Yesterday, I provided info about how to write and publish blog posts. Today I'm going to discuss additional WordPress.com features that you might want to try out as you continue working on your blog.

Note: I'm only going to be able to show you a few of the features available, so I highly recommend you go through all the screens on your Dashboard to see what other options you have to enhance your blog. All of the categories in the left-hand nav expand to show you more subcategories. Also, every page has a Help button at the top right. If you click it, it will give you useful information about the page you're currently on.

Dashboard

This is where you can get a variety of information about what's been going on with your blog, including lists of recent posts and comments, basic stats, etc. It's always good to scan this page once in a while.

Edit Posts

After you've published a post, you may find you need to make changes to it. Click the Posts button and an Edit option will come up.

When you click the name of the post, you'll go back to the same screen you used to write it originally so you can make edits. A couple of things to keep in mind:

• If you make changes to a post, the published date doesn't change.
• You should think about whether you need to alert readers to updates. In some cases, like fixing a typo, probably not. But if you're making a substantive change, you may want to call it out somehow so if people who have read the post before come back to it, they notice the change. (If the change is really big, like correcting an important piece of information, you may want to write a separate post about it and link to that one from the original.

Media Library

Yesterday we uploaded an image as we were writing the post. In the Media Library, you can see all the files you've uploaded, and see which posts they're used in, as well as upload new files by themselves to use later.

Links

This is where you list other websites that you think may be of interest to your readers. Most themes will have a widget to display these links in your sidebar.

Pages

When you write a blog post, it appears on your home page and then moves down as new posts are added. You may, however, have content that you want to be constantly visible. That's what Pages let you do. They look the same as a post (they can even have comments on them) but they occupy a permanent place.

Most themes (if not all) will provide you with a default About page (that you should definitely go in and edit before you go live!) and you can create as many other ones as you want. Where it appears on your blog will depend on your theme. For example, in the Regulus theme that I used for my example blog, every page gets a tab across the top (I don't know what happens if I had 20 pages, but I'm not going to test that). Also, you can often add a widget to your sidebar that lists all your pages.

Comments

The Comments page lists all the ones you've received and lets you approve or delete them. To actually set whether or not you'll accept comments, what information people need to provide, whether you need to approve them or be notified of them, etc. click the Settings > Discussion links at left.

Settings

I'm not going to go through all of these (but you should!). The only one I'm going to call out is on the Reading screen. That's where you can set how many posts you want to appear on your home page before you get a link to older posts. It's definitely a matter of personal preference and also affected by whether you're posting full entries on the home page or just teasers.

Well, I think those are most of the main features you're going to want to think about as you're getting started as a blogger. However, if you see anything while you're working that you don't understand, feel free to ask. (Mention what theme you're using too, because not all themes have the same options.)

Happy blogging!

Posted in Blogging, How To, Series, Social Media