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Authoring website content in WordPress is pretty easy, but I’ve noticed that some first-time WordPress authors (understandably) get tripped up on a few concepts and tools when starting out. This video and set of tips below it should help beginners avoid some common confusion when beginning to use WordPress to manage a website or blog.

Check out the video:

(If you have trouble seeing the detail, you might want to view it at YouTube and maximize the video)

A few key WordPress authoring points from the video

The main two content types are “Posts” and “Pages”

• “Posts” are blog entries that can be used for timely content such as events, news, etc.
• “Pages” are the content on your website that are more static in nature: “About Us”, “Contact Us”, etc.

“Categories” and “Tags” can (and should) be added to posts.

They help humans and search engines find your content.

• “Categories” are for high level categorization of a post. For example an entertainment magazine might use “Music”, “Movies” and “TV” for the site’s main categories. Posts must be in at least one category, but you can add a single post to several categories if applicable. So, for example, if you write a post about the Godfather movie, the category might be “Movies”
• “Tags” are like keywords. You can add as many tags to a post as you like. It is not unreasonable to add 10 to 20 tags to a post. So, for example, if you write a post about the Godfather movie, keywords might include: movie, mafia, mob, 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, etc.

Two helpful tips

1. Make sure to hit the “Show Kitchen Sink” control in the WordPress editor to reveal a second row of editing tools (see image below):
   
2. If you are authoring or borrowing content from a Microsoft Word document, use the “Paste from Word” tool to avoid most funky character issues.
   

Here are helpful related resources:

• WordPress.org Posts definition
• WordPress.org Pages defintion
• WordPress.org Categories vs. Tags discussion

Releated Videos from WordPress.tv:

• How-to: Writing and Publishing a Post
• How-to: Adding Categories and Tags to Your Post
• How-to: Adding an “About” (or any static page)
  

Good luck authoring your content!