HOWTO write a post

Here is a reference is a short guide to how to write a ‘post’ in WordPress (the tool we use to manage our CBC site). ‘Post’ is the term WordPress uses for your regular commentary and is usually time-sensitive such as notices or material that compliments events in our community.

WordPress can be a little esoteric, requiring you to jump to different parts of the screen, seemingly at random, but the numbers on the screenshots below will help guide you as well as a reference for the future.

Login

There is a login in the top right of the home page, or you can bookmark this: https://corshambaptists.org/wp-admin/

1. Your username or email address. This was assigned when you registered.
2. Your password. If you ever forget it, you can set a new one by clicking the ‘Lost your password?’ link below.
3. Sometimes, but not always, WordPress will ask a simple sum. It’s just a precaution to try to stop malicious ‘bots’ breaking into the site.
4. To save time in future you can click ‘Remember me’ but general advice is to only do this on a computer you do not share and which does not leave the house.
5. Let’s go! Click Login.

The Dashboard

From here you can manage all aspects of the site.

1. Click Posts (you can also hover over it which will bring up a sub-menu where you can click ‘Add Post’ and therefore skip the next step.

Post List

Here you can see various recent posts. Depending on your account it is very likely to be filtered to just your own posts.

1. Click to create a new Post
2. Alternate way to create a new Post
3. A somewhat advanced feature that allows changing several posts at once, say to change their category.
4. Filter the list if you’re looking for a particular post you already made
5. Search for a post, try using key words from its name or one of its tags

Write your Post

Now to business…

1. Your post’s title. Just like headline writing that I recall from school you have to give the reader a reason to carry on to the rest of the post. This can be informative, provocative or something else according to your style but it should be engaging.
2. The main area of your post. You can use the buttons above to perform basic formatting such as italicising text for emphasis. Less formatting is generally better as the site will already format things like links and paragraphs.
   1. Please format sub-headings as heading 2, 3, etc. rather than simply making them capitalised or bold. Always start with heading 2 (your title will be heading 1 and there should only be one per post). Then progress to heading 3 and beyond if you need further sub-headings just like newspaper because both search engines and screen readers will assume higher numbered headings are more detailed parts of the post.
   2. You can also add media (generally images) into the post. If you upload images of your own please be sure you have permission to do so, many sites offer royalty free images such as http://www.freebibleimages.org/ and https://pixabay.com/. Sometimes they require that you name the artist. Please specify the source in the ‘description’ so that we can be sure we honour these requirements. Don’t be put off from using images, they dramatically improve the attractiveness of your post.
   3. Don’t mention anyone by full name (not even yourself) but rather refer to people by first name only or first name and last initial.
   4. Never post your email address or phone number. If you want people to respond say ‘my details are in the church directory’ or ‘use our contact form‘.
3. Always set a category. Please choose from those available rather than creating others as this correspond to the main areas of the CBC site.
4. Specify whatever other keywords your post is about as ‘tags’. Like the title these help people know whether this is for them or not. Examples include organisations such as AIM, topics such as ‘anxiety’ and ‘one-anothering’, authors or books of the Bible.
5. Ideally every post would have a featured image. Just like a headline this attracts people in.
6. Preview allows you to see what the post looks like ‘for real’; what you see within the editor is not what you will see on the site.
7. You can schedule posts for later publication or just publish right away.
8. Once you’re ready, click Publish. Remember that when you click this, that is what will go to Facebook and Twitter so Preview before Publish 😉