Learn WordPress

Ready to be a blogger? Welcome to WordPress.com — we’ve been expecting you. (Ready to set up a website? We’ve been waiting for you, too.)

Okay, not really; that would be pretty creepy. But we are glad you’re here; we think WordPress.com is the best place to build your online home, and we’re excited to have you join our community. In this section, we’ll get the basics out of the way and help set you up with a WordPress.com account and site so you can get on with the bigger and better work of publishing.

Create your WordPress.com account

Whether you’re creating a website for your new business or a blog to share your ideas with the world, first things first — you need to create a WordPress.com account. Here’s how:

(Already have your account? We thought your might be an overachiever. Skip ahead to picking your web address.)

1. Visit WordPress.comand click on the orange Get Startedbutton:
2. Enter your email address. We’ll send you an email to to confirm your account, so be sure to triple-check that you’ve typed it correctly:
3. Choose a username. You can use anything you like, provided it isn’t already in use by someone else. Create a username that’s at least four characters long composed of numbers and letters. We recommend choosing something fun that you’ll remember:

If you’re worried that “JaneSmith47627″ is a terrible name for a blog (which it is) don’t be — your username is just how you log in. Your blog’s title can be anything you want; you can set that up once you’ve finished registering.

4. Next up, you’ll need to choose a password. Be sure to choose a unique password, one that you don’t use anywhere else.

(Note: this is something you should be doing for all your online accounts — here’s a bit more on strong passwords and why they’re so important. A bunch of strong passwords can be difficult to manage and impossible to remember, so we recommend applications 1Password and KeePass to help you create, store, and manage your passwords. Okay, end of password lecture.)

Great passwords use a combination of upper and lower case characters, numbers, and symbols such as !”£$%^&(. Not-great passwords are things like your phone number, the word “password,” or “12345.” Here’s a great one:

You can click Show to see the characters you type as you enter them. Clicking Hide makes the characters appear as a series of dots:

If your password is something that may be easier for the bad guys to guess, we’ll let you know; we’re looking out for you:

If you like, we can create a strong password for you — simply click on Generate strong password and we’ll create a super-strong, super-random password.

For those of you who want to add another layer of security, you can consider enabling Two Step Authentication: a second step to your log-in process that no one but you can access. (You may be familiar with the Two Step Authentication process if you’ve got a Google account!) Two Step Authentication uses your mobile device to add a second, impossible-to-guess login requirement to your account. The process is optional, but recommended to help keep your account super-secure. Check out the Two Step Authentication setupon our Support site to enable it, or just bookmark this section if you’d like to add it later.

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Picking a web address

There are two types of web addresses to choose from on WordPress.com: a free wordpress.com web address, yours just for registering, or a custom address, which you can purchase.

Everyone who registers for a site with WordPress.com gets a free address that looks like this:http://ourfabulousbusiness.wordpress.com:

Some people like to nix the “wordpress.com” part. (It’s fine, our feelings aren’t hurt.) If you’d like to do that, you can buy a custom domain name like http://ourfabulousbusiness.com:

A custom domain costs $18 to register for one year. You can register a domain with the extensions .co, .me, .com, .net, or .org. (Note: .me and .co registrations cost $25 per year.) You can upgrade to a custom domain any time, so if you’re not sure during registration, no pressure.

(If you already have a domain that you bought somewhere else, like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, you can also connect it to your WordPress.com site with the domain mapping upgrade— no need to buy another domain.)

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Choosing the WordPress plan that’s right for your site

At WordPress.com, we offer three different plans to choose from, Basic (free!), Premium ($99/year), and Business ($299). The plan you go with depends on what you’d like to be able to do with your site.

That being said, all the plans share the features that make WordPress.com so awesome, like beautiful themes, unlimited bandwith and the friendliest support staff around, and you can create a great looking, customized site with the Basic plan. You’re not any less of a blogger if you stick with the Basic plan, and you don’t have to move to a paid plan just because your site gets a lot of traffic. We’re pros with traffic; just ask CNN.

We know you might not be quite sure what you’d like to be able to do with your site at this point, so you can always bump up to a paid plan later on. If you’re considering it now, here’s a list of the different options included in each plan:

Basic — Free

• A free WordPress.com address (e.g., http://ourfabulousbusiness.wordpress.com).
• Choose from over 120 free themes, with more options added every week. (No premium themes are included, but you can buy one at any time.)
• Basic customization — add widgets, pages, and custom content; upload a custom header image or background; and more.
• 3 GB of space for uploading photos.
• No video storage.
• Community support in the WordPress.com forums.

Premium — $99

• A custom .co, .me, .com, .net, or .org web address, such as http://ourfabulousbusiness.com.
• Advanced customization — choose custom fonts and colors, and modify your CSS.
• Choose from over 120 free themes, with more options added every week. (No premium themes are included, but you can buy one at any time.)
• 13 GB of storage space for dozens of videos and thousands of photos.
• Direct email support from our Happiness Engineers.

Business — $299

• A custom .co, .me, .com, .net, or .org website address such as http://ourfabulousbusiness.com.
• Advanced customization — choose custom fonts and colors, and modify your CSS.
• Choose from over 120 free themes or 50+ premium themes, and switch premium themes at any time.
• Unlimited storage space for anything you want to upload.
• Direct email and live chat support from our Happiness Engineers.

(Note that none of the plans allow you to upload your own themes or plugins; all this goodness is built right in to WordPress.com. If you need a site that requires a custom theme or plugins — e.g., if you want to be able to sell things directly from your site, or you want to install discussion forums — a self-hosted WordPress site might be right for you. Learn about the difference here.)

When you’ve chosen your plan and you’re ready to move on, hit the big blue button:

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Set up your public profile and upload a Gravatar

When you create your WordPress.com account you’re not just creating a blog or a website, you’re joining a community. No one wants to interact with a generic, nameless icon, so you’ll want to set up a public profile — this is where you’ll enter your name, choose how your name displays when you comment on a site or author a post, and upload a Gravatar. A Gravatar (which stands for “Globally Recognized Avatar”) is an image you choose that will appear next to your name when you comment on or post to a blog; other people can click on it to learn a little more about you.

To fill out your public profile, log in to your WordPress.com dashboard and click on Users >> My Profile. All this information is totally optional, so only fill in what you’d like.

(Not sure what your dashboard is, or how to get to it? The dashboard is your blog’s control panel, the place where you get to be the Wizard of Oz orchestrating everything behind the curtain. It’s just a click away from the Reader, or you can go straight there, bypassing the Reader entirely, by entering http://yourblognamehere.wordpress.com/wp-admin in your browser’s address bar. You’ll learn about the secret powers of the dashboard here in Get Comfy.)

Now where were we? Right, profiles. Log in to your WordPress.com dashboard and click on Users >> My Profile to pull up this screen:

Uploading your Gravatar

To create your Gravatar, go to Users >> My Profile and click on Change your Gravatar:

Your WordPress.com account is also your Gravatar account — just enter your WordPress.com username and password to log in:

You can choose to upload a photo from your computer, take a picture of yourself using the camera on your computer, link to a photo of yourself online, or use a Gravatar from a previous account:

Your Gravatar can be anything you’d like — a photo of yourself, your website’s logo, a picture you love, whatever. Bear in mind that it’s not a very big image, so something that has a lot of detail is going to be really hard to see.

Once you’ve uploaded your Gravatar, you’ll be able to see it by going to Users >> My Profile. You can always change your Gravatar from there if you get a new haircut, dump the boyfriend in the photo, or finally find The Perfect Picture to represent you.

To learn more, check out Gravatar hovercards.

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Configure basic site settings

Okay, you’ve got a site and a profile. One of the two most important settings you’ll probably want to customize right away is your site title and tagline. To get you started, we’ve given your blog the same title as your username, but that might not be what you want. And right now, you’ve got a generic tagline like “This WordPress.com Site is the Bee’s Knees” — time to change them.

In your dashboard, go to Settings >> General, and enter your site’s title and your new tagline. If you don’t want to have a site tagline or can’t think of anything to enter right now, just delete the text that’s there:

Here’s how the site title and tagline look on the site:

It might look a little different on yours, because every theme displays the title and tagline a little differently.

In this section, you can also set your site’s timezone, and choose a date format and a time format; if you’re not in the US, you can have the date display in whatever format you normally use. You can also select the day the week starts on and the language for your blog.

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Congrats — you’re officially a blogger! Or a business, or photographer, or whatever else you joined WordPress.com for. Either way, you’ve got the basics of a site. Now it’s time to learn your way around WordPress.com — head to Get Comfy, where tours leave every 15 minutes.

Header image based on View From Kancamagus Highwayby Ian Murphy, CC-BY-2.0

Get Published
By the end of this section, you’ll know how to:

• Figure out whether you should create a post or a page.
• Publish a post with text and images.
• Use different post formats depending on what you want to publish.
• Publish a page with text and images.
• Create a menu to help visitors navigate your pages and posts.

So, you’ve picked a theme to make your site beautiful, enabled widgets, and added personal touches to your blog to make it look just the way you want. It’s time to publish something!

Posts vs. pages — what’s the difference?

You can create and publish both posts and pages on your blog. Postsare the meat of your site — the content you write and share with your visitors, and the awesome stuff that people come to your blog to read. Some people prefer to publish quick posts, like an update about their day or a single photo posted on the go from their mobile phone; others craft longer essays or publish photo collections with galleries and slideshows. It all depends on how you want to use your blog — you can create all kinds of content.

Your posts make up what you think of when you think of a blog. They’re dated, and they appear in reverse chronological order; as you publish new posts, older posts get pushed down the page. Posts can also be tagged— you assign the tags based on subject matter. Readers can then use the tags to sort through your blog and find the stuff they’re most interested in, and to find your posts in the Reader.

Pagesare a little different — they’re kind of like the salt and pepper shakers of your site. (If you’re wondering about other food analogies, your header is like the amuse-boucheof your site, and your widgets are like a side of mashed potatoes.) Once you publish them, they stay put. They’re handy for timeless content, like an About or Contact Me section. This stuff probably isn’t going to change very often, and you want your visitors to be able to access it easily no matter where they are on your site. Your pages are displayed in a menu somewhere on your blog that’s always visible (usually up near your headeror in a sidebar), so people can explore your site with ease.

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Publish a post

Ready to create a post? On WordPress.com you can publish a post in a few different ways. The speediest way is in your Reader, which we’ll talk about first.

Publish a new post in the Reader

When you’re logged in to your account, click on the New Post button on the top right of the toolbar. On the next screen, you’re asked: “What would you like to post?”

It’s not that we’re just nosy (although that’s also true) — we ask because you can choose the post format you want to publish: Text, Photo, Video, Quote, or Link. In the Text format, you can create text, but also add multiple images. If you want to share a single photo instantly, use the Photo format. The other formats are also great for quick posts — you can publish quotes that inspire you, or paste the URLs of videos and links you want to share.

(Note: as we discussed, not all themes support all post formats, so this screen might look a little different depending on your theme.)

Let’s publish a post with a basic image — go ahead and click on the Text option to pull up the box where you’ll write your masterpiece:

In the top field, insert a title. It’s optional, but we recommend it. Think of your post title like a news headline: succinct and focused on what your post is about, and intriguing enough to make people want to read it. If your title doesn’t make someone want to click on it, your post isn’t going to get read.

Action Time! In the bigger box underneath your title, write the text for your post. For your inaugural post, try a welcome message for your readers. You can browse the daily prompts and writing challenges in the Daily Post, or get started with one of these:

• What inspired you to start your blog?
• Describe the intended focus of your site and what your readers can expect.
• Introduce yourself: What do you do? What are your interests?
• Tell readers what your blog’s title means and why you chose it.

This is your first chance to pitch your baby blog to a great big blogosphere, so don’t hold back!

Feel free to play around with the various formatting buttons, which you may recognize from using a word processor: highlight some of your text and select the bold or italicized tools to change the look, create bullet points, add quoted material, and more. Click the kitchen sink button — the icon on the far right — to see more text formatting options.

Now, let’s throw in a picture. To add an image, place your cursor in the text where you’d like it to show up and click Insert Phototo upload a picture from your computer. After the image appears, you can edit it further: just click on it and select the picture icon on the top left to access more options:

You can align the image, add a title or caption, and access advanced settings. Not happy with the image at all? Delete it by clicking on the red crossed-out circle icon. (Don’t worry, we won’t leave you hanging — Get Flashywill help take your photojournalism skills to the next level.)

You’re almost at the finish line: in the bottom field, add words to “tag” your post. While tagsare optional, they group related posts together on your blog and in the WordPress.com Reader, which makes it easier for people to find them and tells your readers what they’re about. If your post is about a book you’ve read, add general tags like “books,” “literature,” and “fiction,” as well as more specific tags like the author’s name  (“George Orwell”) and the book title (“1984″). (We’ll talk more about tags later, in Get Connected.)

When you’re ready to flip the switch, click Publish Post. You’ll see a confirmation screen — hooray! — and can view this new post on your blog. You’re officially a blogger. How does it feel?

Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, experiment with the other post formats to publish instantly to your site.

Publish a new post in your dashboard

Another way to publish posts is in your dashboardby going to Posts >> Add New. This will pull up the Post Screen, which is where the magic will happen! This is the place to go when you want to publish something longer or more complex. This dashboard editor is similar to the editor in your Reader — it works a lot like your favorite word processing software, and you can insert a title and tags — but it allows you to do much more.

It looks a little something like this (don’t worry, we’ll walk you through each piece — baby steps!):

You’ll notice two tabs at the top of the Post Screen: Visual and Text.
You can toggle between these two modes as you create and edit your posts. In the visual editor, you’ll see your content as it’ll appear when published, and in the handy and powerful text editor, you can write and edit your post in HTML. When you need to add a shortcode, add some font styles, or paste in code from an outside source, you’ll use the text editor. (We’ll talk about shortcodes and other nifty things in the next section, Get Flashy.)

If “HTML” and “shortcodes” make you lightheaded, don’t worry — you can do most things without ever leaving the visual editor, and have a perfectly wonderful blog without knowing any HTML. (We bet you’ll eventually start exploring it, though, because it’s easy, fun, and opens new possibilities for your blog.)

There are two rows of icons in the visual editor. You can find out what any one of them does by hovering over it with your mouse; a pop-up will appear telling you what it is. Many of them will look familiar; you’ve probably seen them before in your word processing program of choice — bold and italic text, justification options, bullets, and more. If there’s anything you’re not sure about, you cantake a comprehensive tour of all the options here.

Again, if you’re looking for inspiration for your first post, browse the daily prompts and writing challenges at the Daily Post, answer one of the prompts above, or whip something else up from your imagination. Whatever you feel like writing, plop it into the visual editor.

Got your text in place? Sweet. Let’s dive into the Media Manager to upload a few images (bonus internet points if they’re pictures of a cat).

Upload and insert images in your dashboard

As we reviewed, you can publish images instantly from your Reader. Here in the dashboard, you’ve got a powerful Media Manager to upload, edit, and manage your images. You can also upload audio and video files and create image galleries and slideshows, which we’ll discuss in Get Flashy.

Let’s make that cat famous. In the Post Screen, click on the Add Media button just above the box where you wrote your post:

Once you’ve opened your Media Manager, you can select the files you want to upload from your computer (hint: click Select Files) or drag and drop the files right from your computer’s desktop to the Insert Media screen. You can also add an image from the web using the Insert from URL option on the left, which is handy if you already have photo living online, say at Flickr. (If you use this option, remember that if an image file is hosted elsewhere and it’s removed from that location, the image will no longer appear on your blog — if you delete a photo from Flickr, you also delete it from your site. If you don’t want to worry about that happening, upload the file rather than using the URL.)

At the top of the Media Manager, you’ll see two options: Upload Files, which is where your new images will appear as they upload, and Media Library, which is where you can access your entire library of images. (Since this is your first time uploading images it’ll be empty, but that won’t last long.)

Once the upload process is complete, you can click on an individual photo to edit its settings on the right, under Attachment Details, before inserting it into your post. (We can’t turn this dog into a cat, but at least we’re still in the realm of adorable animals.) We can add an image title, caption, and description; and set the alignment, size, and image link options:

These are all optional settings, but they can be really useful: Caption will insert the caption under the image in your post, and Alt Textis the text that appears when you hover your cursor over an image (it’s also what screen reader users will hear if they’re using a screen reader to browse the web). Alignment controls whether the image is positioned left, right, or center on the page and whether you text wraps around it, and Link To lets you make the image clickable. Play around with these options to get the image formatting just the way you like.

Once you’ve edited these options, click the blue Insert into post button on the bottom right to plunk the image into your post. If you’re not happy with it, you can still make changes — just like the edit image tool in the Reader, you can click on an image in the visual editor to edit it. Look for the picture and red crossed-out circle icons to edit further, or to get rid of it and start from scratch.

One thing to remember is that you don’t have to re-upload an image you’ve deleted from a post — it’s still there, in your Media Library. You haven’t removed it from your library, just from that particular post. If you want to use it somewhere else (or re-insert it), you can access your already uploaded files by clicking the Media Library tab. You can also access your library from your dashboard by going to Media >> Library. Scroll through your library to find the image, and click it to edit and insert.

Action Time! You’ve probably got a whole bunch of photos stored on your computer — you may as well put them to work. Sift through your images and drag some of your favorites into your Media Library for possible future posts, like an “All About Me” or “Welcome” post, or a “Where I’m From” post with shots of your city. Once you upload them, give them a little more love in the Media Manager:

• Input a title, caption, and alt text for each image.
• Get a feel for the drag-and-drop tool and move thumbnails around.
• Test out the “Search” feature and insert titles in the box to pull up the images you’ve just uploaded.

More cool publishing tools

Other key tasks you can do in the dashboard editor are located on the right, in the Publish module:

Here, you can preview a post before publishing it by clicking Preview at the top right of the box (not to be confused with the bluePublish button below!), schedule a post to publish at a later time, or make a post private or password-protected. Think of this Publish module as your mini command center, where you control who sees a post and when it goes live. If you’re using Publicizeto share your posts with social networks — which you’re probably not, because we haven’t gotten to that yet — you’ll see those settings here, too.

Below the Publish module, you can add tags, as well as categories. Categories are similar to, but broader than, tags. You can create categories based on your interests and the focus of your blog. For example, if you have a site about food, you could create categories for “recipes, “dessert,” or types of cuisine, or if you write about travel, you could have categories for particular countries or cities. Depending on your theme and widgets you’ve enabled, categories can be displayed in different places, like at the top or bottom of a post, or in your sidebar.

Once you’ve got your text, images, and settings just so, it’s time to hit the big blue button: Publish. Good job! Time to start planning the next one now.

Two general afterthoughts on composing and editing posts: we know how important your content is, and how hard you work on crafting your posts! First, keep in mind there’s a handy Autosave feature that takes advantage of your web browser’s storage to ensure you won’t lose your work, despite a wonky internet connection.

Second, you can keep track of your drafts and changes in the Revisionsmodule, which you’ll find near the bottom of your Post Screen.

This module shows links to backup copies of each post — up to 25 revisions. Each time you click Save Draft or Update, a revision is stored. Revisions allow you to look back at the recent changes you’ve made and revert to an earlier version, if you so choose. It’s a great tool to keep you focused on your content — no need to worry about losing it!

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An introduction to post formats

As you poke around in the dashboard editor, you’ll also notice the Format module on the right, which lists the post formats your current theme supports. The types of post formats from which you can choose depends on your theme, and some have more options than others.

If you’re curious, check this list of themes and the post formats they support. You’ll see similar options here to the ones in the quick post editor in the Reader, as well as formats for Audio (to highlight audio attachments), Asides (or snippets of text for quick thoughts), Chats (bits of memorable conversations with others), and more. Many themes that support post format also have nifty little icons that go with each format, like quotation marks or a director’s clipboard, just to make you look extra-cool.

See some post formats in action to get an idea of what different formats look like.

Action Time! The look-and-feel of post formats depends on your theme — let’s experiment with these different formats and see what they look like, shall we? (Yes, let’s!)

• In your dashboard, create a new post (or, if you don’t have content for a new post, just create a test post and paste any text or images you want).
• In the Format module, confirm “Standard” is selected. Then, click Previewto preview the post.
• Now, go back into your dashboard and test out some of the other formats — Aside, Quote, and Link. After you switch to each format, click Previewto see how the format has changed the design of the post.

Tip: Check this list of themes and the post formats they support, then browse the Theme Showcase for the ones you’re interested in. Each theme in our showcase has a demo blog on which you can view it in action, including its different post formats.

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Publish a page

Now that you’re a whiz at posts, let’s create pages for your timeless content. Think about what kinds of information you want your readers to know and access easily:

• Your biography or life story?
• Your contact information?
• Your résumé or CV?
• Links to resources or favorite sites?

Once you’ve got more content on your blog, you might also add a page highlighting your favorite or most popular posts, to further woo new readers. If you’re an artist, you can create a page for your exhibitions. If you’re a writer, you can compile your publications in one place. If you can think it, you can get it on a page.

As mentioned earlier, pages are distinct from posts — they’re not associated with a date or time like posts, and you can’t tag or categorize them. You want to make sure your pages are accessible no matter where your visitor is on your blog; for many themes, pages will appear as tabs or links in a menu at the top. You can also activate a Pages widget  for your sidebar by going to Appearance >> Widgets in your dashboard.

Let’s create a page or two — we’ll go with perennial favorites About and Contact Me. Head into your dashboard and make your way to Pages >>Add New. (As you can see, reaching the admin center for pages in your dashboard is similar to accessing the control panel for your posts — there are lots of similarities and consistency throughout the dashboard, so you’ll become familiar with the options in no time.)

See the Page Screen that opens?

It looks similar to the Post Screen, with the visual/text editor, the Publish module, and other tools. Publishing a page is very much like publishing a post, so go ahead and insert your text into the main module for your About page. At the Daily Post, we’ve talked about how to draft a fantastic About page — feel free to open up our About Page 101 and About Page 201 tutorials in another window for a little guidance.

After inserting your text, upload an image of yourself with the Add Media button, using the process we talked about above; your readers want to see the wizard behind the curtain! If you’re not comfortable displaying a photo of yourself, try an illustration, a logo for your site or brand, an image you think represents you, or even a favorite photo — images help humanize your blog.

Another great feature in the Page Screen is the Page Attributes module: here, you can nest sub-pages under a “parent” page:

In other words, you can create a hierarchy that makes sense for your blog: if you’re an entertainment reviewer, you can create a parent page for “reviews,” and sub-pages for “film,” “music,” and “television.” In this module, you can also change the order of your pages by numbering the pages. This may seem mysterious now, but it comes in handy when you create a custom navigation menu for your blog, which we’ll talk about next.

Action Time! Brainstorm your own page hierarchy. (Doesn’t saying that make you feel like a web wizard? “Sorry, I can’t talk now — I’m brainstorming my page hierarchy.”)

• Jot down the main pages you want to display in a menu, like “About” or “Contact Me.”
• Now, think of common themes within the things you post about — if you’re a photographer, what do you like to shoot? Write that down. If you’re a journalist, which beats do you cover? Write them down.
• Brainstorm further: If you photograph people, do you photograph different kinds of people in various settings, like portraits or weddings? If you’re a chef and one of your focuses is Southeast Asian cuisine, what are your specialties? Maybe you’ll want sub-pages for your Vietnamese, Thai, and Malaysian recipes (and maybe you should send us some pho).

As you add content to your blog, use these themes to organize your tags and categories. When you’ve built up some posts and pages, use them to create custom menus, which we helpfully cover in the very next section.

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Create a custom menu

When you create pages on your blog, they’ll appear as tabs or links in a menu somewhere on your blog, depending on your theme. If you have a theme that supports the custom menu feature, you can customize a navigation menu on your blog, which lets you do cool stuff, including:

• Change the order of (or delete) your pages.
• Nest pages under “parent” pages to create sub-menus.
• Create custom links to your menu.

(The ability to create custom menus is especially useful if you’re creating a website rather than a blog.)
To create a custom menu, head on over to Appearance >> Menus in your dashboard. If this is the first time you’re diving into the world of menus, you’ll want to click on “create a new menu” at the top. Type in a name for your custom menu next to Menu Name— only you will see this — and click Create Menu.

Add pages and links to your menu

On the left, in the Pages module, pick which pages you want to include in your menu by adding a checkmark next to the boxes for these pages, then click Add to Menu.

The pages you choose will appear on the right, in the custom menu you’re building. See? Nifty, right? Yeah, we think so, too.

After you create your first menu, you will notice two options at the bottom to control the following:

• Auto add pages– If selected, new pages will be added automatically when you create them.
• Theme locations– This option allows you to decide where you would like your  menu to appear in your theme. By default, the main navigation area of your theme should be selected for you, but you can select a different location if your theme is capable of multiple menus.

Some people use tabs in their menus to link directly to exterior websites — maybe another WordPress.com blog, or another website elsewhere. To add a custom link, go to the Links module, type in the URL and the label for this tab, and then click Add to Menu. It will appear on the right, along with your other items; we’re equal-opportunity menu-creators.

Reorder your menu items

Whenever you feel like it, you can change the placement of the items in your custom menu. Just drag and drop the items up and down to change the order. You can create sub-menus by dragging the items left and right.

Be sure to click the blue Save Changes button to save your settings.

Activate your menu

This menu and future menus you create are listed under the Manage Locations tab on the top left of the Menus screen.

Here, you can manage the locations of your menus by using the drop-downs to select which menu will appear where on your site. (Remember, the number of menus available depends on your current theme, so your options may look slightly different from the ones above.)

Once you feel comfy with custom menus, experiment with other ways to organize your content. Depending on your activated theme, you can do other things with custom menus, including adding category pages.

By now, you’re a master of posts, pages, and menus, and we’ll understand if you want to strike out on your own. But if you want to take it a step further and explore ways to enhance your site with multimedia, then stick around — it’s time to Get Flashy!

Get Flashy

By the end of this section, you’ll know how to:

• Add image galleries and slideshows.
• Embed audio and video in your posts.
• Use shortcodes to put all kinds of content in your posts.

It’s time to get flashy — time to learn how to make your site pop with multimedia: gorgeous galleries and slideshows for your images and video, and audio embeds to breath new life into your posts. Once you’ve got the hang of it, we’ll introduce you to the magical world of shortcodes — tiny snippets of code with big media payoff.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Spice up your site with galleries

Now that you’re a whiz at uploading images from the editors in your Reader and dashboard, let’s experiment with placing multiple images into galleries. Sure, you can just plunk your images down on a page . . . or, you can use elegant galleries, and fool your friends into thinking you’re a graphic design pro. (We’re just joshin’ — we know there are times when you want to use single images, displayed simply. No judgments here!)

You can display collections of photos in a gallery grid of thumbnails, or a swanky mosaic-style tiled gallery of rectangular tiles, square tiles, or circles. Here’s a sample rectangular gallery. (Photos below courtesy of Michelle Weber.)

 

Here’s a sample circular gallery:

 

Create a gallery

To create a galleryto insert into a post, click on Add Media to access your Media Manager. Like we showed you in Get Published, just drag and drop the images you want to include to the middle area, or click Upload Files near the top to select files from your computer. You can also make a gallery of things you’ve already uploaded — if the images are already in your Media Library, just click Create Gallery on the left, and then click on the images you want to use. A checkmark will appear at the top right corner of the image when you choose it. Pick as many as you want — don’t be shy.

When you’re finished selecting photos, click the Create a new gallery button on the bottom:

Voilà! You’ve made a gallery, and you didn’t even have to break a sweat opening Photoshop.

Edit your gallery

Now that you’ve assembled the contents of your gallery, you have options — reorder the images by dragging and dropping them, reverse the order of images, or have your blog display them randomly (check the box next to — wait for it – Random Order underGallery Settings). You can also edit the description of each image under Attachment Details, including its title, caption, alternate text, and description. (Only the caption will be displayed for the slideshow gallery type, except for round galleries, which don’t display captions at all. Sometimes you have to suffer for art.)

Almost there!

Under Gallery Settings, pick the style of gallery you want to use:

Here are your options (you can always edit this later to try a new layout):

• Default: a thumbnail grid layout.
• Tiles: a mosaic-like layout of different-sized rectangular tiles.
• Square tiles: an elegant, clean layout of square tiles.
• Circles: a unique layout of circular thumbnails.
• Slideshow: a moving slider of images (which we’ll cover below!).

We’re partial to the circles, but your mileage may vary. (Although come on, how great are those circles?) You can see these bad boys in action in this collection of blogs that have enhanced their posts with tiled galleries, and check out even more examples in this post.

Next, in the Link to option, specify where you’d like to direct your viewer when they click on an image:

• Media file: a direct link to the full-size uploaded image.
• Attachment page: a page on your blog showing the image in your current theme.

When you’re happy with all your settings, click Insert gallery. You’ll be taken back to your visual editor, where your elegant new gallery will look like . . . a big, empty white box with a camera icon in the middle. You can check out your gallery by clickingPreview to see how it will look when published. If you want to keep editing, click on the empty box and then on the picture icon on the top left — just like you would to edit a regular photo.

If you’ve already made a few galleries on your blog with the thumbnail grid layout but want to update them all to display in a cool mosaic, go to Settings >> Media in your dashboard, scroll down to “Image Gallery Carousel,” and select the box next to Display all your gallery pictures in a cool mosaic. Handy!

Enable the photo carousel

Unless your post calls for something different, there’s really no reason not to display your images in a gallery — it showcases your images professionally, and still allows readers to access individual photos: when you click on an image in a gallery, you can view its larger size in a full-size carousel. In the carousel, your readers can comment on individual photos, and you can opt to display the metadata for your images (like the shutter speed or f-stop you used when taking the photo), which is valuable info for photographers, camera hobbyists, and anyone interested in learning more about your images.

To activate the carouselon your blog, head over toSettings >> Media and check the box next to Display images in full-size carousel slideshow. Underneath, you can choose whether the carousel background will be black or white (free advice: images often look really sharp and pop a bit more on black). The option to display your photo metadata is here, too.

Action Time! You guessed it: time to create a gallery.

If you already have an idea for a gallery, go for it. If you don’t, pick one of these concepts:

• My life in photographs.
• Highlights from my last vacation.
• The past, present, and future in images.
• Focus on a single color (or two contrasting colors).
• Focus on a theme: change, happiness, dreams.

When you’ve uploaded all your images, re-order them so they tell a story. Try at least two different gallery styles to see which you prefer. Then write a short introduction to the post, but let the photos do most of the speaking for themselves.

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Display images in slideshows

Sometimes you’ll want to display your photographs in a slideshowinstead of a gallery. A slideshow offers a different visual effect: a moving slider of images that readers can click through. You create a slideshow the same way you create a gallery.

Let’s practice, shall we? Go ahead and create a new post in the Post Screen and click Add Media to access your Media Manager. We probably didn’t even have to tell you that part — it’s old hat by now. We knew you looked like a quick study.

As you did above, upload images from your computer or go to Create Gallery to select images from your library. Use the steps you’ve learned to create a gallery, and order the images by dragging and dropping.

To enable the slideshow, click on the dropdown menu next to “Type” and select the slideshow option:

Yep, just like that.  You can also edit the image descriptions under Attachment Details, but in slideshows, only captions will be displayed. When you’re finished, don’t forget to click Insert gallery at the bottom: you’ve got a slideshow! It’s like 1979, but better.

You can also create galleries with shortcodes. A shortcode is an, um, short piece of code — a helpful shortcut you can insert to quickly tell your blog to do something, like embed a video or PDF. You drop them into your post in the text editor, and when you return to the visual editor or preview your post, boom: something cool has happened, like the creation of a tiled gallery. If you want to set tiled gallery styles for individual posts, add the following shortcodes when in text editor mode:

To insert a slideshow, use this one:

You can also adjust other settings using shortcodes — once you’ve gotten the hang of the ones above, take a look at this chart of gallery shortcodes.

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Turn up the volume with audio and video

Embed audio in different ways

Want all your new readers to be able to hear the latest tracks from your new R&B/Smooth Jazz Opera? You can share audio on your blog in a few different ways, including:

• Embedding an audio player from SoundCloudor Spotify.
• Uploading an audio file on the web and linking to it using a simple audio shortcode.
• Uploading files directly to your site (which requires a space upgradeso you can store ‘em all).

Let’s walk through these options, and your blog will be in tune in no time! (Rim shot.)

Embed a popular audio player

You can embed an audio player into a post or page to easily share music from other websites like SoundCloudand Spotify. Embed a single track, your favorite playlist, or the mix you made for the cute girl at the coffee shop.

To embed tracks from SoundCloud, click the Share button underneath the track when you’re in SoundCloud. (If a track doesn’t have this button, you’re not able to play it outside of SoundCloud.) A box with sharing options will pop up — copy the “WordPress Code” and paste this code into your post where you want to display the player. You can also manually customizethe player.

It’s easy to embed a player from Spotify, just copy an embed link from Spotify by right-clicking on any song, album, or artist and selecting ”Copy HTTP Link” or “Copy Spotify URL.” Once you have the link, paste it on a line by itself in your post (right into the visual editor, not the text editor):

We’ll turn it into an audio player that looks like this:

If you’re interested in other music services or ideas for audio, read up on 8tracks,Bandcamp, podcasting, andRdio.

Upload an audio file on the web

Your opera might not be up on Spotify yet, so you can also upload an .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, or .wav file somewhere else on the internet and link to it using our audio shortcode. In other words, if you’ve found an audio file elsewhere or have your own music somewhere else, you can grab its URL and use that with a shortcode to embed the track. What’s the shortcode? It’s the word “audio” in brackets which is as short as we could make it.

In your visual editor, just insert the shortcode — audio in brackets — followed by the URL of the audio file. Make sure the whole URL is inside the brackets as well.

For example:

[audio http://wpcom.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/mattmullenweg-interview.mp3]

and

[audio http://en.support.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/mattmullenweg-interview.m4a]

will display this:

 

For more details on embedding audio files from the web, head over to this page.

Purchase the Space Upgrade

Another great option is buying the Space Upgrade, which lets you upload .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, or .wav files directly to your blog using the Add Media button, just like uploading a photo. When you insert the file into your post, be sure to click the None button for the link URL, and then click the Insert into Post button. If your file is an .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, or .wav file, this will automatically insert the audio player shortcode into your post or page.

Action Time! Embed an audio player and create a post listing your five favorite tracks of the moment. Here’s how you’ll do it:

• Pick a site to surf: Soundcloud or Spotify.
• Search for your songs on the site.
• Grab the embed links we learned in this section.
• Paste these links as you find them into your visual editor —  put them in a list from #1 to #5, #1 being your favorite.
• Write a description explaining why you’ve chosen each track.
• Preview the post to ensure that you’re happy with how the audio players and your text display.
• Publish!

Looks like there’s a new DJ in town.

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Embed video to your site

Are moving pictures more your thing? You can also share video on your blog — embed the hilarious clip you found on YouTube, or the equally hilarious clip of your Uncle Carl falling off the picnic table that you shot with your camera phone.

Embed a URL from YouTube or Vimeo

To quickly embed a YouTube video, copy the video’s URL from your web browser’s address bar while viewing the video:

Then, paste the video’s URL on its own line in the visual editor, and make sure it’s not hyperlinked:

Done and done. If you’d like to control the width and height of your video to make it fit into your post better, read about video customization options.

You can embed a Vimeo video the same way: just copy the video’s URL from your browser’s address bar and paste it on a line by itself in the visual editor. Browse the “Related” links on the video support page for steps to embed videos from other sites, like Hulu, Daily Motion, and more.

Upload and display your own videos

If you’re really into video, you can consider the VideoPress upgrade so you can upload videos from your computer for hosting and playback directly on your blog. The upgrade costs $60 per year, per blog — if you’re interested, read more about VideoPressin the Store.

Once you’ve supercharged your site with VideoPress, you can upload a video by going to  Media >> Add New from your dashboard. Just drag and drop your files into the box that appears, or click Select Files to choose a video from your computer to upload.

After dragging and dropping the file, your upload will begin. A progress bar shows the status of your upload — depending on your network, it may take time to upload a large file; this might be a good time to get that second cup of coffee and take a bathroom break. Avoid closing your screen while your file is uploading! When the video has been successfully transferred, you’ll see an Editlink:

Go ahead and click on the Edit link, which will take you to the Edit Media page. You’ll see details of your video, including a preview area and the video’s shortcode for embedding:

Copy this shortcode and paste it into your post. Hooray! The video should be live on your blog when you publish your post.

(Alternatively, you can add a video to your post or page by clicking the Add Media button in the same way you add images. Just drag and drop the file into the uploader and insert it by clicking the Insert into post button. Oh, Add Media button, is there nothing you can’t do?)

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Insert shortcodes to easily enhance content

You’ve probably figured out by now that you can use shortcodes on WordPress.com to do all kinds of cool things like embed files or create objects that would normally require knowing how to code. You can dive into this list of shortcodes to play around with multimedia on your site. Here’s a sampling of some handy shortcodes you may want to try out:

Upcoming events

Flickr video

Google docs

Instagram image

Check the list of current shortcodesfor embedding video, audio, images, documents, and other items.

Okay, let’s get our bearings: you’ve customized your site, filled it with killer content, and tricked it out with multimedia. Next step: viral internet fame. Let’s head to Get Connected to learn how to get eyeballs on your site.

Header image based on “Film Chamber” by _sarchi, CC-BY-2.0

Get Connected

By the end of this section, you’ll know how to:

• Use tags to help your new readers find you.
• Use likes, reblogs, and comments to give and get feedback.
• Connect your blog to your other online accounts, like Facebook and Twitter.
• Understand and use your statistics to grow your readership.

Whew! Signup, configuration, customization, publishing, photos, and video, oh my! By now, you have a great looking site chock full of compelling content, so we’re done, right? Nope: having this site is about more than just publishing. On WordPress.com, we want you to share your content with the world, discover others in the community with similar interests, and use the tools available to you to create more and better. If a blog is written on the internet and no one reads it, does it really exist? Okay, yes, it probably does, but wouldn’t it be preferable if someone did read it? That’s what Get Connected is all about.

How do we make that happen? Let’s find out.

Take advantage of tags

If you’re like the many others who signed up for a WordPress.com account, you want to blog — to write, create, and share your thoughts and ideas — because you want to be part of a bigger community. You want to connect with people who care about the same things you do, and you want them to find you — otherwise, you’d just keep a private diary.

Once you get up the nerve to hit Publish for the first time, you might find that publishing a post may be the easy part, while getting others — often strangers — to engage with you is tougher. Sure, there are thousands of people out there who would love to read your review of The Hobbit or get your killer carrot cake recipe, but how do you reach out and find them and make it easy for them to find you? Enter tags.

Tags group related posts together on your site and are simple yet powerful ways to help readers distinguish between your nature poems and your street art photo essays.

For starters, you can enable a Tag Cloud Widget in your sidebar or footer so your readers can quickly find your content based on your most popular tags. The bigger the word, the more posts you’ve published about it:

Tags not only help readers get around your site, they bring people in to your site in the first place. Like we talked about in Get Comfy, you use the Reader to discover the freshest content published by fellow bloggers — topics in which you’re interested, but also new stuff that intrigues you and opens up new areas of exploration. That means the Reader is also the place where others will find you. And if you want to be found, you should tag your posts appropriately. You could try to grow a fan base through evasive action, but you’d be the first.

While tagging is optional, assigning tags to your posts increases the chance that others will see them on the topic pages in the Reader. To help interested folks find you, use tags that directly relate to the subject of your post, and think about what you’d search for if you were looking for the same content. For your nature poetry, tag your post with broad, popular tags that others commonly search for: “poem,” “poetry,” and “nature.” In addition, you can mix it up with a few specific tags, too. If you’ve written a review about one of Zadie Smith’s books, you can tag the post with general tags (“books,” “fiction,” “literature”) as well as more focused tags (“Zadie Smith,” “On Beauty”).

But don’t go overboard! Stay relevant — just because you mentioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the introduction to your nature poem doesn’t mean your post deserves a “Buffy” tag, and die-hard Buffy fans who visit your blog will be disappointed not to find the Buffy-centric content they were looking for. In other words: you don’t want irrelevant content showing up in the Reader stream and neither do we, so choose your tags carefully.

A few tips to make the most out of tags:

• If you include more than 15 tags and categories (total) on a post, it won’t appear on the topic pages — that’s our way of helping ensure relevance.
• If your blog is private, your posts won’t show up in the Reader, so check Settings >> Privacyin your dashboard to confirm your settings.
• If you regularly post material that is offensive, not safe for work, or not suitable for minors, we might flag your site as mature, and mature blogs aren’t included on topic pages. (You can contact supportif you think your blog may have been accidentally flagged.)
• If you’re misusing the tag feature, your blog may not appear in the Reader. Misuse includes tagging your content with misleading or irrelevant tags; and posting affiliate links, marketing material, and unoriginal content.

(If you’d like, you can also learn more about topics.)

Action Time! Practice tagging a post:

• Write a new post. If you need a topic, try responding to one of the promptsover at The Daily Post.
• Think of at least three general tags for your post. (Check the topics pagein your Reader to see a cloud of popular tags if you need a boost.)
• Brainstorm one or two specific tags relevant to the post. If you tagged your post with “science,” can you get more specific? “Quantum physics”? “Neuroscience”? Did you focus on someone specific, like “Stephen Hawking” or “Neil DeGrasse Tyson”? If so, add the name in the Tag module, too.

Once you publish the post, go find it in the Reader — search for one of the tags you used and your post should appear in that stream. If you can’t find it, revisit our tips on tagging.

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Like and comment on blogs you follow and love — and get feedback in return

In our Get Comfy tour, we talked about how the Reader lets you follow your favorite blogs and stumble upon new sites, all in one place. You can also give fellow bloggers a virtual high-five: when you like something you’ve read, you can “like” it, just like you do on other networks (think Facebook). Think of a like as a thumbs-up to a fellow blogger, to show you enjoyed or appreciated what they’ve put out there. You can like a post directly in the Reader — just click the star next toLike:

You’ll also notice the Reblog icon next to the Like button. Rebloggingis a fast way to share posts published by other users on your own blog. If you reblog a post, it will appear on your blog with a link to where the content came from, an excerpt from the post (if it includes text), the first image of the post, and thumbnails of other images within the post. You can reblog at will, but many bloggers appreciate being asked first — we’re a friendly bunch, so don’t be shy.

It’s also nice when a reblog takes things a step further, presenting the original blogger’s thoughts and then adding some of your own. One of the best ways to strengthen the fabric of the blogosphere is adding your own comments. It’s an easy way to engage with fellow bloggers and contribute to an ongoing discussion. When you click Reblog, we’ll give you the option of adding some commentary:

In addition to likes and reblogs, you’ll want to visit the blogs you love, as well as ones you’ve recently discovered, and comment directly on posts. Commenting is an integral part of blogging — and all part of the fun. You leave comments on other blogs not only to respond to what you’ve read, but to build connections with bloggers who post on ideas and topics that you care about and network with people from all corners of the blogosphere.

Leaving comments on other people’s work is also one of the best ways to attract others to your own site, so leaving a comment is both altruistic and self-serving. How many actions can say that?

That being said, some commenters are more effective at this than others — you still have to say something worth reading. Here are some tips being a comment pro:

• Read thoroughly.Before commenting, read the entire post and the other comments before adding yours. First off, reading all the way through (hopefully) keeps you from saying anything off-base. Second, If a conversation is already underway, in some cases it may make more sense to reply directly to someone else’s comment.
• Contribute something of value.Add something meaningful to move the discussion forward. Avoid a general “great post!” or “thanks for writing this!” response. That is, sure, tell them they’re great — and then add something. Of substance. A meaty reply is more likely to attract the blogger of the post — and other commenters — to your own site.
• Keep your comment bite-sized.If you have a lot to say on something you’ve read, leave a brief comment, then add a link to a post on your own blog where you’ve replied to or expanded on the topic at hand — it’s a clever way to engage readers who share your interests. If a comment stretches into multiple paragraphs, you’ve probably got a post on your hands.
• Avoid shameless plugs.Don’t just leave a link to your blog in a comment — it’ll likely be deleted. Your username links back to your site anyway, so there’s no need for a redundant plug. That said, be sure your user details — especially your website address — are current in your personal settings by going to Users >> Personal Settings and scrolling down to Account Details.
• Show yourself off.Upload an eye-catching Gravatar, which is the image that will appear next to your name across WordPress.com blogs and other sites and comment forums. Most people will be more moved to click on your smiling face (or cat photo, or drawing, or. . . ) than on a generic icon. (You can also edit this public profile in your dashboard by going to Users >> My Profile.)

Follow these quick tips, and you’ll begin to connect with people with similar interests and attract new readers to your site. Above all, be patient, be respectful, and be yourself! Whether you are smart, witty, or just plain bizarre — be you. We’re drawn to the blogosphere because we want to read and interact with real people; if we just wanted news, we’d head to CNN.

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Connect your site to your other accounts on the web

You’ve got a cool tool called Publicizeright in your dashboard, which allows you to automatically share your posts on social networking sites including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, andPath – no more publishing and then individually pasting the link into each site. You can even add a custom message with the post. You can use the valuable minutes you save to get a head start on your next post, or to bake us some cookies (we like oatmeal raisin).

To enable Publicize, go to Settings >> Sharing in your dashboard and click on the Add new connection link next to each service you want to connect:

You can pick and choose; depending on how you use your blog and these services, you might not want to push your posts to every one you belong to.

For more detail, check out the specific setup steps for each available service:

• Facebook
• Google+
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Tumblr
• Path

Once you’ve enabled a service, you’ll see a Publicize section next to your visual editor every time you write or edit a post:

Just publish your posts as usual, and you’ll see them appear on the services you activated — usually, within a few seconds. If you want to opt out from any of the Publicize services for a particular post, click Edit, then uncheck any services you need to. You can also include a custom message (for your Facebook post, tweet, LinkedIn update, etc.) in this box.

Action Time! First off, enable Publicize for at least one account.

[hold music playing]

Great, you’ve enabled Publicize! Now publicize one of your posts to Facebook or Twitter, or Yahoo! or LinkedIn, and be sure your update entices your friends and followers enough to make them click! How? Try one of these:

• Tease your readers — pull a quote from your post that encapsulates your discussion, or makes people want to know more.
• Pique their curiosity — reel them in with a question.

Whatever you do, don’t be a ‘bot — you could go the easy route and send a Facebook status update and tweet with simply your post’s title. Add some personality! People respond to real people, not auto-tweets.

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Make sense of your statistics

In Get Comfy, we toured your stats page, which is full of interesting data to analyze and learn from; if you’ve already started publishing on your site, you probably visit your stats periodically to see how things are going, where “periodically” means “every 15 minutes.” Let’s revisit some of your stats and explore ways you can use them to refine your blog and draw in even more readers.

Views by country

Take a look at where your visitors come from. Notice a lot of visits from the United Kingdom or Japan? Craft a post that may appeal to them (but only if it makes sense for your site). If you’re a travel blogger and have explored the coast of Cornwall, write about your journey; if you’ve trekked through Japan in the spring, talk about how you followed the cherry blossoms as they bloomed.

Think of other ways to connect with your readers from other parts of the world — you don’t have to assume the role of “expert,” but you can approach a post as if you’re conversing with or reaching out to people in different places.

Top posts & pages

Browse your top posts and pages of the day (and yesterday) by clicking on the links at the top of this module, and click onSummaries to view cumulative summaries by week, month, and more:

See which posts are the most popular, and then consider publishing follow-up posts to these, or even a series of posts on a certain topic. Also take note of which pages are most popular and ensure that they are always current — you don’t want to direct your readers to outdated information!

Referrers

Check the links in your Referrers section on a regular (if not daily) basis to see where visitors are coming from, and to keep track of any mentions of your posts or blog on other sites. If you notice your blog was listed in a “top 20 food blogs” roundup on a major culinary website, write a quick post to tell your readers or share the news with your social networks. If you see that another blogger has quoted your latest piece in their post on politics, consider publishing a response and linking back to the blog to continue the conversation.

Clicks

In the Clicks module, take a peek at what your readers click on the most. If they’re clicking through your blogroll, be sure the blogs you’ve listed are all active. If they’re clicking on certain kinds of links — newsy links to the New York Times and the like, or links to YouTube videos or lots of your images — continue to include these types of links into your posts.

Search engine terms

Your Search Engine Terms module is an interesting, revealing, hilarious, even disturbing section — you can see how people have found your blog with search terms and phrases (for example, “cliff jumping in Ibiza,” “graffiti in Berlin,” or “kid-friendly wineries in Northern California”). Take a look at these and think about similar pieces you can publish using the same approach.

Note: over time, you’ll almost definitely see some odd phrases show up — non-sequiturs or things you don’t think you’ve ever written about. (“Honey, did I ever publish a post about how to cook for a Dr. Who-themed cocktail party?”) We all get them. Laugh at them, and move on. If you collect enough oddities, you’ll be able to write the classic “Look at these crazy search terms!” post, a blogger standby.

As with the other modules in your stats page, you can click on Summaries on the top right to see a broader, cumulative view of this data. In particular, make sure you take a peek at the “All Time” view every so often to get a quick summary of the primary search terms that have led people to you since the beginning.

Tags & categories

Here, you can see the most popular topics you’ve written about and which get you the most traffic. (So, hopefully you tag your postseffectively!)

After looking at this list of tags and categories, you can get a sense of what your readers like to read about. Consider activating theTag Cloud and Categorywidgets on your sidebar so visitors can access these popular topics quickly.

You’re now armed with the essentials to publish content, add multimedia, and share your stuff with the world. Next step? Publish on the go! A blogger need not be stymied by her proximity to a computer. If you’ve got a smartphone, you’ve got the ability to capture great moments and blog them as they happen: read on for the basics of blogging from your mobile device.

Header image based on “chained“

Get Mobile

By the end of this section, you’ll know how to:

• Download and set up a mobile WordPress app.
• Post from your phone or tablet.
• Upload photos and videos from your phone to your blog.

Inspiration doesn’t wait to strike until you’re settled in at your desk with a computer; you never know where you’ll be when you have The Next Big Idea or see the perfect vignette, demanding to be captured in a photo. WordPress mobile apps make it easy to post on the go. Heck, you can even create a whole new blog on the go. The whims of the blogging muse are no match for you and your phone.

Download and set up a mobile WordPress app

Choose a flavor

Whichever type of mobile phone you use, there’s a WordPress app to match. In these screenshots and examples we’ll be looking at iPhones using WordPress for iOS, but the key ideas transfer easily to whichever smartphone you’re working with.

Already have an app up and running? We don’t want to slow you down — skip right to Posting from your phone or tablet and collect $200. If not, read on.

Right now you can choose from:

• WordPress for iOS(iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch) – Download, FAQ, Forums
• WordPress for BlackBerry– Download, FAQ, Forums
• WordPress for Android– Download, FAQ, Forums
• WordPress for Windows Phone 7, Download, Forums
• WordPress for Nokia– Download, Forums
• WordPress for webOS– Download, FAQ

If you can’t find an app that meets your needs, remember that you can always post by emailfrom any email-enabled device.

Action Time! Choose the phone you use and install the appropriate WordPress app. It’ll take you less than a minute, and you’ll then be able to play along with the rest of us rather than thinking about doing so at some indeterminate time in the future. No time like the present!

Set up your app

Now you have an app installed on your device, you’ll want to set it up to work with your blog (or blogs). The process is similar across all the apps. On the iOS platform (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch) the first thing you’ll see is a welcome screen inviting you to add a WordPress.com blog you’ve already got set up, a WordPress.org blog (one you’re hosting yourself outside of WordPress.com), or a new WordPress.com blog that you can create right from within the app:

We’re going to assume that you already have a blog. However, if you want to make a new blog — maybe you want something just for posting your mobile content, like your street photography — tap Create New WordPress.com blog and you’ll have one up in running in a minute or two.

When you tap Add a WordPress.com blog, the next thing you’ll see is this:

Enter your creds, and the app will sync with your blog (or if you have a bunch of them, your blogs, which you’ll be able to choose between). You’ll be able to see the posts you’ve already written and any drafts you have hanging around, and you’ll have the option to write a new post. We’ll look at how to do that in the next section.

If you have more than one blog, click the icon with the three little lines in the upper left corner to get to a list of all your blogs, and then pick the one you want to work on.

Go ahead, put in your username and password. We’ll wait for you.

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Post from your phone or tablet

Now you’ve set your blog up to sync with your phone you’re ready to post. To edit an existing post, just tap on the post title to go to the editor, make your changes, and update. To create a new post, tap the plus symbol on the top right of the screen:

Now you’re in the post editor, where you can write, add a title, give your post some tags (remember those?), and assign the post existing or new categories:

To assign a category, tap on Categories (you probably guessed that). You can select an existing category from the list that appears. If you’d like to add a new category, tap the plus symbol at the top-right of the screen and add the new one; you can even give it a parent category:

When you’re done, hit Save. Your new category will now also be accessible when you post to your blog from a computer.

Hit Save again to return to the post editor, and start writing. Tap on the main post editing section, which helpfully says Tap here to start writing, and you’ll be taken to a keyboard/full-screen post editing page:

Along with the keyboard, there are buttons for formatting text (making it bold or italic), inserting links, and formatting quotes. It’s just like posting from your computer, except it’s a little squished and it doesn’t have that sticky “p” key that’s really hard to press. When you’re done writing, press Done.

You’ll now be back on the new post screen. Along the bottom, you’ll notice three icons on the left: a pencil, a cog, and an eye, which are ancient WordPress hieroglyphs meaning, “Don’t try to fix heavy machinery with a pencil, or you’ll put your eye out.” No, really.

Okay, we see that we can’t put one over on you — these are additional editing options:

• The pencil is for editing the text or content of your post, and takes you back to full-screen writing mode.
• The cog goes to your post settings, where you can set whether the post will be public or private, published or draft, and can even schedule a postto be published later on if you don’t want it to go out to your readers immediately. This is also the place you’ll head if you’re using a theme that has certain post formats, to select between those available from this screen. Finally, you can choose a featured image to appear with your post.
• The eye lets you see a preview of your post. This is especially useful if you’re working with HTMLin the post editor and want to check that everything’s displaying as it should be, but also gives you a nice bird’s eye view of your work in progress:

Head back to the main post editor by tapping the pencil icon at the bottom-right of the screen, and when you’re happy with your post, hit Publish at the top left of the screen to send it whizzing off into the blogosphere (if you’ve opted to schedule rather than post immediately, hitting Publish will activate the schedule).

You’ll now see the status of your post, which should change from “uploading” to being added to your list of existing posts once it’s been published:

Rinse and repeat, and you’ll soon be mobile blogging up a storm.

Action Time! Where are you right now? Look around, and write a post based on what you see. It could be a description of where you are, the tale of how you got there, or a story about how the man in the three-piece suit walking past is really a double-agent.

If you’d prefer not to post that to your existing blog, why not quickly create a new blogjust for mobile posting? You could keep it private and use it to capture ideas when you’re out and about, to post photos from your sojourns (we’ll be looking at that next), or as a complement to your existing blog. Whatever you decide, post and publish something from your phone so you can bask in the delights at having done so.

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Upload photos & video from your phone to your blog

Now that you’ve managed to crank out a simple text-based post, how about giving posting photos and videos a shot?

Posting photos

Remember the post editor? You were just there. (Helpful reminder: you got there by tapping the plus symbol at the top right of your list of posts). To add a photo or photos to your post, you’ll want to tap the picture icon at the bottom right of the screen:

That pulls up the option to either add a photo from your phone’s photo library or take a new photo to drop into your post. Let’s take a look at adding an existing image first:

You might see a warning at this point that WordPress wants to access your images. If you’d like to use images you’ve saved to your phone, tap “OK” to give the WordPress app access to your photo library. Don’t worry; the WordPress app is a very responsible guest:

Choose a photo from your photo library, and decide what size you’d like the image to be. What you choose depends on a few things: the width of your theme, the type of photo you’re uploading, and whether you have a good connection at the time. Based on those, you can decide if you’d to use like a sharper-but-bulkier high-resolution or a speedier-but-fuzzier lower-res image:

You’ll now see that image being uploaded to your blog, which typically only takes a second or two with a good connection. Once it’s uploaded, you’re done — the app will add it to your post. Tapping on the image if you’d like to preview:

Now add any text you’d like to, and tap Publish. That’s it, you’ve published a photo! You’re growing up so fast.

If you’d rather take a new photo and post straight from the camera, the process is pretty similar. Tap the image icon bottom-right and choose Take Photo:

Once you take your snap, the process will be exactly the same as with the image from your library. It’s a great way to capture the moment and then share it in seconds.

Note that if you use an app like Camera Plus or Snapseed to edit photos on your phone, you’ll want to do all that first, and then upload the photo to your blog — if you take a photo and plop it right onto your site, you’ve missed your chance to crop it or fix the red-eye.

Action Time! Show off your ‘hood. Hit the streets with your phone and capture a scene of everyday life that represents your neighborhood. Once you’ve snapped a moment from the world around you, post and publish it to your blog with a little post telling readers more about it. Boom. See how easy that was?

Posting video

Posting video follows an almost identical process to the photo you just posted. However, if you’d like the capability to add videos to your blog from your phone, you’ll need to be packing a VideoPress upgrade— otherwise, you’ll need to upload your videos to a service like YouTube or Vimeo, and then embed them into your blog. If posting video on the fly sounds like it suits you, grab the upgrade for your blog.

To blog a video, tap the icon to the left of the one you used to insert a photo — it looks like a strip of film:

As with a photo, you’ll now have the option to record a video or use one you’ve already saved to your phone’s photo/media library:

If you’re selecting a video from your library, you’ll be able to preview the video before you select it. If it’s the one you’re looking for, tap Choose, otherwise; cancel out and pick something else:

Again, as with photos, you’ll now see a progress update of the video uploading, can preview it once it has uploaded, or can hitPublish to send it out the world:

If you’d rather shoot video and upload it directly, you’ll want to choose “Record Video”:

Shoot your video as you would usually from your mobile. We recommend a close friend doing the robot dance as a good starting place:

And when you’re done, you can watch it through to decide if you’d like to post the video, or try again for a different one. That’s it. Upload and publish as you have in the posts above. Boom: you’re a digital filmmaker and distributor in one. Look out, Coppola.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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