Blogging Using the New Site Content Editor
Templates
On starting the editor, you can start with a blank page or use an existing template or create your new template. Any template you create can you can save for later use.
It makes content writing less stressful and gives you more time to clock up the words. Most accomplished authors will advocate writing, just writing! You can go back and edit, correct your writing when you have finished, or you can modify as you go along. I tend to do a combination of the two. It all depends on the flow.
All the primary formatting options are available. In fact, I've only used two - H3 headings and Paragraph. Links can be inserted and unlinked, and an 'Unordered', 'Ordered' lists, which indent further to the right or outdent back to the left. There is a spelling checker built in with a grammar checker, but on testing this alongside Grammarly; I find that Grammarly is correct more frequently than the built-in checker.
Grammar Checking
As you can see, I am using the Grammarly extension for Chrome browser. It integrates neatly with the Content Editor and is a breeze to use. I would find it difficult to write coherently without it! Grammarly makes writing a pleasure again. You will find that the words flow smoothly and before long, you have a good sized article ready for publishing.
What I am using here, is the free Chrome extension but I liked this product so much, I paid for the premium version. You can check out Grammarly at grammarly.com. There is also a Safari browser plugin, which works equally well and I am using that for this article.
The free version checks for 150 of the most common grammar and spelling errors. The paid-for version, checks for a further 100 or more typical mistakes. Not only that, but the premium also offers Genre style tests, vocabulary suggestions, and a useful plagiarism detector, which will check your work against 8 billion websites!
You can see why I went for the premium version. You'll be interested to know, that Grammarly has an Affiliate Program. I attempted to sign-up but my website did not have a big enough following. For some of you who are targeting the online business or writing genres and already have their tribe, I would strongly suggest you look at Grammarly as another source of income.
Formatting
Formatting is limited to the basic Heading 1, 2 & 3; Paragraph; Bold; Italic and Underscore. It appears to be standard among the experienced bloggers within WA to use H3 for each sub-heading within their post. In addition to this, these same bloggers will keep their paragraphs in short easily readable blocks of texts. Each paragraph containing between 50 and 100 words and rarely more.
I have set this template to have 7 headings and 21 paragraphs. If I take my previous estimates, then my article should contain on average 75 words per paragraph. With a target paragraph count of 21, this should exceed my target of 1,500 words (75 * 21). This allows for the fact that some sections will be shorter than the average and some will be longer.
Summary
Let's take a breather and review. If I move the screen recording down, you can see the stats for this article. They are dynamic, and you will be surprised at how quickly these change and urge you on to greater things!
The editor autosaves for you, so you don't lose any of your valuable words. It didn't take me long to reach my template goals.
There you have it. Get writing!!!
Recent Comments
1
Excellent post.