- Styling – a note on why blocks are set up the way they are so that the site looks coherent
- Getting to the blog section, using ‘quick edit’
- Creating a new blog post in draft or private mode, choosing ‘distraction-free’ layout, making the right hand side bar appear
- Editing/Viewing Posts, checking layout on different screen sizes
- Adding new blocks of content using the plus button
- Adding ‘heading’ and ‘list’ blocks to the page, showing the blocks on each page in order
- Adding a featured image to the header section of your page (1388 x 500 pixels)
- Embed a Youtube video on your page
- Adding categories to your blog posts
- Links to the standard WordPress blocks
- Links to GeneratePress / GenerateBlocks blocks
- Yoast and SEO Features and free training info
Styling
To keep the site looking coherent and organised the various colours of text and font size and type are set ‘centrally’ within the WordPress installation. This is necessarily locked down to make it harder to make mistakes. You can usually still override things like colour and font in the settings for each block (particularly in Generate Blocks) but it’s not advised. By keeping the site coherent and making a ‘paragraph’ or a ‘heading’ etc look the same (in terms of design) across the site you keep the site looking businesslike and easy to navigate.
Making your blog live/visible on the front end of the site
When you have some blog posts you want to share publicly please let me know and I’ll set it up so that there is a blog page in the menu, and ensure that all live and non-private posts will show there. I can also put the three latest ones in a block on your home page if you would like that, with a link to send people to your blog page.
Getting to the Blog Section, using ‘quick edit’
Creating a new blog post in draft or private mode, choose ‘distraction-free’ layout, making the right hand side bar appear
Editing/Viewing Posts, checking layout on different screen sizes
Adding new blocks of content using the plus button
Adding ‘heading’ and ‘list’ blocks to the page, showing the blocks on each page in order
Adding a featured image to the header section of your posts
Embed a Video from Youtube on your site
Important: videos from other platforms may behave differently – you can try generating a ‘share link’ and choosing the ’embed’ option and then pasting it into a ‘custom html block’ (which you can search for from the block options/menu when adding a new block).
Don’t save videos to the media library on the site: For adding video content I’d strongly recommend setting up a video channel and hosting your videos on YouTube as you’ll get potential followers there that you can communicate with in the comments and may be able to monetise it if you build a large enough following/level of engagement. Please don’t upload video to the media library on the website as it will gobble up your allocated server space.
How to embed a youtube from any account on youtube
To embed a YouTube video that you have found (or indeed one you have created and hosted yourself on YouTube) you should add a new block and search for the ‘youtube embed’ block. Then simply add the URL (no other code or share code is needed, just the url for the page that it’s on) into the place in that block where it is indicated. When it is fully loaded it will appear like this example:
Adding categories to your blog posts
Categories will help you organise your posts and make them easy to display in different places where you want to show specific types of posts only (eg recipes, or travel posts and so on).
Links to the standard WordPress blocks
A general guide to the WordPress blocks can be found on the WordPress.org tutorial pages. Many online tutorials will use other blocks or set ups so it’s important to stick to the ones on this page or the generate block ones to avoid getting confused by tutorials about blocks you don’t have access to! There is some seeming duplication between the WordPress and GeneratePress blocks – I like to have both at my disposal but they should both work okay.
Links to GeneratePress / GenerateBlocks blocks
GenerateBlocks are often used on your site – you may wish to use them but may wish to stick with the ‘native’ WordPress ones. There is a license applied to your site which allows the pro version of GenerateBlocks on this site.
Yoast and SEO features
If you scroll down below the bottom of the main body area at the bottom of each page when you are in ‘edit’ mode you will see a section called ‘Yoast SEO’. This gives you a score and various tips on how to present your content to make it both easy for humans to read and also easy for bots and other machines to read – both of these things help with search engine optimisation. As Yoast sometimes amends its advice and updates what it puts in the section below posts to reflect changes in how search engines operate I point clients to the Yoast Training which is free for beginner level (and that is all you would need to become competent at this point).
Image at top of this page thanks to Nick Morrison on Unsplash