These instructions should get you up and running so you can write your own blog entries. If you run into something and you’re not sure how it works or what to do, let me know and I’ll help you through it. Also, if you feel that I left a step out, let me know and I’ll add it in here.
1) Click the Register link at the top to get started
Fill in the information and then you will receive an email with a temporary password. Check your email, copy the password and go to the Login link. Enter your user name and paste the password in.
2) Change your password!
Once you log in, you’ll go to the Dashboard of Wordpress.
Click on the Profile link to change your password and update your name.
A couple of things on this… Fill out your first and last name so everyone knows who you are. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and create a new password for your account. Click the Update Profile button. After you do that, go back to the drop down menu that says “Display name publicly as:” and choose your first-last name combo and then click Update Profile again.
This will be the name that shows up when you write a post. It will be a little confusing if everybody uses their default user name as their author name!
3) Start writing!
The Dashboard is the first place you go to once you log in to Wordpress.
From here, there are two ways to start writing a post. First, on the top right is a section called QuickPress. If you type in a Title and Content and click Publish, it will show up on the home page of the blog. This would be the minimum amount of effort to get something up on the blog.
Secondly you could click on the Posts link in the upper left corner which will take you to the Add New Post page.
This is a more feature rich way of adding a post. And if you don’t want to use any of these features, you don’t have to, whatever is the simplest for you. Most of it is self explanatory… add a title, write some copy, then click Publish on the right.
4) Add photos
If you want to add photos, click on the Insert Image Button… the first icon to the right of Upload/Insert under the Title.
Click on Select Files and navigate to the the photo on your computer. After it uploads, the screen will look like this:
You don’t really have to do much here. Choose the Alignment, choose the size and then click Insert into Post. On the photo size, please choose thumbnail, medium or large for the time being. Once I find a solution, we’ll be able to upload large images and view them at full size. Right now, if you choose Full size from the size options, the photo will cover up a large portion of the page.
Once you insert the photo, it will show up in your text where ever you placed it.
After you finish typing and inserting photos, you can choose a category to put the article into. This is optional. If anyone has an idea for another category, let me know and I’ll add it. Then click Publish and your article with images will show on the home page. To view the home page, click on Preview on the right, or the hornfamilytree.com link on the upper left corner of the page.
