Now that we have covered all of the necessary basic functions of the WordPress editor toolbar menu, we will be focusing on some of the areas to the right of the editor. This area of the editor looks pretty much the same for both posts and pages except for one thing. I will first explain functions for Posts.

POST CATEGORIES, TAGS & FEATURED IMAGE

When it comes to Posts it is best to place them into categories based on what they fall under. If it is a post that has a video, it can be placed in the video category, a dated post – in the 2015 category, about ways to diet – in the weight loss category. Because every post must be in at least one category, by default every post is listed as uncategorized until you place it in a Category of your own choosing.

Categories help your posts to be found easier on your website. This helps with the UX (User Experience) and as we already know, the better the UX the better the SEO. So when creating Categories for your website posts, make sure to pick good ones that are not too broad. Two Categories should be enough.

As for Post Tags, see above image, you should treat these like keywords in that they are more specific than the Categories and will help to drive more traffic to your posts. Being that these tags reside on a WordPress website, other WordPress users can gain access to your posts by doing a search for a specific WordPress tag. Tags help your content to get noticed by more people. Try not to use more than 3 Tags per post.

Many times I see members wondering how they can get the image to appear on their Home Page Blog Roll, next to or under their Post titles. To set these images you must use the Set Featured Image link, see above image. This process will work the same way as the “Add Media” button described on the previous page.

Be forewarned that the entire image you see in the Featured Image preview, as in the image above, may not appear as a whole image when viewed on your Home Page blog roll. It may appear with either 25% of its top or bottom cut off. It all depends on the size of the image used and also the theme itself. If you should set it and it doesn’t look right, you can always change it at any time.