Adding Content

In this lesson we will look at adding content to the pages, this content will be basic text and pictures. We will look at the built in WordPress text editor, though you can add a more advanced text editor if required just search for text editor plugins. We will also look at adding links to both internal and external content. Though once you learnt to add the basic content it is not that difficult to add video and other media.

The Editor

• the Upload /Insert buttons for Pictures, Video, Sounds and Media.
• the text buttons for Bold, italics, strikethrough, bullet points, quotes and text position.
• the buttons for adding links, more tag, spellchecker, full screen view and display kitchen sink (more editor options).
• Displaying all editor options underline, text colour, paste options, remove formatting, add special characters, undo and redo.

An example of basic text entry, click insert picture icon. Click Browse. Click the picture to be inserted. Click Open. Click Upload. Note there may be a limit on the size of the file you can upload, it is always a good idea to keep file sizes as small as possible this will help your web page load time. Picture uploaded you can edit the image or add alternate text, caption or description. Alignment and size can be adjusted, adding a picture at the thumbnail size (150×150) will keep all your images at a consistent size through out the site. Here we have aligned the picture to left of the text. The link URL can be used to link this image to other content internal or external. Click Insert into post. The image has been inserted. Clicking the image you will be able to delete or access the edit options again. Select Right to realign the image. Click Update. Image now aligned to the right of the text.
We will now create a link to an internal page on the site. Highlight Contact Us. Then click Link icon. Click Link to existing content. Select Contact Us. Click Add Link. Click Update, then open site to check the link works. Click the link text. The link is working, we will now return to the backend and redirect this link to an external site.
Again highlight the link text and click the link icon. We will change this link to http://www.bbc.co.uk.  Note always start links with http. Tick the box Open link in a new window/tab. This will ensure if someone clicks a link to an external site your site will remain open also. Click Add Link and remember to update the page before checking the link. Click the link text. The external link works and note your site remains open in another tab.

Adding Content

Next we will look at the editors copy and paste option, although you can simply copy and paste directly into the page. The paste from word option does help to retain the formatting applied by Word. For this example we have created a simple table in Word then we will copy it and paste it into the page.
In Word highlight the entire table. Right click the +. Select Copy. Click the paste from word icon. Press CTRL+V on the keyboard. Click Insert. The table has been added, Click Update. The table added to the web page. Highlight some text and click on the font colour icon. Select font Colour.
Click HTML tab to view the page in the code view. The HTML view of the page, you can directly enter code into the page. Page view with our text in a different colour applied.
In this lesson we have looked at adding content to our web pages, we have covered the basics of entering text and inserting images. In the next lesson we will look at adding plugins to the site to enable more dynamic content. Plugins can be added to the site as widgets which will appear in the sidebars or as enhancements to for example the text editor. There are numerous plugins available for the WordPress system, we will look at adding a translation plug-in to make the site accessible in many languages and a plug-in to create a custom contact form.