WordPress Basics

Creating a new post

When you want to add a news article or land use notice, you’ll want to create a new post. When you hover over the +New button at top, it’ll show different options and post is the one you want.

You can create a post by entering only a title and content and hitting publish, but there are several more options to make things look nice and automate your work.

First, make the title descriptive and short. That’s what will show up if you share the link on Facebook, so you want the title to look credible but also click-worthy.

The content goes in a text editor just below the title. It’s just like whatever you use for email – with options to bold, italicize, add links and format things however you like. You can do a lot with this and never touch anything more complicated.

There is an Add media button that lets you upload pictures or PDFs. There are different settings available with that, but at basic it will insert a picture into your content area wherever the cursor is.

There are three important things on the sidebar at right, below the Publish button: Featured image, categories, and tags.

The featured image will be what shows up when you share the link on Facebook. Make sure the picture is a wide rectangle or else it’ll get cut off and look bad on Facebook. Check this site for the best image sizes for social media.

The category is what makes sure this post goes where it belongs. If it is land use related, check the land use category first and it will show up in that section automatically.

Tags are not required for everything. They’re there to help you group things and you can use more than one per post. If you want to easily keep all the posts about master plans together, tag each new post that’s relevant as “Master Plan”. See all those at once like this. Try to use existing tags before creating new ones. A tag used once and never again isn’t helpful.

Once all those areas are filled in, just click Publish and your post is live! Once you publish it, you can copy the URL immediately below the title for sharing. Click that link to see the live post.

Avada

This website uses WordPress to create and manage all the content here. Certain add-ons offer more advanced functionality. Avada is what’s called a page builder. Everything described above under the basics will give you a perfectly fine page. If, however, you want something more… Avada can probably help.

There is a slight learning curve with Avada and all page builders. What it does is makes certain elements easier to add into your page without having to know how to code it. Sometimes page builders can be overkill, though.

You can use Avada without switching to the Avada Builder. Click the green stylized “A” at the end of the text formatting bar and you’ll get all the basic Avada building blocks, right on your regular post content area!If you’re making a new post, rather than editing an old one, you can’t really break anything. Go ahead and click that green “A” and play around with the options on a dummy post. When you’re done kicking the tires, just click “Move to trash” instead of Publish and no one will ever see your scratch pad!