Editing WordPress Posts

This video shows basic post editing in the WordPress Post editor and the concept of using blocks to layout your post.

What are Blocks?

Current design methods involve the use of “blocks” to create the layout for your page or post. Think of blocks as a section of a page you can rearrange or edit individually. A great analogy is how music is divided up into verses, choruses, bridges and perhaps an intro. By dividing the whole into smaller parts is a great way to focus on individual sections of your layout to make things more manageable. A block will usually contain a type of element in it, or several elements.

What are Elements?

Blocks will typically contain one or more elements. By default, the WordPress blocks will be named after the elements they contain but note that blocks can contain multiple elements.

There are many types of blocks/elements you can use to create your post. The most common ones are listed below:

• Heading – A heading for a group of text, much like a title. Headings will appear as H1, H2, H3 (heading 1, heading 2, heading 3). You will start with H1 for your main points, and sub points of text will use H2, H3 much like taking notes in school.
• Paragraph – A paragraph of text is exactly how it sounds. When you click <Enter> at the end of a paragraph it automatically creates a new paragraph block so you can continue writing. Some properties of the paragraph you can change are bold, italicize, font size, colour, and justification (left, centre, right).
• Image – Insert an image on the page. You can upload the image directly from the post or pull them from the media library.
• Columns – You can use columns to space multiple elements across the width of your page. So for example if you wanted to display three paragraphs equally wide across the page you can use columns to do this.
• Spacer – This is an easy way to add horizontal space in a page. You can choose exactly how much space it takes up via the block options.
• Youtube – Insert the location (URL) of the Youtube video and it will display this video on your post.

What are Properties?

Properties are a type of setting you can change on an element. In WordPress they are often called the “options” that can be accessed via the options sidebar on the right, or the floating bar above the block.

Don’t Forget to Set the Category!

It’s very easy to forget to set the category on the post. The category is used by your pages to display the posts with a particular category. If you don’t set a category, it’s likely your post will not be visible to the page.

Feel Free to Experiment

Feel free to experiment with different types of blocks/ elements to get the desired result. The best thing to do is to click the “Switch to Draft” (top bar, near the right) ahead of time so that your work in progress is not visible to the public as you’re editing it. As your editing continues you can preview your changes but clicking “Preview” (also top bar, near the right).