You know what they say about first impressions  — well, your first blog post is the chance to make a good one. Your blog’s starting post will set the tone of your blog and let readers know what to expect from future posts. Here are a few suggestions:

• Introduce Yourself — Tell your readers a bit about who you are and what prompted you to start your new blog.
• Introduce Your Blog — Let us know the purpose of your blog and what subjects you plan to discuss and maybe how often you plan to post new content.
• Tell Readers How We Can Interact — If you allow comments or have a forum, you may wish to let readers know in your initial post. If you like to interact with readers on FaceBook or Twitter, give links to your profiles on those sites and/or other social media sites.

Creating the Post

Now that you’ve got a general idea of WHAT to post, let’s go over the HOW part by introducing you to the WordPress “Add New Post” screen.

When you select Add New Post from your Dashboard’s Posts menu, you’ll arrive at a screen with a lot of boxes. For first-timers, this can be as overwhelming as the menu board at McAlister’s Deli, but, like McAlister’s, once you’ve visited a few times, the shock from choice-overload fades quickly, and you’ll look forward to your next visit.

Post Title

The empty rectangular box at the screen’s top center is your title box. As soon as you type in your title and hit the tab key to go to the post box, a Permalink will appear. This is what will show in the address bar of  the reader’s browser. We’ll discuss titles at length soon, but keep in mind when you write yours that your post title is the number one tool you have when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. If you title your post something cute, such as, “Guess What!,” it won’t help your search engine rankings. That may or may not be important to you, depending upon the purpose of your blog.

Post Editor

The Post Box has a built-in editor where you can add bullets, bold or italicize your font, and several other options. We’ll come back to the editor’s toolbar in a minute, but look just above that and find the Upload/Insert icons. These icons link to popup windows that will allow you to upload images, video, audio, etc.

Most of the editor toolbar icons will be familiar to you if you’ve used a wordprocessing program before, but if you look just to the right of center, you’ll see an icon with a small box on top of a larger box with a dotted line between them. (It’s small — you may have to squint!) This button will insert a More Tag. You may have noticed that on the home page of this blog, only the first part of the post displays and you have to click to continue reading. That’s because I’ve inserted the More Tag after my post’s introduction. This is optional, and as you’re browsing through WordPress themes, you’ll likely run across some that automatically truncate posts, in which case the More Tag is not needed.

The next icon you may not be familiar with is called the Kitchen Sink. It’s just to the right of the Full-screen toggle icon. Clicking on the Kitchen Sink icon enables another line of editing tools, which gives you a number of options. You probably already noticed that moving your mouse over each icon displays the icon’s title.

Right below the text box is a status bar that gives your the post’s word count, autosave information, and who the post author is. (Note: If you have more than one user with Author privileges, set up in the Authors & Users menu of the settings, another box will appear in the right sidebar to select the post author.)

Tags & Categories

The Tag and Category boxes are located in the right sidebar. We’ve discussed these briefly during the Touring the WordPress Dashboard post, and I figure we’ll have future posts on these well, in the future.

Advanced Features

There are a lot more boxes we won’t discuss today, such as Excerpts, Trackbacks, the HTML editor, and Custom Fields. Plus, depending upon which theme you select, more boxes may appear on the Add New Post screen.

Publishing Your Post

I’ve saved the best for last — publishing your first post to your new blog! The Publish menu box is in the upper right sidebar.

Now that you’ve typed in what you want to say, formatted it the way you want, and used the handy spell-check feature on the editor’s toolbar, it’s time to publish your post. If you post isn’t quite ready for prime time, you can click on the “Save Draft” button and finish composing or editing your post later. Once you’ve saved your draft, you’ll be able to preview it in your blog just as it will appear once it’s published by clicking on Preview. A new window will open to display your post. You can still make changes. In fact, you can come back and edit your post even after it’s published, but we’ll save that topic for another day.

Post Publishing Options

You may want to password protect your post and only grant access to those you choose. If you click “Password Protected,” a box will appear for you to type in your password. If the post is private, no one but you and your blog’s other editors & admins can see it. You can also make the post “Sticky,” which means it’ll appear at the top of your list of recent blog posts. You may have seen “sticky topics” in forums — this feature works the same way.

Scheduling Your Post

The final topic for this post is scheduling. You’ll notice a little calendar icon next to the words “Publish immediately.” If you click on the Edit link, you can enter the date and time you wish for your post to appear and then click OK. If you change your mind, simply click Edit again and then click Cancel. You can also choose to delete your post by clicking the red (warning) Delete link. This only appears after you have saved your draft, and if you click it, a warning box will pop up before you’re able to delete the post permanently, so don’t worry about bumping it accidentally.

Finally — the Publish key. Go ahead, click it! Then go to View Site and see your brand-spankin’ new first post displayed on your new blog.

Pop the cork, you’ve officially launched your blog!

(Note: This post concludes our “Start a Blog” series.)

The most important choice you’ll make after picking your blog’s purpose is choosing a theme. It’s like looking at paint chips for your home — yeah, you can change it if you don’t like it, but that means more work will be involved, so it’s best to choose carefully at the beginning.

Things to consider:

• Purpose – Choose a theme that reflects your blog’s purpose. Is your blog business-like? Whimsical? Newsy? Call me a copycat, but I picked this theme for several reasons, including the fact that it is the old Copyblogger theme. Since my blog is focused on blogging, I figured I couldn’t go wrong with that choice. Besides, it was free and any theme designed by Chris Pearson is top notch.
• Layout – There are many choices here: How many columns? Fluid or fixed-width? Footer or not? Left or right sidebar — or both? Personally, I prefer a fixed-width theme. I like to know what the site will look like and not chance it looking, well . . . weird. If you’re not sure about how many columns, start with a 2-column site. When you’re just starting out, the fewer elements to deal with, the better. I prefer right-hand sidebars. Yes, I’m somewhat of a traditionalist, but it’s because those tried and true methods work, and readers read from left to right, so their eyes linger a bit longer on the right side of a page. The most important part of your blog is the signup form, and I want them to notice that.
• Content – Some blogs are so pimped out that it seems to me the blogger has forgotten the reason he’s blogging — to share information with the readers. Is your theme readable? Doesn’t mean it has to be Plain Jane, but the content should be the spotlight of your blog. Black print on white background is the easiest to read on screen. If you pick a dark theme, your audience needs to be young enough to see it well. (I’m serious!)
• Budget – There are dozens if not hundreds of quality free WordPress themes available. That said, I have purchased many “premium” themes. For one thing, I’m a theme-junkie! Plus sometimes there’s just one feature I want missing from the free theme I first picked. When you’re starting out, though, one of the free ones should do fine. A note of caution about free themes: I do not recommend using “sponsored” themes. These have embedded footer links that lead back to the sponsor’s site. Again, it comes down to your blog’s purpose. Sponsored themes are just unprofessional, but if your blog is personal and you aren’t opposed to what the sponsor is promoting, then there are plenty of attractive sponsored themes to choose from.
• Customization – Most themes are ready to use “out-of-the-box,” but some require a bit of set up and even some customization. If you can afford to hire a WordPress theme developer to spruce up your blog and make it unique to you, that is awesome. As long as you pick a reputable, experienced designer, you will have a great blog. Check references and prices and ask lots of questions before entering into any agreements. (Have I ever done this? No, but I wouldn’t mind some day . . .)
• Site Elements – When you’re browsing themes, look at the different elements of the theme — the font, header, quotes, sidebar design, comment area. Make sure you find all those things attractive before making your final selection.
• Images – Themes render images in several ways. Some have automatic image re-sizers that use a script. Some use the media defaults. Some have style the image with padding (space between the image and text) and/or frames. If you aren’t sure what to choose but you do want to have images included in your blog, it’s best to start simple and, after you’ve become more familiar with different functions of WordPress, CSS, and .php, then you can dip your toe into deeper waters.

Additional Tips

If you do select a paid theme, read reviews of those who’ve used it. (That’s not a bad suggestion for free themes, either.) Also, see what kind, if any, of support is available for your potential theme. Many theme developers have forums set up so you can ask questions if any issues with the theme come up.

Uploading Themes

Kudos to the WordPress development team for including an auto-uploader for themes and plug-ins! This makes the process simple and a good selection of themes is available. Simply go to the Appearance menu in your Dashboard’s sidebar and click on “Add New Themes.”

The WordPress auto-uploader is not the only way to upload a theme. Another way is via FTP (file transfer protocol). For Mac users, I highly recommend my friend Fetch. I use this program almost daily. My favorite FTP client for PCs is by far FileZilla. File transfers fall somewhere between intermediate and advanced techniques, and won’t be discussed for a while on this blog. If, in the meantime, you ever run across a topic I haven’t yet blogged about, search about it on Google. There are many excellent sources about WordPress available out on the web.

(Personal Note: I use both Mac and PC systems, but if you’re wondering, my favorite is my MacBook Pro. I have the Snow Leopard operating system with Parallels, which enables me to run PC programs. My PC operating system of choice is Windows XP, which I have use on the MacBook Pro. I have Vista at the office, which isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be.)

Your WordPress blog has several Settings you can adjust. The Settings menu is located at the bottom left sidebar in your Dashboard and contains a list of the areas you can control — General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Privacy, Permalinks, and Miscellaneous. This post will provide an overview of each of those items.

If you don’t understand a particular setting, no biggie. Simply leave it the way the WordPress default has it set. As we progress into more advanced topics and learn more, you can always go back and change your settings. (Note: If you do make changes, be sure to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of each specific Settings section.)

• General Settings – Your blog’s title is normally the same as the Domain Name, but you can change that here if you want. You can also update your Tagline, URL, Email address, and set membership levels for those who subscribe to your blog. (Subscriber is the default setting and is recommended to keep spammers from joining your blog and then posting to it. You can manually upgrade the user status for those you wish to contribute posts by going to the User Settings area.) Here is also where you select your time zone and format the date/time stamp of your blog posts. The Week Starts default is Monday. I prefer to change this setting to Sunday on all my blogs, but you can pick any day of the week you want. If you add the Calendar widget, the setting you pick here will reflect on your calendar.
• Writing – Here is where you can make adjustments to the formatting, post & link categories, and select Remote Publishing choices. You can also set up your blog to accept posts via email from here.
• Reading – If you want to create a new page to use as an intro page instead of your recent blog posts, you can select Static Page and choose which page to post as your blog’s Home page. You can also adjust the number of posts to display on your blog entries page (which will be the Home page unless you choose the Static page option). The number you pick will depend upon the theme you choose. With some themes, the default of 10 posts doesn’t look as well, so you can adjust it to what looks best. You can also change your Feed settings from this screen.
• Discussion – You can pick whether or not to allow comments and pingbacks & trackbacks on your posts. Note: These are global adjustments and can be over-ridden in the individual post page.) In the next area, you can place several restrictions on your blog’s comments. (Tip: To help grow your blog, make it easy for people to comment. I usually let people post, but set the posts to go into moderation until the poster has had one post approved. Then their posts automatically show up as soon as they post. Don’t irritate real readers out of fear from Spam comments. We’ll talk about how to deal with Spam very soon — probably early next week.) You can also set up a Comment Blacklist, if desired, from this screen as well as set your Avatar choices.
• Media — This is where you can set the default sizes of images. Certain auto-resizer scripts will use this information unless the theme you’re using sets the image size via the style sheet.
• Privacy – Some people want a private blog, such as to share family or organization news within your group. If you want your blog to be found by the general public, you can make that choice here.
• Permalinks — This screen provides a link to the WordPress.org’s Codex (a great resource site about WordPress) article on Using Permalinks. You may wish to read it. As the article says, the default permalink structure is ugly. You can change this using Structure Tags. This screen has several choices. One note about Permalinks — these help search engines find your posts, so I try to keep my Permalink structure simple and use just the post title. You can do this, too, if you want, but selecting “Custom Structure” and typing this code in the box: /%postname%/
• Miscellaneous – This section of your settings allows you to organize your uploaded files. I’ve never found any reason to change it, so I leave these settings as WordPress defaults them.

I hope this overview helps you understand more about the choices you have to set up your WordPress blog.

If you have questions, please post them below or start up a conversation in the Forum.