Tag Archive for: add a featured image

WordPress originally started out as a blogging platform. Today it is powerful enough to run a very complex website, but it is still an easy way to start a blog. Assuming that you already have a site in WordPress (if you don’t, contact me and I would be happy to work with you to set one up).

To add a blog post, you are going to want to make sure that you are logged into your site and that you have at least Author permissions for your website. You can find the login page by adding /wp-login.php to the end of the URL. So if your website was located at www.cupcakes-are-awesome.com the login page would be www.cupcakes-are-awesome.com/wp-login.php.

You should now see the Dashboard or backend of your WordPress website. Today, we want to add a blog post. We can start the process using two different links. The first is at located in the dark grey navigation bar at the top of the page. From here, select + New, and then in the dropdown menu, Post.

You can also do this from the dashboard navigation bar on the left, select Posts, and then in the dropdown menu, Add New.

However you decide to start the new post, now you should see a blank post page. Let’s start this blog posting party!

1. Enter a title (this will be your H1 tag on the top of the page as well as the URL of your page (with dashes).
2. Enter the content in the main WYSIWYG editor.
3. Select the Catagories of your post (feel free to add new ones).
4. You can also add tags for your post.
5. Add a featured image for your post. You will want it to be a minimum of 845 pixels wide and a minimum of 321 pixels tall. Try and keep the resolution low (or at least not that high) so that the file size is small(ish), preferable under 120kb so as not to slow down the load time of the page.To select the image for your post,
   1. A. Scroll down to the bottom and in the right column, click Set featured image.
   2. You will see a popup for Featured Images. You can select one that is already uploaded in your Media Library click the Upload Files tab to start the process of uploading a new image.  
   3. Here you can drop the file onto the page or Select Files from your computer to upload to your site. Once it is uploaded, your new image will appear in the Media Library tab. Add an alt text that is rich in keywords relating to your post, then click the blue button, Set featured image.  
   4. You will now see this image under the Featured Image section. You can select a different image by clicking Remove featured image or scroll up to the top to publish the post.
6. When you are done with this, scroll up to the top of the page. in the top right-hand side, you will notice several things under the section header Publish.You can save this post as a draft while you work on it, you can click preview to see what it would look like live in a new window. If you would like for the system to publish the post in the future, under the Publish section on the right-hand column, select Edit next to Publish immediately. Then, select the date and time that you would like to have the content live on your site. Once the date is in place, select OK and then the blue Publish button. It is a useful feature to be able to publish blog posts on a schedule.

One your blog post is published, assuming everything is set up correctly, you will be able to see your blog post on the main posts page.