WordPress
More Good Foundation websites are mounted with WordPress. Contributors to our sites, therefore, will need to work with WordPress. Having some experience with WordPress before-hand is a good idea, and you can launch your own blog in WordPress to get started.
Go to WordPress.org to get started.
Click on “get a free blog on WordPress.com.” Fill in the blanks to establish a WordPress account.
After you fill in the blanks, you will be taken to a confirmation page. On this page, you will see the URL of your blog, which will look like Bill.wordpress.com (if your name is Bill, and that’s your username). WordPress.com will tell you that your blog will then be called Bill’s Blog. If there’s something you don’t like about your choice, you can make changes on this page. You will also be able to choose whether you want your blog to show up on search engines like Google and in public listings around WordPress.com. To lock in your choices, click on the Sign Up button. An e-mail will be sent to you so you can activate your blog account.
Click on the activation link in the e-mail. This will bring up the activation verification page (below).
Click on View Your Site. Your site page will look like this:
You can begin blogging at once, just by highlighting the text on your main page and typing in your message. Or you can create a page and subpages by clicking on Pages: About.
The first thing you will notice is that your blog is very simple — too simple, in fact. You’ll want to dress it up and add some features. You can click on WordPress on your blog’s homepage to see what your blog platform has to offer. http://en.wordpress.com/features/ lists all the features that come with your blog at no charge. Premium features are also available for a charge.
On your blog page, click on Login. Enter your user name and your password. When these are correctly entered, you will be taken to the WordPress “Dashboard.” This is your workspace for your blog. After you have logged in, you can click on Site Admin to take you to the dashboard from the homepage.
Go down to the lower left side of the page, look in the left sidebar, and click on Appearance. A screen will come up that will give you an opportunity to change the appearance of your blog. The appearance of your blog homepage is called its “theme.” On this page you can browse and choose the theme you want for your blog:
There are 76 themes to choose from. Click on A to Z to see them all. Some themes are highly customizable; others are not. Choose the theme with the look and features that you want. Then click Activate in the upper right hand corner. The following theme is called “MistyLook.”
Click on Site Admin to go into the dashboard. Then in the left sidebar click on Posts. You will see a list of posts with only one entry, “Hello, World.” Click on that title. An edit page will open up for you to change that to whatever you want to say in your first post. Above the edit window, you will see some icons.
Use the Upload/Insert icons above the editing buttons to upload images, audio, video, and other media. When you are writing your text, you can add links by highlighting the link-word and clicking on the chain symbol in the edit buttons. A window will apear for you to add the URL you are linking to.
You can continue to learn the basic steps of using WordPress by going to “First Steps with WordPress.” The instructions there will help you to continue to set up your blog and the features that you want.
