticky” (pins the post to top of lists)
An example of a time when Quick Edit is needed would be if you have a new tag you want to add to multiple posts.
You could go into each post and add the tag, or you can use Quick Edit to add the tag to multiple posts without ever leaving the All Posts page – much quicker!
Add New
The Add New post page is where you really get your feet wet in blogging. This page is where the actual post creation happens.
The visual appearance of the Add New page can vary based on your settings, theme and which plugins you have installed on your blog, but the basic features we’re going to look at will be available to you regardless.
For example, this is what my Add New posts page looks like on my test site:
And this is what the Add New posts page looks like on Blogfiti:
You can see that I have changed my visual settings on my Blogfiti site from the default ones that came with WordPress and that I have installed plugins that add features while in the Add New posts page.
As I said above, this will change the appearance of the page but not take away the standard options.
Before we dive into the ins and outs of the Add New Post page, you need to familiarize yourself with blocks.
If you have no clue what I mean by that, don’t worry, I didn’t either when I first started blogging!
Blocks are elements that you add into your posts like paragraphs, images, and headlines.
You can expand your list of available blocks by adding plugins, but an ample amount of block options come default with WordPress.
These are the more commonly used default blocks:
Gutenberg Block Editor
In 2018, WordPress released a new way to create posts called the Gutenberg block editor.
Before that time the WordPress editor, referred to now as WordPress classic editor, was more like MS Word.
It’s much easier to understand block editing visually, so I highly recommend taking the time (10 minutes) to watch this Gutenberg blocks overview:
Okay, so we have a vague idea of what blocks are and how to use them. Now, let’s explore the Add New Post page!
There are tons of features on this page too, so again I’ve broken down the visual guide into two parts: main features and sub-features.
Add New Post Page Main Features
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Add New Post Page Sub-Features
While some of the sub-features above are self-explanatory, others require more detail to thoroughly understand what they do.
We’ll go further in-depth with those sub-features now:
Status & Visibility: this allows you to make your post public, private, or password protected. You can also use this area to schedule your post to publish at a later date and time, stick the post to the top of your blog, or mark the post as, “pending review”.
Featured Image: this is the image that will auto-populate when you link to your post on social media. It will also auto-populate to other areas of your website depending on your settings/theme.
Excerpt: here you can specify a short blurb about your post that will show on search results, RSS feeds, etc.
Post Attributes: I’m not sure why this sub-feature is called Post Attributes instead of Templates because the only action you can take here is to change your post’s template.
What is a template? WordPress templates specify the layout of certain pages. It determines how many headers, footers, sidebars, etc are available to place on the page. As a new blogger, you don’t really need to worry about messing with your template, just focus on learning the basic blogging ropes for now.
Reveal Content Structure: this sub-feature will give you word, heading, paragraph and block count as well as a nifty document outline. I love this feature!
This is what the Content Structure looks like:
Why do you need to pay attention to your content structure? Your word count is important for SEO. Data shows that Google favors long-form posts (3000+ words) as opposed to shorter posts.
Additionally, if you’re trying to rank for a keyword, it would behoove you to write a post longer and more thorough than the top Google results.
Let’s say that you want to rank for the keyword, “how to play chess” and through your keyword research, you’ve found that the top resulting posts are all 1,500 – 2,000 words long.
That means you’re going to want to make sure your post is over 2,000 words to have even a chance at ranking among the top results.
The easiest way to keep track of your word count while composing in WordPress is with the Reveal Content Structure button.
I’m not advocating stuffing your posts full of fluff words to increase your word count, please don’t. That will quickly lead you to blogging failure.
I do, however, wholeheartedly endorse well written, thorough, legendary posts that your readership cannot find anywhere else. That, my friends, is a recipe for success!
Of course, the longer your post is, the easier it becomes to turn it into a disorganized mess.
This is where the Document Outline comes in handy. Every once and a while, or at the very least before you hit Publish, examine your Document Outline and rearrange your post if you find that the flow doesn’t make sense.
Reveal Block Navigation: this feature allows you to jump directly to a particular block within your post. This is what the Block Navigation drop-down menu looks like:
Honestly, I do not use the Block Navigation button too often because my posts are simply too long for it to be functional.
Since there’s no identifying feature among the Block Navigation titles (they all just state what the block is, like Paragraph), when you have 80+ paragraphs it’s difficult to discern which you would like to jump to (which is where the Document Outline mentioned above comes in).
Categories
Categories are simply groups of posts.
Think of categories like genres of books or music.
You access the Categories page through the Posts icon and this is what the Categories page looks like:
Category name: keep this simple and to the point. For example, if the category is Laptops, some possible tags could be MacBook, Dell, HP, etc.
Category Slug: Make sure search engines understand your category by adding a slug. Make the slug name the same as the category name except with only hyphens (instead of spaces), numbers, and lower case letters.
Slug Example: if your category is, “Blogging Laptops” your tag’s slug would be, “blogging-laptops”.
Parent Category: Sometimes a category is so vast that it becomes a Parent Category for others.
Parent Category Example: if your category is, “Blogging Laptops” a parent category could be, “Laptops”.
Category Description: you can add a description to your category to help your audience understand what the category is about.
You can create categories and assign them to your posts while you are writing them by clicking on the Document Settings:
Then, scroll down to the Categories section and click on Add New Category:
Tags
Tags can be thought of as specific keywords that apply to a post, as opposed to Categories which are a broader classification.
A tag can describe a portion of a post or the whole shebang.
This is what the Tags page looks like:
These are the features of the Tags page:
Tag name: keep this simple and to the point. For example, if the category is Laptops, some possible tags could be MacBook, Dell, HP, etc.
Tag Slug: this helps search engines understand the tag. Make the slug name the same as the tag name except with only hyphens (instead of spaces), numbers, and lower case letters.
Slug Example: if your tag is, “Starting a Blog” your tag’s slug would be, “starting-a-blog”.
Tag Description: the tag description shows in some themes, but in most, it simply serves as a note to self regarding what the tag is about.
Pro Blogger Tip: avoid adding tags that don’t apply to your post.
You may see a small increase in clicks by adding 30 tags to a post regardless of whether or not they actually relate to the post’s content, but those readers will soon leave after they realize they’ve been duped.
What’s worse is that they won’t come back because of their unpleasant interaction with your site (not finding what they were looking for).
Wah-wah. Not worth it! Make sure your tags are actually applicable to your post.
Then, scroll down to the Tags section and start typing out tags in the Add New Tag area (press enter after each tag to create):
Guided First Blog Post Creation
Now that you know everything there is to know about the WordPress posts page, let’s walk through creating essential elements of a post together!
Conclusion
Well, folks, that’s it for the WordPress posts page!
The sooner you get to know the ins and outs of the WordPress post page, the quicker you will become a badass, profitable blogger.
Now that you have all the technical information you need to construct a bitch’n blog post, be sure to check out Your First Blog Post: 7 Tips You Must Know.