Tag: becoming a blogger

Mizanur Rahaman Mizan / October 26, 2015

Be A Blogger Series – Part 4: Everything You Need to Know about WordPress Media Manager

Introduction

In a blog post, we often need to insert images and videos . We might also need to attach certain files in the blog post. Videos and Images  are often used by bloggers to illustrate or demonstrate their points in a better way. This article going to deal with topic of  wordpress media manager.

How adding media works with Bloggers!

While writing a post in Blogger.com you can just use simple “Browse….” button to upload images and videos from local computer or from “Web Address URL”. In Blogger.com you can only add an image or video while you write a post.

Image below shows how to add images with Blogger.com

How it works with the popular WordPress!

WordPress gives us two options under Media menu “Flash Uploader” and “Browser Uploader“. WordPress shows you all the uploaded files in a list and you can also edit them. We can also use “File URL” multiple times in different posts and pages.

Note: A “File URL” is the URL of where uploaded file can be accessed.

Steps to Add media in WordPress:

  1. Login to WordPress dashboard panel.
  2. Go to Media menu on left sidebar of the dashboard and click on Add New.
  3. You will get two options for uploading media which are Flash uploader and Browser uploader. By default WordPress has Flash uploader selected (see image below).
  4. Click on Select Files button and then add file from your computer. :-)
  5. Now once the file is uploaded it will show us options to add title, description, alternate text, etc..
  6. Copy “File URL” and paste it into your post or page content where you want.
  7. Click on the Save All Changes button.
  8. You can see all the uploaded media files in the Library menu. Also by clicking on edit option you can find “File URL“.               

Bonus Tips

WordPress allows us to do the same as Blogger.com but with an added feature which lets us add files and store them like your personal media library. The URL of these files can be shared with friends who can view images or videos directly without the need to create a post. :-)

Summary

With both Blogger.com and WordPress you can add images and videos easily. But  the biggest difference is that you can upload and manage files without writing a post on WordPress. This doubles up by using  WordPress blog like your own personal FTP which can store files online. So just rock and roll with WordPress!

Previous posts in this Series:

Be A Blogger Series – Part 1: How to install WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 2: Say Hello to WordPress Dashboard

Be A Blogger Series – Part 3: Writing and Editing posts with WordPress

 

Mizanur Rahaman Mizan / October 14, 2015

Be A Blogger Series – Part 6: Writing and Editing a Page on WordPress

Blogs will mostly have posts on it. But in some cases, we do need to have some stand alone pages like About Us and Contact Us etc. These types of pages are a great source of information for new readers and also to let new users know about the dynamics of certain blogs. So pages and posts are essential in a blog.

How Page(s) works with Blogger!

In Blogger.com you to need look up the Edit Pages option under the Posting menu in order to create pages (consider the  image below for an idea). We can similarly create new pages with WordPress quite easily. Creating a post and creating new pages is very similar in Blogger.com.

How Page(s) works with WordPress!

  • WordPress dashboard provides us with a separate menu for Pages (see image below). Click on Add New option under Pages Menu.

  • Just like we create content in a post, we can also upload images,videos and media in a page.

  • We can Publish a page or save it as a draft. Changing the date for publishing allows us to schedule the page to be published sometime in the future (See image below).

We can assign any parent page and also templates for page if the WordPress theme supports it. Pages are usually displayed alphabetically in navigation but you can change the order of pages by using the order field. These options are up to the end user’s preferences.

  • We can also allow comments as well as “trackbacks and pingbacks” for pages. We can change Author of the page. Scroll down along the page and you will get two options Discussion and Author as seen in the image below.

 

So, as like Blogger.com,  we can easily create and manage static pages on WordPress also. But the main advantage of pages in WordPress over Blogger.com is, in Blogger.com usually there is a restriction of creating only 10 static pages whereas with WordPress the options are literally unlimited. WordPress unlike Blogger.com can also be used for static portals instead on of only blogs.

We hope you got an idea about the WordPress pages in this post. Until the next post of the “Be a Blogger Series”, I wish you all a very Happy New Year 2013!

 

Previous posts in this Series:

Be A Blogger Series – Part 1: How to install WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 2: Say Hello to WordPress Dashboard

Be A Blogger Series – Part 3: Writing and Editing posts with WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 4: Everything You Need to Know about WordPress Media Manager

Be A Blogger Series – Part 5: All about Links in WordPress

Mizanur Rahaman Mizan / September 4, 2015

Be A Blogger Series – Part 2: Say Hello to WordPress Dashboard

Introduction

When beginning my blogging career, many bloggers started out by using Blogger.com. But after a while, they discovered that the best platform to use is always WordPress. Here I am with the next article to my ‘Be A Blogger’ series which will be focus on publishing articles using WordPress.

This user guide is really for those who are already familiar with the Blogger.com interface and find it a little difficult to getting their head around the new WordPress dashboard. Though I am giving you a brief introduction by comparing WordPress with the Blogger.com platform, if you don’t have any idea about it – no problem! Just follow this then you will be familiar.

Follow the first article of this series : Be A Blogger Series – Part 1: How to install WordPress

How it works with Blogger!

Now lets start with your Blogger.com Dashboard which should look something like the image below.  ( Or at least similar to it!)

How it works with WordPress!

How to login into WordPress Dashboard?

In most blogs you will not see a link to sign-in to the dashboard. You can directly access the login interface by adding ‘wp-admin’ to your URL.

Example: “http://yourblog.com/wp-admin” OR “http://yourblog.com/wp-login.php”

When you manage to get into WordPress Dashboard it will resemble something similar to the image below. The numbers are obviously my creation and corresponds to the points below for you to get familiar with WordPress! ( I am demonstrating the version 3.2.1)

Please click on the image to see enlarged version

#1. Posts

When you click on the Posts menu, you will find a sub menu with options for showing you all posts on the blog, writing a new post and additional links to create Categories and Post Tags.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about:  Writing and Editing posts with WordPress

#2.  Media

You can upload videos, audio files and images by using the Media menu. Click on the menu and you will get the two sub-menus like Library and Add New. Here you can add media files and explore them. You can also find the URL of uploaded files here.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: Managing Media with WordPress.

#3. Links

A blogger usually likes to add links to websites and blogs maintained by friends and mentors. This can also be an indication for visitors on your blog to check out which websites or blogs you frequently visit.

If you want to add some external links of other websites that you like, you can add them from the Links menu. Just like posts can be organized into categories you can also create categories for your external links.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: All about Links Menu on WordPress

#4. Pages

With Blogger.com we can create pages which are static on the blog. This is very useful to show information like ‘About Us‘ or ‘Contact Us‘ on a blog. Similarly WordPress also allows us to create pages which are static. You might already know how to go about writing a post in WordPress. In the same way you can create pages and write content on it.

You can not create Categories and Tags for Pages like you can with Posts.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about:  Writing and Editing a Page with WordPress for full details regarding Pages.

#5. Comments

You can find all the comments in Comments menu. It is one of the options for moderating your comments. It gives you many options with which a user can approve, move to trash, edit, add to spam and also most importantly reply to all the comments. Just like we can not allow comments on a particular post or page we can also do the same with WordPress.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: Comment Moderation and Settings with WordPress.

#6. Appearance

Click on the Appearance menu and you will get many options for styling and providing some extra functionality to your blog. Using this menu you can change the theme of your blog, create custom menu for pages, categories and links. Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: Managing themes with WordPress.

Change of background or header of the theme can also be done from this menu. The Editor option allows the user to edit your theme files (PHP and CSS). The background and header can be changed with only the default themes available with WordPress.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: Managing Widgets in WordPress.

For more details on Menus Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: How to add Menus in WordPress.

With Widget option you can add extra functionality to your blog. (widgets are similar to gadgets in Blogger.com).

#7. Plugins

Plugins menu is very useful in WordPress. It gives more flexibility and also functionality to your blog. With this  menu a user can add, delete, activate or deactivate plugins.

Plugins at first glance is what really sets WordPress apart from Blogger.com as it has no options for adding plugins. Some plugins might give you new widgets or extra setting options in the dashboard itself. :-)

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: Managing Plugins in WordPress.

#8 . Users

Like the Blogger.com has a Permission menu in which you can manage users and their roles. With WordPress we have the Users option with which we can add, remove and mange users.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: Managing Users in WordPress for complete details.

#9. Tools

In Tools Menu you can see import and export options. With these options you can import a blog which uses WordPress just like the tools in Blogger.com. Additionally these options can be used for moving a blog from Blogger.com to WordPress.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about: All about Tools in WordPress.

#10. Settings

Settings menu is the most useful option in WordPress. You can tweak the required settings for the above discussed points for your blog like “Site Title & Description“, “Email address”, “Date & Time format”, “Post Count on front page”, “Default Category”, “Comments Moderation”, “Uploaded Media”, “Blog Privacy”, etc.

Stay tuned in our website for the upcoming article about:Managing Settings with WordPress.


#11. Drop-down Shortcuts

With this drop-down you can directly be taken to the respective menu. This is a great way to jump off to writing a new post, creating new pages, looking up drafts and comments etc.

Hope this article has increased your familiarity with WordPress functionality and features.

Summary

In this article I tried to give you a basic introduction to the WordPress Dashboard and its features. In the upcoming ‘Be A Blogger Series’ articles, I will focus on all the sections that I have highlighted throughout the article in more detail. Till then just play around and get a feel for the dashboard. You will gain lots of knowledge by just trying it by yourself. Please let me know how you go through making comments about this article. Best of luck!

Mizanur Rahaman Mizan / July 27, 2015

Be A Blogger Series – Part 7: Moderating Comments and Comment Settings In WordPress

Comments play a vital role in any blog.  Comments are a way readers communicate & express their views on a particular website. Comments are basically views and opinions expressed by readers about a particular post. If you are a  Blogger.com user, you might be familiar with comment moderation and also its various options.

Blogger: How it works?

In Blogger.com we have two options for comments, one is under Settings -> Comments menu and other is under Posting -> Comments.

Comment Moderation in Blogger
Comment Moderation in Blogger

So, How it actually works with WordPress!

  • For Comments moderation in WordPress, click on Comments menu.
  • You will get a list of comments of your blog posts with Author identity and on which post comments are posted.
How comments work
How comments work
  • The options are to approve, edit, reply, spam and trash any comments when we hover over with the mouse on comment.
  • You can also search comments.
Moderting Comment
Moderting Comment

Click on Settings -> Discussion menu to get all the settings about comments.

Comment Settings as Discussions
Settings

Related Settings for Commenting

  • Default article settings : Notify blogs linked from the article, pingbacks and trackbacks, allow comments.
  • Other comment settings : Name and email is required, user has to be logged in for posting comments. Comments are closed automatically and so on.
  • E-mail me whenever : Notification through email is sent whenever a comment is posted or when a comment is held for moderation.
  • Comment Moderation : You can add URL, email id or IP address in text area to do comment moderation, it will show all the comments in comments menu.
  • Comment Blacklist : You can add URL, email id or IP address in text area to span comments.
  • Avatar : Avatar is user profile picture that will be shown with comments. You can select the default Avatar for those who doesn’t registered in gravatar.com.

Beware of Comment Spammer: Take actions!

Every WordPress blog has Akismet plugin as a default plugin which is also useful for comment moderation. All you need to do is activate it and get your API key from Akismet.com.

So, Start Moderating your Comments!

When it comes to Comment management with WordPress in comparison with Blogger.com there are many similarities. Almost all blogger features regarding comments are also available in WordPress. WordPress does give a great way to control spam through comments with features like Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist as explained above.

 

Hope you enjoyed our series so far. Below are our previous posts of the “Be A Blogger Series” Part 1 to Part 6. We’ll appreciate your feedback!

 

Be A Blogger Series – Part 1: How to install WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 2: Say Hello to WordPress Dashboard

Be A Blogger Series – Part 3: Writing and Editing posts with WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 4: Everything You Need to Know about WordPress Media Manager

Be A Blogger Series – Part 5: All about Links in WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 6: Writing and Editing a Page on WordPress

Mizanur Rahaman Mizan / June 19, 2015

Be A Blogger Series – Part 5: All about Links in WordPress

In most cases with a blog post, we often tend to provide or share some links with our readers. For instance, you might want to link exchange or even share links to other blogs or any particular important website for lots of reasons. WordPress is the most friendly blogging platform that allows us to create a Links Menu and show them up nicely on the website in a menu or widgets for easy navigation.

 

How it works with Blogger!

If you are familiar with  Blogger.com , you might also be familiar with “Blog List“, “Link List” and “List“. These are gadgets that you need to add and they basically display links to other blogs or websites which are your favorite (see image below).

Gadget Link in Blogger.Com

How it works with WordPress!

The same way you can add external links in WordPress blog. In WordPress, you can distinguish links by assigning Link Categories. This is very similar to how we assign categories to posts.

  • Click on Links menu.  You will get three options: Links, Add New and Link Categories (see image below).
Links in WordPress
Links in WordPress
  • Click on Add New to get started with adding links for the blog. WordPress by default provides a Link Category which is named “Blogroll”.
  • The default Blogroll category cannot be deleted but we can rename it.
  • We can assign only Link Categories to links and not assign categories that were created for posts.
  • Click on Link Categories and we can add new categories.
Links in WordPress explained
  • Click on Add New option and we get the area where you can add external links. Here we can add Name, URL, Description and assign Categories for the link.
Adding New Link in WordPress
Adding New Link in WordPress

 

Related Settings

For displaying these links in the blog with WordPress, we need to use widgets or menus. Once you click on Widgets on the sidebar of the Dashboard, we can drag and drop the Link Widget where we want the links to be displayed on the blog.

Summary

Like Blogger.com , we can also show links to our favorite blogging websites with WordPress. This is possible on Blogger.com only by adding gadgets. With WordPress, we can not only add links on the blog directly but also display them based on the categories.

 

Previous posts in this Series:

Be A Blogger Series – Part 1: How to install WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 2: Say Hello to WordPress Dashboard

Be A Blogger Series – Part 3: Writing and Editing posts with WordPress

Be A Blogger Series – Part 4: Everything You Need to Know about WordPress Media Manager