This is part 6 in the “Life After Design” blog series. Part 5 can be located here

In this post:

• Different levels of access
• Getting to know your “post page”
• Where can I find ______?

As stated in Part 1: Content Management – Your wordpress site is part of what is called a “Content Management System”, within this system there are differing levels of authority and access. Taken from a related entry to the WordPress Codex (an extremely helpful resource if you can get through the formatting) – There are six different roles that users can be granted to a wordpress site:

• Super Admin – somebody with access to the site network administration features and all other features. See the Create a Network article.
• Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.
• Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
• Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
• Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
• Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile.

It’s highly likely that if 11eleven Studio designed and built your site for you, that you have Administrator, Editor, or Author roles. This is generally decided by the web-designer and client, based on how much control the client desires, along with how confident the designer is in the clients’ ability to navigate the site, and make changes without any unintended consequences.

Within these three main roles, depending on your site theme/set-up, you will have different levels of access on your “Posts” page – if you don’t see one of the options described below, feel free to Contact us and we will make sure to resolve the problem or increase your access.

As with most of my blog posts – this is to help you get a basic understanding of the system, and in an effort not to overwhelm you, this may seem “over-simplified”, but I’d rather start at 10,000 feet, and zoom in from there:

• This is where you will enter the title of your post, after doing so WordPress will develop a “permalink” for your post – this will establish a specific web-address such as: 11elevenstudio.com/blog/life-after-design-part-5-post-basics/

• Along with where you will add any media (pictures, videos, etc..) this is where you will add any content that you want to be shown within the main body of your blog – this sentence that you are reading right now was typed by me within this area.

• It should be noted that if you’re looking for more options within the text entry area, there may be a button for more options, also known as the “Toolbar Toggle”

• Here we see the “Publish Window” – depending on what orientation of visibility your post is in, you will have differing options. Here we can publish, schedule, save as a draft, preview, and even change a post to a private or password protected post. When I’m creating and editing posts, I like to use the “preview” feature, this means that only I will see the updates, and I will hit “Publish” when I’m ready for content to go live.

• Located at the top right part of your posts page, you will see a tab labelled “Screen Options” – click on it and you will be shown additional options for your page – if you’re not seeing one of the sections that I have described in this post, there’s a good chance that you will need to find it in this section, select it, and reload the page – Always save as a draft before reloading!

• Once again, you may or may not see this window depending on your site, and that’s fine – you most likely will not be needing it, I tend to keep my selection at the default – if you’re comfortable working with this, feel free to experiment with it, but it’s not super important right now. Let’s stick to the basics so we don’t get confused.

• The categories window is how we will keep your blog posts organized. If you head back to 11elevenstudio.com/blog (or scroll up and look to the right) you will see the different categories that I have used so far within this blog. Your users will appreciate you being organized and this can be the difference between finding more content on your blog, or leaving after reading once. As with any marketing effort – organization is key, let’s use these as much as possible (without being spammy) and keep your categories relevant and up to date.

• The featured image is the image that your audience will see on the main blog screen (11elevenstudio.com/blog for this site) It often shows up in important places – like when you link to your blog in a social media post – so make sure that you choose your “best” image right here.

Earlier in the post, I linked to the WordPress Codex. This is the location where you are most likely to find the answer to your question. The main drawback of the WordPress Codex is the formatting of their data, unless you know what you are looking for in specific terms, you may have trouble finding it.

I always make myself available to my clients to answer questions, I don’t check my e-mail in normal intervals during my “time-off” and rarely check it on sundays, but I will always respond as soon as I see it, and would love to help, if you think that it’s a question that other users could benefit from, add it to the comments below!

If it’s a question about content creation, make sure to keep up to date on our “Content Creation” blog series.

Coming up next: Part 7 – Editing Content For Posts