Creating a New Blog Post

To keep your blog fresh and engaging, it’s important to regularly publish new posts. In this article, you’ll learn how to create, customize and publish or schedule a blog post on your website. Once you get the hang of it, creating a new blog post will be a fun and easy way to reach your supporters with the latest news.

For more advice on managing a blog, like how to plan your posts with an editorial calendar, be sure to check out all our blogging tips. You can also find a treasure trove of blog post ideas in our free guide!

Helpful Terminology

• Unlike creating a new page, which can be added anywhere on your site, a new post will only appear on your website’s blog.
• The sidebar is an area of a post that displays information that is not part of the main content. The sidebar is usually a vertical column on the right side of the post.
• A category is assigned to each post to help keep your blog organized by topics that your readers might be interested in.
• The featured image is the main photo associated with the post. It displays as the header image at the top of a post and along with a summary of your post on the main blog page.
• A meta description is a brief summary of a post’s content that may be displayed in search results so users know what the post is about.

How Do I Add a New Post?

Once you’ve logged in and are on your site’s Dashboard, the easiest way to create a new post is to hover over the “Posts” item on the left-hand side and click “Add New”.

Customizing a New Post

Once you’ve added a new post, you’ll want to build it out by adding content and adjusting any post settings as needed.

Start by giving your post a title. From there, review the Document settings on the right side of the screen:

• Select the correct author for your post. Authors are determined by your Users settings. Learn more about adding guest authors.
• Select a category for your blog post.
• Add a featured image, if you have one. If you don’t add an image, the published post will simply not show this section, and your post won’t have an image associated with it when it shows on places like the homepage or main blog page.

If you’d like to turn off comments on this specific post, you can do that under Discussion. Learn why we typically encourage comments.

Add Content

Now it’s time to build your post! Follow the instructions for adding and formatting content on a page.

Avoid starting with a blank page, and use the Page Writer to help you write your blog post. Answer a few quick questions and the Page Writer will generate a first draft of your post in minutes.

Add a Meta Description

In the Yoast SEO section at the very bottom of the page, add a meta description to serve as a short summary of your post for search traffic. Get tips for writing meta descriptions.

Add a More Block

Adding a read more tag to the first few sentences of your blog content creates a short and simple excerpt. This excerpt appears in areas where your blog posts are displayed on the site, such as the homepage and the main blog page.

• Determine where you want to cut off the text for the excerpt. It needs to be at the end of a Text block.
• Click “Add block” and select the More block. You might need to search for it.

• You’ll see a dotted line with the words “READ MORE”. This line will not be visible in the published post. Here is an example of how the Read More tag appears when editing a post:

This is what an excerpt looks like on the main blog page of a site using the Pioneer theme.

Save Your Post as a Draft

Once you’ve customized your post, or whenever you feel like saving your work, click the Save Draft button. It’s located in the Publish section in the top right of your page. You can save your post as a draft indefinitely until you are ready to publish.

Once you have a saved draft, you’ll also see that a Permalink has been created based on your post’s title. You can adjust this URL as desired, like to make it more concise.

Preview and Publish Your Post

Before publishing, we recommend opening a preview of the post to make sure everything looks correct. Click the Preview button at the top of the page on the right-hand side. A preview version of the post will open in a new window.  You can close the preview when you’re done.

When you’re ready to publish, click the blue Publish button, and the post will be immediately added to the blog.

Schedule a post for a later time or date

If you don’t want your post to publish immediately, you can schedule the blog post to publish at a future date and time. The post will not be live or publicly accessible until it is published.

• In the Document settings, find the Publish option and click where it says “Now”
• Choose the date and time you’d like the post to be published.

• Click outside of the calendar view to close it.
• Verify that the date and time are correct.
• Instead of a blue Publish button, you’ll now see a Schedule button. Click this button when you’re ready to schedule the post at your chosen date and time.

If needed, you can always adjust the schedule later by editing the post and changing the date and time.