The topic of the presentation is After the Install in which we go through a 4-part series geared towards WP beginners offering some helpful tutorials, advice, tips, tricks and experiences. The parts are broken down as follows:
- Settings (presented by Rindy)
- Themes (presented by me!)
- Plugins (presented by Dana)
- Widgets, Custom Menus, & Tips (presented by Kevin)

(If you are only interested in my segment, it begins about 19 minutes in!)

Note: When using Nextgen Gallery, images are stored separately than Media Library. You can use images stored in your Nextgen gallery archive in posts and pages, but cannot use images already imported into WP Media Library in Nextgen unless you re-import files.

Importing Images into Nextgen Gallery

1)  Login to WP Dashboard and go to Gallery > Add Gallery / Images.

2)  Click “Add new gallery” tab on top, and enter a name into field, then “Add gallery”.

3)  Click “Upload Images” and use Image Uploader to select images to import into Nextgen Gallery. Take note of Gallery ID#.

4)  Using the drop-down, select which gallery to import images into then click “Upload Images”.

Embedding a slideshow into a Post (or Page)

1)  Go to Posts (or Pages) > Add New, or open up a saved Post (or Page).

2)  Place the cursor where you want slideshow to appear within the body of content and type the following shortcode substituting the “x” with gallery ID# and values for slideshow dimensions (width and height are in pixels):

[ slideshow id=x w=400 h=300 ]

3)  “Preview”, then “Save Draft” or “Publish” post (or page).

Embedding a gallery into a Post (or Page)

1)  Go to Posts (or Pages) > Add New, or open up a saved Post (or Page).

2)  Place the cursor where you want slideshow to appear within the body of content and type the following shortcode substituting the “x” for gallery ID:

[ nggallery id=x ]

3)  “Preview”, then “Save Draft” or “Publish” post (or page).

Embed in Sidebar

1)  Copy the entire shortcode from post/page editor after creating it.

2)  Go to Appearance > Widgets, and place a Text widget where you want the slideshow to appear in relation to other widgets.

3)  Paste shortcode and be sure width is set to fit within sidebar.

4)  Save.

Manage Gallery in Nextgen Gallery

1) Go to Gallery > Manage Gallery. Take note of the Gallery ID# (left column).

2) Click the gallery you just created to review and edit settings.

There are add-on plugins that can extend the basic functionality of this plugin. Be sure to discuss what some of these things might be if you are looking to go out-the-box.

Once you are logged in to dashboard, you can usually find the “Gallery” panel somewhere towards the bottom of your left sidebar. When you click “Gallery”, a sub-menu will appear. We will navigate through some of these sub-menu items throughout this tutorial.

Create New Gallery & Upload Images

The first thing we wanna do, is “Add Gallery / Images” so click that sub-menu item.

Next, we want to create a gallery to upload images to, so click the “Add new gallery” tab then in the blank field, give your gallery a name and save it by clicking the “Add Gallery” button.

Now that we named our gallery, we want to upload images, so click on either the “Upload Images” or “Upload a Zip-File” tab (depending on your preference). Click “Browse…” to browse your hard drive for the correct image files to upload. Then click the “Choose gallery” drop-down to choose which gallery to import the images to. And finally, click “Upload images”.

Note: sometimes the upload will return a “http error” message when uploading images, click the Disable flash upload button, then try again to usually fix this issue.

Managing Gallery

Now that we uploaded images to our gallery, lets click “Manage Gallery” in sub-menu to view.

You should see a all the galleries created listed on this page. Take note of the “ID” numbers for each because you will need this later when we go to place your gallery using the shortcode. The ID numbers listed on this page, are all Gallery ID numbers, not to be mistaken with Album ID numbers which we will encounter later.

Click on one of the Gallery titles so we can take a closer look and configure it.

General Gallery Settings

You should see all the images you imported on bottom half of page, but lets focus on top half for a second.

Title: self-explanatory, but this is how the title will render on front-end of site.
Description: This will appear on front-end depending on how you choose to show gallery.
Path: This is where your gallery images are located on the server. By default, Nextgen creates a /gallery/ directory in your wp-content/ directory, so as you create new galleries they will be added to the wp-content/gallery/ directory.
Create new page: If you are planning on using individual pages for each gallery, you can easily create a new page by simply clicking “Add page”. You would select a Parent page from drop-down if your individual galleries will be on their own individual pages and have a Parent page that they are supposed to be sub-pages of. For example, a parent page might be called ‘My Vacations’, and you might have 3 separate galleries called ‘NYC’, ‘Napa’, and ‘Niagra Falls’ respectively. So if you wanted to add a 4th gallery called ‘Virginia Beach’, you would select ‘My Vacations’ from drop-down, then click “Add page” and a page will be added as a sub-page of My Vacations.

Page Link to: Once you create a new page, if the gallery will appear on a specific page, you can select it from drop-down here.

Preview image: This is the images used as a cover image to the gallery.
Author: If there are multiple WP users on account, you can assign which user the gallery will be given credit to.

Remember to “Save Changes” as you go.

There is a button that says “Scan folder for new images”. This only applies if you are uploading images via ftp. You would click this after uploading new images to the wp-content/gallery/ directory via ftp so it searches for new images.

Individual Image Settings

Now that we took a close look at some of the gallery settings on top of the page, lets scroll down to where all the images are listed.

On the left, you see the boxes to select an image. The column next to it, lists the individual Image ID numbers (don’t confuse with Gallery ID, Album ID, or any other ID numbers). These are specific to the images in Nextgen gallery. You will also see your Thumbnail image and Filename/info listed in next 2 columns.

The next 2 columns are for you to add “Alt & Title Text / Description” and comma-separated “Tags”, respectively for optimization. Depending on how you configure gallery to render, this info may appear on hover. Galleries can also be displayed by tags.

The last column gives you the ability to “Exclude” specific images. So let’s say you don’t want the cover image duplicated once you go into the gallery, you can exclude it here; or perhaps you don’t want to delete an image you uploaded because you haven’t made up your mind if you like it or not. Whatever the reason, this give you a quick way to hide it from rendering on front-end.

Above where all the images are listed, you will also notice a drop-down called “Bulk actions”. This is an easy way to apply changes to all (or some) of your images quickly.

First, click the selection box next to “ID” where all the column titles are, to select ALL the images listed, or simply select individual images to apply changes to as desired.

Then click the “Bulk actions” drop-down. There are alot of choices, most of which are straight forward. Feel free to apply bulk actions as you see fit. If you change the thumbnail size settings later, you may need to come back here and “Create new thumbnails”. This is also an easy place to “Delete images”. Remember to click “Apply” after selecting one of the options, then save changes just to be safe.

Next to the “Apply” button, you will also find a button called “Sort gallery”. If you click it, it will take you to a page with all of your gallery images in a grid. You can then click-select an image and drag it somewhere else to change the order in which the images appear. Remember to click “Update Sort Order” after you finish re-ordering your gallery, then click “Back to gallery” to go back to your gallery settings page. If you forget to Update Sort Order, the changes will not take effect.

There are alot of settings and you may end up coming back and adjusting some more as you go. It’s ok. Take your time and be patient, you will soon be creating galleries on the fly without thinking about it. Remember to “Save Changes” as you go!

Creating Albums

Once there are several galleries created, you may decide to organize them into one or several Albums for easier browsing so click “Albums” in the sub-menu.

You first want to type a name in the “Add new album” field, then “Add”.

Managing Albums

Below that, you will see 3 columns. The first one will show the contents of the album you select from drop-down. The middle column will show all the galleries you created. And the last column will show any albums you created.

Once an album has been added, you can “Select album” from drop-down and you will see it appear in the column on the left.

You can easily drag and drop galleries, and even other albums into the selected album (left column) in the order you prefer them to render in.

Other Sub-menu Items

Before addressing the question on your mind (“how do I place my gallery or album on a page?”), I just want to point out that there may be additional items in the Gallery sub-menu for you to peruse and configure some more. Word of caution: tread carefully, be sure to take notes as you go in case you have to put settings back. If you don’t feel comfortable with some of the advanced configurations, feel free to speak to Krista for more specific information or to make some requests for changes.

Now what?… Shortcodes!

Now that we have created galleries and/or albums, we probably want to place them into pages, posts or even widgets using shortcodes.

A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut.

How the “Options” are configured will determine which shortcode to use, but these are the basic shortcodes:

For a slideshow: [ slideshow id=x w=width h=height ]
For a album: [ album id=x template=extend] or [ album id=x template=compact ]
For a gallery: [ nggallery id=x ]
For a single picture: [ singlepic id=x w=width h=height mode=web20|watermark float=left|right ]
For a image browser: [ imagebrowse r id=x ]
To show image sorted by tags: [ nggtags gallery=mytag,wordpress,... ]
To show tag albums: [ nggtags album=mytag,wordpress,... ]

Please note: When placing the shortcode in a post, page or widget be sure to eliminate the extra spaces after the open- bracket and before the close- bracket.

Remember when I said not to confuse your ID numbers? Well this is why. You will need to find the correct Gallery or Album ID number to use here.

So you simply add the shortcode where you want the gallery, album or slideshow to appear, then Publish or Save as Draft so we can see if it worked on frontend. If your ID number is incorrect you will get an error message where the gallery should appear.

If you want to see Nextgen Gallery in action, visit my Creations page. The slideshow on top is utilizing JW slideshow plugin. Below that you will simply find a basic gallery.

Archives

A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on dates (like a monthly or yearly archive). The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific category.

It does not stop there; you can also archive your posts by author or alphabetically. The possibilities are endless. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool.

Feeds

A Feed is a function of special software that allows “Feedreaders” to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds.

Blogrolls

A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a “sidebar” on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. BlogRolling and blo.gs are two websites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs. WordPress has a built-in Link Manager so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and managing their blogroll.

Syndication

A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves “feedreaders”. What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don’t have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these “Syndication” feeds available for the readers to use.

Managing Comments

One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks. We’ll also discuss how to moderate and manage comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in “comment spam”, when unwanted comments are posted to your blog.

• Trackbacks
• Pingbacks
• Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
• Comment Moderation
• Comment Spam

Trackbacks

Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart, creators of the MovableType blog package. SixApart has a good introduction to trackbacks:

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, “This is something you may be interested in.” To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

A better explanation is this:

• Person A writes something on their blog.
• Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
• Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog
• Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s post

The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A’s and Person B’s readers can follow links to the other’s post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.

Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an “excerpt”) of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a “teaser”, letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B’s site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B’s trackback to Person A’s blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of “authenticity” isn’t really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B’s site that sent the trackback.)

SixApart has published an official trackback specification.

Pingbacks

Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks.

The official pingback documentation makes pingbacks sound an awful lot like trackbacks:

For example, Yvonne writes an interesting article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne’s article and comments about it, linking back to Yvonne’s original post. Using pingback, Kathleen’s software can automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to, and Yvonne’s software can then include this information on her site.

There are three significant differences between pingbacks and trackbacks, though.

1. Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).
2. Pingbacks do not send any content.

The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:

• Person A posts something on his blog.
• Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A’s post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
• Person A’s blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B’s post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.

The pingback is generally displayed on Person A’s blog as simply a link to Person B’s post. In this way, all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient). The automatic verification process introduces a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.

Some feel that trackbacks are superior because readers of Person A’s blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say, and then decide if they want to read more (and therefore click over to Person B’s blog). Others feel that pingbacks are superior because they create a verifiable connection between posts.

Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like: there’s no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be. Trackbacks and Pingbacks both aim to provide some verification to blog commenting.

Comment Moderation

Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the different article posts, and can help in tackling comment spam. It lets you moderate comments, & you can delete unwanted comments, approve cool comments and make other decisions about the comments.

Comment Spam

Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post. They can contain one or more links to other websites or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get higher page rank for their domains in Google, so that they can sell those domains at a higher price sometime in future or to obtain a high ranking in search results for an existing website.

Spammers are relentless; because there can be substantial money involved, they work hard at their “job.” They even build automated tools (robots) to rapidly submit their spam to the same or multiple weblogs. Many webloggers, especially beginners, sometimes feel overwhelmed by Comment Spam.

There are solutions, though, to avoiding Comment Spam. WordPress includes many tools for combating Comment Spam. With a little up front effort, Comment Spam can be manageable, and certainly no reason to give up weblogging.

Pretty Permalinks

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn’t change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time).

“Pretty” Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and should therefore be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are “hackable,” meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog. For example, this is how the default Permalink to a story might look in a default WordPress installation:

/index.php?p=423

How is a user to know what “p” represents? Where did the number 423 come from?

In contrast, here is a well-structured, “Pretty” Permalink which could link to the same article, once the installation is configured to modify permalinks:

/archives/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/

One can easily guess that the Permalink includes the date of the posting, and the title, just by looking at the URL. One might also guess that hacking the URL to be /archives/2003/05/ would get a list of all the postings from May of 2003. Pretty (cool). For more information on possible Permalink patterns in WordPress, see Using Permalinks.

Blog by email

Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. WordPress offers this cool feature. Using email, you can now send in your post content to a pre-determined email address & voila! Your post is published!

Post Slugs

If you’re using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. A title such as “I’ll Make A Wish” might be truncated to “ill-make-a-wish”. In WordPress, you can change the Post Slug to something else, like “make-a-wish”, which sounds better than a wish made when sick.

Excerpt

Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in various ways. In WordPress, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post, or generated automatically by using the first few paragraphs of a post or using the post up to a specific point, assigned by you.

Plugins

Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.

WordPress offers simple and easy ways of adding Plugins to your blog. From the Administraton Panel, there is a Plugin Page. Once you have uploaded a Plugin to your WordPress plugin directory, activate it from the Plugins Management SubPanel, and sit back and watch your Plugin work. Not all Plugins are so easily installed, but WordPress Plugin authors and developers make the process as easy as possible.

(source: http://codex.wordpress.org)

Blogs are a form of a Content Management System (CMS) which Wikipedia calls “a system used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation.” Both blogs and Content Management Systems can perform the role of a website (site for short). A website can be thought of as a collection of articles and information about a specific subject, service, or product, which may not be a personal reflection of the owner. More recently, as the role of WordPress has expanded, WordPress developers have begun using the more general term site, in place of blog.

The term Word in WordPress refers to the words used to compose posts. Posts are the principal element (or content) of a blog. The posts are the writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, and, yes, the rantings of the blog’s owner and guest authors. Posts, in most cases, are the reason a blog exists; without posts, there is no blog!

To facilitate the post writing process, WordPress provides a full featured authoring tool with modules that can be moved, via drag-and-drop, to fit the needs of all authors. The Dashboard QuickPress module makes it easy to quickly write and publish a post. There’s no excuse for not writing.

Integral to a blog are the pictures, images, sounds, and movies, otherwise know as media. Media enhances, and gives life to a blog’s content. WordPress provides an easy to use method of inserting Media directly into posts, and a method to upload Media that can be later attached to posts, and a Media Manager to manage those various Media.

An important part of the posting process is the act of assigning those posts to categories. Each post in WordPress is filed under one or more categories. Categories can be hierarchical in nature, where one category acts as a parent to several child, or grandchild, categories. Thoughtful categorization allows posts of similar content to be grouped, thereby aiding viewers in the navigation, and use of a site. In addition to categories, terms or keywords called tags can be assigned to each post. Tags act as another navigation tool, but are not hierarchical in nature. Both categories and tags part of a system called taxonomies. If categories and tags are not enough, users can also create custom taxonomies that allow more specific identification of posts or pages or custom post types.

In turn, post categories and tags are two of the elements of what’s called post meta data. Post meta data refers to the information associated with each post and includes the author’s name and the date posted as well as the post categories. Post meta data also refers to Custom Fields where you assign specific words, or keys, that can describe posts. But, you can’t mention post meta data without discussing the term meta.

Generally, meta means “information about”; in WordPress, meta usually refers to administrative-type information. So, besides post meta data, Meta is the HTML tag used to describe and define a web page to the outside world, like meta tag keywords for search engines. Also, many WordPress-based sites offer a Meta section, usually found in the sidebar, with links to login or register at that site. And, don’t forget Meta Rules: The rules defining the general protocol to follow in using this Codex, or Meta, as in the MediaWiki namespace that refers to administrative functions within Codex. That’s a lot of Meta!

After a post is made public, a blog’s readers will respond, via comments, to that post, and in turn, authors will reply. Comments enable the communication process, that give-and-take, between author and reader. Comments are the life-blood of most blogs.

Finally, WordPress also offers two other content management tools called Pages and custom post types. Pages often present static information, such as “About Me”, or “Contact Us”, Pages. Typically “timeless” in nature, Pages should not be confused with the time-oriented objects called posts. Interestingly, a Page is allowed to be commented upon, but a Page cannot be categorized. A custom post type refers to a type of structured data that different that a post or a page. Custom post types allow users to easily create and manage such things as portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts, quotes, chats, and whatever a user or developer can imagine.

Terminology for the Administrator

Another set of terms to examine are those involving the Administration of a WordPress site. A comprehensive set of Administration Panels enables users to easily administer and monitor their blog. A WordPress administrator has a number of powers which include requiring a visitor to register in order to participate in the blog, who can create new posts, whether comments can be left, and if files can be uploaded to the blog. An Administrator also defines Links and the associated Link Categories which are an important part of a blog’s connection to the outside world.

Some of the main administrative responsibilities of a WordPress blog involve adding, deleting, and managing Registered Users. Administering users means controlling Roles and Capabilities, or permissions. Roles control what functions a registered user can perform as those functions can range from just being able to login at a blog to performing the role administrator.

Another chief concern for the blog administrator is Comment Moderation. Comments, also called discussions, are responses to posts left for the post author by the visitor and represent an important part of “the give and take” of a blog. But Comments must be patrolled for Spam and other malicious intentions. The WordPress Administration Comments SubPanel simplifies that process with easy-to-use screens which add, change, and delete Comments.

And not to be forgotten is the obligation for an administrator to keep their WordPress current to insure that the latest features, bugs, and security fixes are in effect. To accomodate administrators, WordPress has a simple Upgrade Tool to download and install the lastest version of WordPress. There’s no excuse to not upgrade!

The Terminology of Help

The final set of jargon relates to helping you with WordPress. First and foremost is the hanging Help tab that is displayed under the each of the Administration SubPanels. That contextual help describes the function and use of the current SubPanel and provides links to other help topics. And, there are other help resources available to WordPress users; Getting More Help, Finding WordPress Help, Troubleshooting, and WordPress FAQ (frequently asked questions) are good starting points. Also Getting Started with WordPress will jump-start readers into the world of WordPress and the excellent WordPress Lessons provide in-depth tutorials on many of the aspects of using WordPress. Among the most important resources is the WordPress Support Forum where knowledgeable volunteers answer your questions and help solve any problems related to WordPress. And, of course, this Codex which is filled with hundreds of articles designed to make your WordPress experience a success!

History of the WordPress Name

Besides the technical terminology of WordPress, it’s also interesting to know the history of the name, WordPress. The name “WordPress” was originally coined by Christine Selleck (see related post) in response to developer Matthew Mullenweg’s desire to associate his new software project with printing presses. In this sense, press refers to the world of reporters, journalists, columnists, and photographers. An aptly chosen name, because WordPress serves as the printing press that enables its users to publish their words.

(source: http://codex.wordpress.org)

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:

• A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
• An archive of older articles.
• A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
• A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
• One or more “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files.

Some blogs may have additional features beyond these. Watch this short video for a simple explanation for what a blog is.

The Blog Content

Content is the raison d’être for any web site. Retail sites feature a catalog of products. University sites contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites show the latest news stories. For a personal blog, you might have a bunch of observations, or reviews. Without some sort of updated content, there is little reason to visit a web site more than once.

On a blog, the content consists of articles (also sometimes called “posts” or “entries”) that the author(s) writes. Yes, some blogs have multiple authors, each writing his/her own articles. Typically, blog authors compose their articles in a web-based interface, built into the blogging system itself. Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone “weblog client” software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.

Comments

Want an interactive website? Wouldn’t it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? With blogs, they can! Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs.

Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called “pingbacks” or “trackbacks“, they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and websites.

The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?

Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS or “Content Management System”. Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features required to create and maintain a blog, and can make publishing on the internet as simple as writing an article, giving it a title, and organizing it under (one or more) categories. While some CMS programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface where you can work in an easy and, to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available. In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write, and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.

WordPress is one such advanced blogging tool and it provides a rich set of features. Through its Administration Panels, you can set options for the behavior and presentation of your weblog. Via these Administration Panels, you can easily compose a blog post, push a button, and be published on the internet, instantly! WordPress goes to great pains to see that your blog posts look good, the text looks beautiful, and the html code it generates conforms to web standards.

If you’re just starting out, read Getting Started with WordPress, which contains information on how to get WordPress set up quickly and effectively, as well as information on performing basic tasks within WordPress, like creating new posts or editing existing ones.

(source: http://codex.wordpress.org)