The topic of this article is supported in its entirety by our customer support department.

Whenever you’d like to add a new entry to your Weblog, you can do so by going to the Weblog admin page at http://yoursitedomain.com/blog/wp-admin or by clicking on the “Site Admin” or “Login” link on the sidebar of your blog. Once you login to the admin area, simply click on the Write tab at the top and you will be given a form that will allow you to create a new post.

On the Write Post page, you will need to enter a title for your post; this title will be displayed above the post and will be attached to the post in your blog’s RSS feed. Be sure to make your post titles clear and concise so that your users can easily search for pages in your archives.

Once you’ve select a title for your post, enter the content of your post into the text area. You can use the formatting toolbar buttons to manipulate the formatting of your content just like a desktop word processing program. If you would like to manually edit the HTML code to your post, click on the ‘HTML’ button in the toolbar above the text area. If you need more space for your blog entry, you can click and drag the bottom right corner of the text area to expand it.

You can embed images into your blog posts; to upload an image for display in your blog post, use the “Upload” section below the post text area. Simply click the “Browse...” button to select the image file on your computer to upload, and optionally enter a title and description for the image. Once the image has been uploaded you will see thumbnails for all of the images that you have uploaded for the post. You can simply drag the image from the thumbnail area directly into the text of the post to insert an image, or left-click on the thumbnail image for a menu with additional options.

If you are writing a post that is in response to a post on another blog, you can send a Trackback to the other weblog. A Trackback alerts the original author’s blog that you have written a response post in your own weblog, and adds a link from the original post to your blog. This is a great way to comment on other blogs, as well as to increase your readership. To send a Trackback, click the “plus sign” in the Trackbacks section below the image upload area, and enter the full URL to the post that you are writing about and the originating blog will be automatically notified of your post.

If your post is very long, it is wise to use the optional excerpt to include a short description of the post that will appear on the main page of your blog. Your viewers will be able to click a link to view the entire blog post. You can add an excerpt by clicking the “plus sign” next to the Optional Excerpt section below the image upload area.

You can organize your posts into multiple categories so that your visitors can easily find posts in your blog relating to a particular subject. If you have created any categories under the Manage - Categories section in the Weblog admin, they will be listed on the right side of the Write Post page under the Categories section; simply click the “plus sign” for the Categories section and select the correct category for your post.

Once you have written your blog entry, you can use the four buttons below the post editing area to continue:

• Save and Continue Editing - This works exactly like the save button in your desktop publishing software; your changes are saved and you can continue to work on adding text to your blog entry.
• Save - This will save the blog post as a draft for you to return to later (using the Manage - Posts section of the Weblog admin). Use this when you have not completed your blog post and wish to return to it in the future.
• Publish - Use this when your blog post is complete—the text will be displayed on your public weblog page.

The sidebar of the Write Post page contains a number of advanced options; simply click the “plus sign” icon for the section of options that you would like to view.

• Discussion - These options allow you to disable comments and pings (Trackbacks) for your entry. Use this if you do not wish to have others submit their own responses to your post.
• Post Password - Only visitors who know the password that you enter will be able to view this post.
• Post Status - This allows you to manually change the status of the post, such as changing a published post back to a draft.
• Post Slug - This allows you to change the internal name that will be used for the URL of your post. If you are writing a post that is about your summer vacation, you may want to change the post slug to “vacation-2005” so that the URL will be more descriptive than the title you entered for the post.
• Post Author - This allows you to change the author that is credited for the post on the public blog page, as well as who can edit the post in the future.
• Post Timestamp - This allows you to update the timestamp on the post, and even lets you set a post to appear in the future (good for organizing your posts in their correct chronological order).
• Custom Tags (near the bottom of the page) - Use this to attach information to your post, such as notes to yourself. The custom tag is a two part system; for example, you could create a key such as “Last Updated” and a value such as “September 20th”, so that next time you open the post in the admin area you will be able to see your notes.