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Write Your First Blog Post – Text Editor Explained

December 13, 2016 by Susan Velez

Before you read any further, I want to give you a heads up that there are affiliate links on this post. This means if you purchase something through one of my links, it won’t cost you anything extra. However, I may receive compensation for your purchase, this is known as affiliate marketing. Read my full disclosure here. This is one of the ways that I make money through my blog. For example, This blogger makes $50,000+ per month with her blog. Blogging can be a lucrative home-based business if done correctly.

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Last updated on August 1st, 2018 at 06:26 pm

If you’re new to WordPress learning how to write your first blog post is not as easy as it may seem. The interface can be quite confusing.

how to write your first blog post

I’m going to walk you through all the features of the WordPress text editor starting with the site title. I am assuming that you already installed WordPress on your hosting account, if not then follow this tutorial.

How To Write Your First Blog Post

Use this guide to navigate all the hidden features of the kitchen sink. Some of them you may already know about and others we will explore and learn about along the way.

Let’s Get Started

Click To Download This Post as a PDF

 

 

The Complete Beginners Guide to WordPress

If you’re struggling with learning the basics of WordPress, pick up my new Kindle eBook that will show you everything that you need to know about the basics.

I’ve compiled everything into a nice eBook that will help you learn what you need to know to start using WordPress.

You can pick it up here…. WordPress Complete Beginners Guide: A Reference Guide to Help You Set Up Your First WordPress Blog

WordPress Text Editor

Click on “add new” and you will be inside of your visual editor.

add new post

I’ve labeled everything to make it easier for you to follow along. Let’s start at the very top with the Site title to help you understand how to write your first blog post.

Post Title

Here is where you’re going to take your long-tail keyword and turn it into an SEO friendly title that will make people want to click.

Here’s an example:  “How To Write Your First WordPress Blog Post – WordPress Visual Editor Explained”

It specifically tells you what this blog post is about.

Post URL

Directly under the site title is the post URL. You can click on the edit button and change the URL if you want to.

As you can see on my blog post I made sure that mine says “how to write your first blog post”

This is the keyword that I am trying to rank for this blog post. Be sure to add your keyword in the Post URL.

Adding Images and Media

Every blog post on my website gets at least one image. I think images make my tutorials easier to understand.

If you’ve seen any of my other tutorials, you know I am a huge fan of creating picture walk through tutorials.

If you need help understanding WordPress, I’ve compiled a great list of WordPress tutorials on this blog that will make it easy for you to understand WordPress better. If you’re ready to rock your WordPress blog, then be sure to visit my WordPress tutorials for beginners

 
If you haven’t read my other tutorials, be sure you check out the one that walks you through step by step tutorial on starting a WordPress blog.

Maybe you need a tutorial on WordPress plugins?

When you’re ready to add images or media click on the “add media” button and browse to your compute to upload your files.

It’s as easy as that.

A Look At the Visual Editor

I like to think of this section like Microsoft Word. You can use the visual text editor to add different types of styling elements to your blog post. If you’re familiar with Microsoft Word, you won’t have any issues using the visual editor for writing your blog posts.

Row 1

I will run through the kitchen sink features quickly so you can better understand what they do. To be honest, I really don’t use all the features.

visual editor row 1

1. Bold Feature: This tab allows you to bold your content. Highlight your text and bold it like this.

2. Italicize Content: Style your content by highlighting and it will look like this.

3. Strike Through: here’s an example of how strike through works.

4. Lists: Creating lists on your WordPress blog is easy.

This is what an un-ordered list looks like:

Social media network sites I need to join to market my content:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest

 
This is what an ordered list will look like inside of WordPress.

Things to do this week:

  • write a blog post
  • publish my post
  • take care of social media

 
If you want to learn more about using lists in your content, you can read about them here.

5. Break in Content: This adds a break in your content. You can read more about using the br tag.

6. Blockquote: Add some content in blockquotes.

This is some content wrapped in blockquotes

7. Horizontal Line: This adds a break in your content. You can read more about using the hr tag.

8. Align Left: Just like in Microsoft Word, these alignment styles will align your content.

left aligned content

9. Align Center: align your text or images in the middle of your post page.

center aligned text

10. Right Align: This will align your content on the right side of your post.

right aligned content

11. Add an anchor text: Highlight the text you want to create an anchor text. Click on the link and input the link to create an anchor text.

12. Remove or edit your link: Click this to remove or edit the link.

13: Read More Tag: If you don’t want to show all your content, use this feature to show a read more tag.

14. Kitchen Sink: Click on this to open up the bottom row for more styling elements.

15. Distraction Free Writing: If you don’t want to be distracted by the sidebar widgets, click on the distraction free mode. This option hides all the widgets on the post page.

Here is what the distraction mode looks like on my demo site.

distraction free mode

Row 2

Lets dive into row two of the visual editor.

visual editor row 2

1. HTML Elements: The default is set to paragraph. Click the drop down arrow to use any of the heading elements. You will find H1 – H6 heading elements inside of WordPress.

2. Underline Text: Highlight your text you want to underline and click the button. This is what underline text looks like.

3. Justify: Use this feature to set the content to justify, you can read more about this element.

4. Text Color: Click on the drop down arrow and pick a color or add your own custom color.

5. Paste as Text: This will remove any type of formatting from your content. Word Document tables are notorious for adding HTML elements to your blog posts.

6. Clear Formatting: The clear formatting button removes all the formatting (bold, underline, colors, italics etc) from a highlighted section of your text.

7. Special Characters: Click on it to add characters such as (square roots, trade mark sign, copyright symbol and etc)

8. Indent Right: Use this to indent your content to the right.

9. Indent Left: This will indent your content to the left.

10. Undo: If you make a mistake inside of your editor, you can click on the undo arrow and it will take you a step back before you hit on the undo arrow.

11. Redo: If you accidentally clicked on the undo button, click the re-do button to bring back your content.

12. Keyboard Shortcuts: Click on the question mark and an image will popup that will show you all the available shortcut keys inside of WordPress. Here are some awesome keyboard shortcuts that will help you product content easier.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The visual editor has several hotkeys, or keyboard shortcuts built in. I have a few of my favorite hotkeys I love using that seem to make write a blog post more enjoyable.

keyboard short cuts

I recommend playing around with them to familiarize yourself with some of them. Some of my favorite ones to use are:

Ctrl + Alt + 2: Highlight your text and change it to a H2 heading.

CMD + u: This will underline your content.

Command + v: This will paste content into your text editor.

Tour’s Over What’s Next

I’ve taken you step-by-step and shown you how to use the visual editor to get a better understanding of how it works. As you can see, it kind of works like a word processor.

The next step is to actually start writing your content.

Hand Picked Articles for You

  • Installing WordPress 4 Different Methods
  • Starting Your Own Blog

 

Final Take Away

If you’re growing a blog, you are going to need to publish new content on a consistent basis. Hopefully, tutorial gave you a better understanding the visual editor, so you can get your editorial calendar loaded with tons of pillar content you can share with the world.

Do you use the distraction mode? Maybe you don’t even use the text editor to write your content? Let me know your method of operation for writing new blog posts.

Recommended Blogging Resources:

  • Free 12 Day Blogging Bootcamp
  • Article about using Yoast SEO for optimizing your blog posts and how to do it.
  • SEMRush Free Trial to Gather Low Competitive Keywords
  • Quiz: Which theme is best for your blog?
  • If you want to build an email list and send newsletters, I recommend ConvertKit (starts at $29)

 

Filed Under: WordPress Tips Tagged With: how to write your first blog post

About Susan Velez

Hi! I'm Susan welcome to my blog. Are you ready to use the Internet and a computer to change your finances? I share tips to help you make money online through blogging, side hustles and other non-traditional methods learn more Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lindsay says

    May 14, 2018 at 5:44 pm

    Hey Susan! My name is Lindsay and I’ve been doing the usual painstaking process of getting ready to start my own blog (or two 😉
    I just wanted to say I love your posts. You’re honest, knowledgeable and down to earth. Keep up the great work! I’m loving it! Oh and I’m now following you on Pinterest.
    Have a great day!

    • Susan Velez says

      May 15, 2018 at 4:19 am

      Hey Lindsay,

      I would start with one blog, it’s much easier than trying to juggle two blogs at the same time. Once you get the hang of blogging and you get the first one to sustain itself, then you can start your second.

      I couldn’t imagine trying to run two blogs at once while trying to grow the first one.

      Good luck with your blogging journey and come back and let me know when you get the blog started.

      Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment.

      Have a great day 🙂

      Susan

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