that canadian girl

This tutorial will take you through a step-by-step of understanding the administration page dedicated to adding new posts and editing them. It’s very simple and, over time, you will find that some of the features aren’t always necessary for what you need.

Let’s start at the top, shall we?

1. Title field

Quite simply, enter the title you want to see published with your post.

Once you’ve hit Save Draft the first time, and every time you update the title from then onwards, you will see an address path appear below the title field, for example:

The permalink should generally reflect the title of the post, but it is possible to click “Edit” next to it in order to change it.

2. Menu bar

If you have used a word processor before, you will recognise some of the icons in the menu bar above the large text box. We’ll run through the items one by one below, starting from left to right.

2.1. The basic formatting menu

By default, you’ll only see the top row of items; these are the basic formatting actions you’re likely to require when creating a post. In brackets, you’ll find the shortcut key combination you can use when you’re in the visual editor when you want to feel like an expert. Simply highlight the

[Note: If you're a Mac user, use Cmd wherever Ctrl is mentioned]

Bold

Show some of the text in stronger font than the rest (Ctrl + B)

Italics

Show some of the text in italics (Ctrl + I)

Strikethrough

Show some of the text as strikethrough or deleted (Alt + Shift + D)

Unordered list

Create a list of unordered items (aka bullet points) (Alt + Shift + U)

My cat is:

• Fluffy
• Purring
• Nibbling my toes

Ordered list

Create a list of ordered items (aka numbered list) (Alt + Shift + O)

A list of things I want:

1. A cat
2. A hamster
3. A pony too, please!

Blockquote

This is a blockquote (Alt + Shift + Q):

Maecenas sed tempor risus. Morbi placerat, dolor quis mattis egestas, dolor dui malesuada mi, sit amet rhoncus dolor eros vitae sem. Suspendisse suscipit massa sit amet diam ultricies facilisis.

Curabitur eleifend libero a nisl aliquam iaculis. Mauris eget orci eget justo interdum pulvinar.

Text alignment

These next three boxes allow you to align text left (Alt + Shift + L) centered (Alt + Shift + C) or to the right (Alt + Shift + R)

Insert/Edit link

This box will become active when you select text you want to turn into a hyperlink – otherwise known as a link that takes you to another page. Once you’ve selected the text you want to link, click on the chain link icon and a box will pop up. Enter the URL you want (Tip: copy-paste it if you want to avoid typographical errors)

Generally speaking, you shouldn’t need to fill in the Target, Title and Class fields, so leave them as-is.

To edit an existing link, click the existing link first. The chain link icon will activate and when you click it, you’ll be able to modify the existing Link URL you created.

Unlink

Clicking any existing link then this icon will undo any existing hyperlink you previously created, reverting the selected text to plain text. (Alt + Shift + S)

Insert More tag

This white block of text divided by a horizontal line represents a break in the part of the entry your readers will see on multi-post pages (like the homepage or a category page on your blog)

It will generally end the entry with “Read the rest of this entry” or “Read more”, where the text is a link allowing the reader to click through to the full post. It’s a handy way to limit the amount of text visible when writing a long post and can be used once in the post. (Alt + Shift + T)

Spell-check

The ABC icon with a blue check below it enables you to spell-check the text you have written. Click it and any words not recognised by the dictionary will be underlined in red. Click the small arrow on the right to change to another language dictionary. (Alt + Shift + N)

Toggle full screen mode

Need to focus on writing? Remove anything surrounding this text box by clicking the blue screen icon. Click it again to return to normal mode. (Alt + Shift + G)

Kitchen Sink

If you simply can’t get enough of this formatting, the Kitchen Sink icon will toggle a second row of icons providing you with more advanced formatting options. You’ll find the details about the second row below. (Alt + Shift + Z)

2.2. The kitchen sink

As with the first row, we’ll go left to right through all the icons on the second row

Style formatting

Click on the arrow next to Paragraph to see the range of formats available to you; these will be default formats you can use to style your content consistently.

The Paragraph, Address & Preformatted styles may produce different results depending on the blog template you are using. Headings, ranked hierarchically from 1 (largest) to 6 (smallest) allow you to write sub-headings to fit your needs.

Select the text you want to format, and use the drop down to format it appropriately.

Underline

Some some of the text underlined.

Align full

Otherwise known as justified text, this aligns your paragraph both on the left and right margins. (Alt + Shift + J)

Font colour

Select text and choose a colour to show some of the text in a different colour.

Please be sparing with this one; remember that the objective of your site (usually) isn’t to make it look like the Circus is coming to town!

Paste as plain text

If the text you are copying in comes from any source other than a plain text document, paste it through this tool to ensure it is free from odd characters and legacy formatting. It’s like the scrub room before stepping into the operating theatre, it removes any unexpected dirt that may cause problems later.

Paste from Microsoft Word

Similar to “Paste as plain text”, this applies in particular to text copy-pasted from Microsoft Word. It will retain what basic formatting it can, but will remove any Microsoft-specific characters and an awful lot of unnecessary junk you can’t see. Trust me on this one, avoid bad surprises and bogging down your blog by always using this filter before posting content from MS Word.

Remove formatting

It does what it says on the tin; it strips out any previous formatting, reverting it to plain text.

Insert/edit embedded media

This icon makes it easy to insert media (Flash, Real Media, Quicktime, etc) into your post. Click on it to pop up a box into which you can insert the URL of the video you want to embed.

Tip: If you need to upload the video to your own site, go to 2.3. below for information on uploading media.

Insert custom character

Find accented characters and odd symbols quickly by clicking on this icon to view a grid of characters available.

Outdent/indent text

Indent a paragraph of text away from the left margin of the page, or use outdent to move it back towards the left margin.

Undo/Redo

The back and forward arrows allow you to undo (Ctrl + Z) or redo (Ctrl + Y) recent changes you have made to your post.

Tip: If you’re looking for previous versions of your post, scroll down to the bottom of the editing page. You’ll find a section called Page Revisions which will list previously saved versions of the post you’re writing, allowing you to review the changes you have made since.

Help

I hope I’ve answered most of your questions about formatting here, but further information is always available via the question mark icon.

Coming soon

Uploading and inserting media, advanced functions and more!