WiscWeb - WordPress UW Theme - Creating Posts
Posts can be used to create chronological items within your site, and are most commonly used for blogs or news articles. They display in reverse order, and tags and categories can be used for further filtering and menu options.
In this document:
Summary
Post content can be used within your site to create just-in-time items such as news articles, blogs, event updates, and other types of notices. These can be displayed using the Posts Listing page element in reverse chronological order, so that the newest item posted shown at the top of the list.
Accessing Your Posts List
To view your full posts list, click on Posts in the left menu. The next screen will show you all posts that currently exist within your site.
Create a new post
To create a new post, click the Add New button at the top of the page. You are presented with the new post options.
Post Title
The first item you are presented with when creating your post is to provide it with a Title. Your post title identifies this particular location within your site and identifies what the expected content of the post will be to site visitors. Once you create a title, a Permalink value will also be updated with the expected URL (and post structure) for this particular post.
Please note: Unless otherwise necessary, do not use all caps for your post titles (use News Article instead of NEWS ARTICLE), and separate words with spaces instead of other characters. Also try to avoid special characters such as apostrophes, exclamation points, and ampersands.
External Link
One of the options that the UW Theme provides is the ability to add an external link to a specific post. These can be used in instances where you want to use content created elsewhere but to provide that to your audience. Copy and paste the full URL into this field, and a link to that item will be placed within the post when it is published.
Be aware that you will want to save the draft and preview any posts that you create where you use the External Link field. In some cases, an excerpt of the item that you're linking to will automatically populate into your content's body field. In the instance that it does not, you will want to provide a brief summary of the content that you are linking to. Do not copy and paste content that you do not create yourself into your posts. This creates the assumption that you are the owner and creator of that content, and could create copyright infringement issues.
Post Body
Posts only use the Text Editor to enter content, which can include images, forms, data tables, and videos. Enter the content that you wish to add.
Post Excerpt
The excerpt field is meant to be a brief summary of your post content and can be displayed when using different UW Theme page elements. The excerpt is also displayed when search engine results to better inform your audience.
By default, the excerpt field is left blank and WordPress will automatically populate the field based on the first text that appears on the post. Because of this, the excerpt may not accurately represent your post content so we recommend that you add your own excerpt.
For posts, the excerpt field can be viewed when you create a Post Listing on a page and wanted to display the summary of each post.
Related Posts
One feature that exists within the UW Theme is the ability to add links to up to three additional posts that may be similar to this current post that you are creating. For more information on using Related Posts, please refer to WiscWeb - WordPress UW Theme - Related Posts.
Meta Tag Settings
Another specific function within the UW Theme is the ability to customize the look of a post when it is shared through Social Media or crawled by search engines. The Meta Tag Settings section allows you to use a number of different options to edit this delivery. For more information on this, refer to WiscWeb - WordPress UW Theme - Sharing Pages to Social Media and Search Engines.
Post Categories
Post categories can be used to group particular posts within your site into different themes like News, Research, or Blog. For example, if you were to create several posts with the News category, you could then use a Post Listing page element on a page to filter posts from a particular category. Categories provide you with different ways to deliver content throughout your site.
To add a new category, click the Add New Category link, type in the name of the category that you want to add, and then click the Add New Category button.
Posts can be assigned to multiple categories, and you need to place a check in the box for the category you want to use.
Featured Image
The Featured Image can be used as the primary image of a post that you create, and can be displayed both within the post itself as well as the Post Listing page element. To set a featured image, click the Set featured image link and choose your image from the Media Library.
By default within the UW Theme, featured images will not appear above a post when it is published, however you can decide to display it by clicking the checkbox for Show featured image above post content.
Preview your post
As you are building this post, you can make use of the Save Draft button in the upper right section of your editing environment. This will save the work that you have done up until this point, but will not make the post live just yet.
Once you have saved your draft, you can click on the Preview button that will open a new browser window or tab, and show you the current state of your post. This is a good way to check periodically that the changes or updates that you are making look as you expect them to.
Publish your post
Once you are ready for your content to be live and visible for your site visitors, click the Publish button in the upper right section of your editing environment. Whenever you want to publish new changes, simply click the Update button that now displays in this section. You can also click the Preview Changes button before committing your update to preview what it will look like.
You can also change the Published on value for this post if you'd like to have this post appear earlier or later in a post list.