Q. OK, I just published my blog post.

And as great as it is, I notice that, in my thoughtful deliberation on the topic at hand, my post is not would could be called “compact”. In fact, it takes up most of the front page of the blog.

Yet I notice that some people have found a way to put a “teaser” line or two out on the front page and a link to open the full post at the end of that blurb.

How can I do the same?

A. Well, it’s easy once you know the trick.

Simply click to insert the blinking curser after the end of your first or second sentence, and click on the toolbar button that looks like the one in the picture.

Done!

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Click here or on the image to run a 30 second audio slideshow explaining how to add links to the body of your post with just a couple of clicks.

You’ll find that your links get a lot more views when people don’t have to copy and paste addresses into their browser.

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Q. Why does my blog’s font look different than the rest of the blog?

Probably because you wrote the post in MS Word or some other word-processing application.

That is a smart way to write, but there are a couple of tricks to help you give it the clean sans-serif “WordPress look” that is so easy on the eyes.

1. Simply do a “save as” or “export” of your word doc, and select “plain text” or just “simple text”. Then open that new file and copy the text out of it. Paste it into your blog editing window, then break it up into paragraphs as you see fit.

Remember, a little white space every few sentences makes it so much easier on the reader!

2. Just go ahead and paste in your regular Word-created text. Click the HTML tab as in the image and you’ll see you text is shot full of HTML code stuffed into by the Word application you used. Now you know why
MS Word is such a bloated big application that takes too long to open!

Don’t worry about all the code in the body of your text, but strip away all that you see before your very first word, and click “Save Draft”.

Then continue editing or hit publish.

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We have three common questions:

Q. I just posted but can’t see my post.

A. Make sure you hit the “reload” or “refresh’ button in your browser so it doesn’t give you the cached version of the page.

If that doesn’t work, use the pull-down menu “My Dashboards” at top left of page

Make sure only one blog name appears in that menu; if you see more than one there is a good chance that you have inadvertently posted to your own blog which you may have created without even knowing it when you accepted the original invitation to WordPress.

If that happens go  to the editor window of that post and copy the text, then go back up to My Dashboards and choose the Education870 blog. You should now be in the dashboard of Education870; got to “Posts” in left margin and click “add new”, then paste your text into the editor window.

Make sure to title it and choose the right category for it, and hit publish.

Q. I posted awhile ago and I can’t find my post now. What gives?

A. The front page can only hold so many posts and eventually the posts at the bottom “scroll off” and onto page 2 or 3 of the blog.

You can click “previous” at the bottom of the front page to go “back in time”, but it’s better to click on the name of the category you posted under . It will be on the front page in the left-hand margin.

Q. What if I tried that and still can’t find my post?

A. Make sure you are looking for a post and not a “comment”; if you left a comment on someone else’s post it will always be nested underneath that original post.

A reminder: put your name in the title of your post ie “Graham’s response to LER 1″ so that Dr. Spooner can quickly identify your post.

A navigating tip: When you do scroll to your post, click the headline to open the full post. Then bookmark/favourite it so that you can go directly to it the next time you check the site.