As of this writing, I have this set up on my site; just go to one of my post pages or archives and then check out the address bar to see it in action.

Here’s how to do it:

First, login to your WordPress administration. Click “Settings” (or “Options”), then click “Permalinks.”

After the beginning slash in the “Custom Structure” box, add the subdirectory name followed by another slash.

For example, if your permalink structure was this:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

…You would change it to this:

/blog/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Click the “Save Changes” button. Now your post and archive permalinks will contain the subdirectory name that you entered. Enjoy!

• Item A
• Item B
• Item C

…And you want it to look like this:

• Item A

• Item B

• Item C

When you have lists that contain a lot of text, spacing out the items can improve readability.

As far as I know, this isn’t possible in the visual editor (unless you went the semantically-incorrect route of creating a new <ul> for each list item).

To add spacing, you’ll need to go to the HTML editor. In WordPress 2.5, select the “HTML” tab of the post editor; in previous 2.x versions, select the “Code” tab.

Here is what your list code would look like:

<ul>
<li>Item A</li>
<li>Item B</li>
<li>Item C</li>
</ul>

To create spacing, just add the <p> and </p> tags to the beginning and end of each item like so:

<ul>
<li><p>Item A</p></li>
<li><p>Item B</p></li>
<li><p>Item C</p></li>
</ul>

Then save the post and voilà! Spaced lists.

1. Change a Post’s URL — If you’re using Pretty Permalinks, you can open the “Post Slug” section of the “Write Post” page and type in the text that you’d like to appear in the post’s URL. Among other things, this can be useful for shortening the URL of a post that has an abnormally long title.

2. Post Macros — Install and configure the Shortcut Macros plugin, enter a shortcut text in the “Post” field of the Write Post page, save the post, and the shortcut will be expanded with the full text of your choosing.

3. Disable the Visual Editor — By default the Write Post page has two tabs for post composition: “Visual” and “Code.” If you’d prefer to use the “code” editor exclusively, you can disable the visual editor.

4. Publish Posts in the Future — The Write Post page has a feature that lets you “work ahead” on your blog. Learn about it here: How to Publish Posts in the Future.

5. Custom Fields — Use this section to attach additional bits of information to your posts. The WordPress Codex has a good tutorial on using Custom Fields.

6. Excerpt — Excerpts appear in lieu of the full post content on category/tag/author/date archives, assuming your theme supports it. By default, WordPress uses the first 55 words of the post as the excerpt. However, you can specify your own using the “Excerpt” section (or “Optional Excerpt” before WordPress 2.5).

7. Remove Unused Functionality Bloat — Streamline your blogging workflow by using the Custom Write Panel plugin to create your own version of the “Write Post” page that omits functionality you don’t use (for example, perhaps the Trackbacks, Post Password, and/or Discussion sections).

Before you start adding content, you’ll need to log in to the WordPress administration center. On your blog there should be a link that says “Login.” Click that, type in your username and password, and click Login.

Posts

Posts are the articles you publish on your blog, like the ones you’d find in a newspaper. The article you’re reading right now is a WordPress post. Posts are chronological (they’re published on a certain date), they can be categorized and tagged, and visitors can leave comments.

To add a post to your blog, click the “Write” button on the top administration menu.

The two most important input fields you see will be Title (where you put the title of the post/article) and Post (where you put the content).

Two other important fields are Categories and Tags. Both of them help you organize your content, but they’re not identical. Here’s a good analogy of their differences from the post Putting Some Thought Into Blog Categories and Tags:

In the simplest of terms, I think of categories as the table of contents for your blog, a kind of general outline that directs visitors to general topics that you blog about. Tags are more like the index page of a book, a list of key words people will use to search for specific terms.

So categories are more structured, whereas tags are more free-form. A post will usually have one or two categories and several or more tags. (Or you can forgo tags altogether if you wish.)

To add a category, first click the plus sign next to “Categories” if you can’t see the list. Then check off a category or two from the list, or type in a new one and click “Add.”

To add tags, type them in the “Tags” box and separate them with commas.

There are many other fields on the Write Post page, but you don’t need to fill them out for purposes of basic blog publishing.

If you want to save your post but keep working on it, click “Save and Continue Editing.” To save your post so you can come back to it later, click “Save.” If you’re ready for the world to see your post, click “Publish.”

Pages

Pages have a title and content like a Post, but they are static (they’re not date-oriented), by default they can’t be categorized or tagged, and visitors typically can’t leave comments on them. Pages can also be hierarchical, whereas Posts can’t.

Pages can give information about the blog, the author, or other non-article content that should always be accessible instead of being archived.

To add a page, click the “Write” button and then click “Write Page.” With the exception of the aforementioned differences, the “Write Page” panel functions very similarly to the “Write Post” section.

For more information, check out this tutorial on WordPress pages, as well as some examples of how you should NOT use WordPress Pages.

Widgets

Widgets are “blobs” of information about your blog that go in the sidebar.

Some examples: a list of your categories, a “tag cloud” (a free-form list in which the more popular tags have a larger font), a list of monthly archive links, a piece of text, etc.

To activate widgets, go to Appearance in your WordPress admin, then click Widgets.

Drag-and-drop the widgets onto the sidebar boxes to arrange them the way you want. If there’s a button to the right of the widget’s name, click it to view and edit additional options for that widget.

Note: Not all themes support widgets. If widgets don’t appear to be working, try installing a theme that supports them.

Conclusion

I hope this article provided helpful content management information for WordPress beginners out there. Stay tuned to The WordPress Expert for more WordPress tips, tutorials, and information.

If you have any questions or comments, please voice them in the comments section below.