WordPress

Here are some quick notes on creating, editing, and deleting wordpress pages.

Log in

You must log into the web site before you can do anything.

Go to /wordpress/wp-admin.
Enter your username and password and click on “Log in.”
What you see is called the “dashboard”.

You must register before you can log into the web site.

Go to /wordpress/wp-admin.
Click on “register” in the lower left.
Enter a username and your email address and click on “Register.”
Look for an email message with a temporary password.
Click on the link in that message, log in with your username and temporary password, fill in as much information about yourself (eg, your name) as you desire, and click on save.
Look for an email message from me in the next day or so saying that you have been made an “editor.”
Log in and start work.

Create a new page

Go to the dashboard (go to /wordpress/wp-admin and log in if necessary).
Click on Pages->Add New
Enter the page title in the first block.
Enter the page content in the second block.
Click on the “Publish” button.
Go back to the top of the page and find the url immediately beneath the title labeled “Permalink;” this is the url to use to access the page.

Edit an existing page

Go to the page you want to edit (after logging in, of course).
Click on the link labeled “Edit” in the lower left corner.
Edit the page as desired.
Click on the “Update” button to make your changes visible.

Delete an existing page

Go to the dashboard (go to /wordpress/wp-admin and log in if necessary).
Click on Pages.
Find the page in the list of pages.
Move your mouse over the page title, see the “Trash” link appear below the page title, and click on “Trash.”

Tips on using the editor

Using the editor should feel very much like using Microsoft Word.
The editor gives you two views of the page. The “visual” editor should look like Microsoft Word displaying a document. The “html” editor should look like notepad displaying html code. You can toggle between the two views by clicking on the “visual” and “html” tabs at the upper right corner of the editor.
In the visual editor, at the top of the you should see two rows of buttons. If you see only one, find the button at the far right labeled “Kitchen sink” (the label will appear when your mouse hovers over the button), and click on that. The second row should appear.
By default, the editor gives you a very narrow view of the document you are editing, just ten lines. You can increase the number of lines visible in the editor by clicking on Settings->Writing->Size of the post box, enter a number like 25 or 30, and click on “Save changes.”
By default, the editor appears on a page with two columns, giving you a very small number of characters on each line. You can switch to a single column view (giving you longer lines in the editor) by going to the top of the page and clicking on Screen options->Number of Columns and click on the radio button next to the 1.
When you create or edit a page, your changes will become visible to the world when you click on the “publish” or “update” button. If you want to work on the page for a while before you make it visible to the world, you have two options.
For a new page, one never before published, you can save the page as a draft until you are ready to publish. Click on the “save draft” button as many times as you desire, and finally click on the “publish” button when you are ready.
For a published page, you can make changes to the page and rely on the fact that wordpress does an autosave of your work every minute. Or, you can make your changes and safe the result as a draft: Find the page status section, click on “edit” next to status, and set the status to “draft”. You should know that changing the status from “published” to “draft” means that no version of the page will be visible to the public until the status is changed back to “publish.” If neither of these options makes you comfortable, you can cut and paste the contents into a new page (a temporary copy of the page) until you are happy, and cut and paste the result back into the real page (and delete the temporary copy of the page when you do).