Blogging Mechanics

Linking to Sources

When citing sources in your posts, you’ll want to provide convenient hyperlinks so readers can navigate directly to your support material without losing their place in your essay.

Here is an example of a link to a website called Very Short Novels. Notice that if you hover over the link, an explanation will appear, in this case the information that the link will lead to David Hodges’s Fiction Blog. You can customize the message when you build your link.

1. Navigate to your source file.
2. Copy the url from the navigation window at the top of the browser. In the example, the url is https://davidbdale.wordpress.com/
3. Highlight some text in your post while you’re writing it, or open your published post in Edit mode and highlight some text. (In the example, I highlighted the words “Very Short Novels.”
4. Click the link tool in the word processing toolbar (circled in yellow).
5. An Insert/Edit link dialogue will open.
6. Paste the url you copied into the URL field (be careful not to end up with http://  twice).
7. Write descriptive copy in the Title field.
8. Always click the check box to “Open link in a new window/tab.“
9. Click “Add Link.”

Kitchen Sink Editing Tools

When writing or editing a new post, certain word processing tools are available to make text bold or italic, add bullets, center text, and perform other functions. The basic toolbar looks like this:

The red circle outlines a toggle called the Toolbar Toggle. Click it to reveal an additional row of editing tools including the formatting drop-down, indent tools, and text color selector.

The toggle reacts to repeated clicks by hiding and unhiding the second row of editing tools.

Edit Modes

I don’t see the value of the new WordPress edit mode and prefer the “classic mode” primarily because it makes choosing categories so much easier. When it appears on your page at all, the toggle back to “classic mode” appears at the bottom of the right sidebar.