You can use the blog section for posting church news, articles, etc.
Contents
Blog Page
First you will need to add a page to show your latest blog posts. You also need to tell WordPress this is your blog posts page.
- Go to Pages > Add New.
- Enter a title (such as “Blog” or “Church News”) and any content that you want to appear at the top of the blog.
- Click Document, then…
- Under Template, choose “Blog”.
- Optionally set a Featured Image (see Section Banners for related information).
- Click Publish.
- Go to Settings > Reading.
- Under A static page, set Posts page to the page you just added, then click Save Changes.
How to add your blog page
Publishing Posts
Adding a Post
- Go to Posts > Add New.
- Enter a post title and write your content.
- Click Document, then…
- Choose or add Categories for your post.
- Optionally enter some Tags (keywords) for your post.
- Optionally set a Featured image to upload an image for the post.
- Write a short Excerpt (post summary) or use the “More” block in your content.
- Click Publish.
Adding a new blog post
Editing and Deleting Posts
- Go to Posts > All Posts.
- Hover over a post to see the Edit and Trash options
How to edit and delete posts
Excerpt or “More” Block
Excerpts are shown in lists of posts. If you don’t provide an excerpt, WordPress will auto-generate one from your post content. This is usually fine but sometimes you want to provide something specific that would be better than the auto-generated excerpt (which is taken from the first part of your content).
Writing an excerpt to represent your post
Alternatively (if your theme supports it), you can use the “More” block in your content and everything above it will be shown instead of the excerpt. This is good for letting readers begin reading the first part of your actual article. Once they reach a certain point they’ll have to click the “Read More” button to view the whole post.
How to add a “More” block
Categories and tags can be added while adding a post but there are also areas for managing them separately.
- Go to Posts then Categories or Tags.
- Hover over an item to see the Edit and Delete options.
Blog Widgets
You can go to Appearance > Customize > Widgets to add widgets to show your blog posts and categories. Widgets can be shown in your theme’s widget areas (which may include homepage, sidebar and/or footer). There are several widgets especially useful for blog posts.
- CT Posts – list most recent blog posts.
- CT Categories – list blog categories (optionally as dropdown).
- CT Archives – lists monthly date archives (optionally as dropdown).
- Tag Cloud – standard WordPress widget that can list blog tags.
- Recent Comments – standard WordPress widget listing recent comments.
- Calendar – standard WordPress widget showing small calendar of posts by day.
The CT Posts widget is also useful for showing the latest posts on the Homepage (for supported themes).
Read the Widgets guide for more information.
Each author gets their own archive at a URL like this:
http://yourname.com/author/username/
If you click an author’s name on a post, their archive will load.
You can show an author box below each post and on each author’s archive (click an author’s name on a post to view their archive). The box shows the author’s name, Gravatar image and a short bio.
- Go to Users > All Users.
- Click to edit a user.
- Provide text in the Biographical Info field.
Feeds
WordPress creates RSS feeds for your latest posts and each archive (date archives, categories, tags, etc.). See Feeds in the WordPress Code for details.
Most of our themes let you show an RSS feed icon in the header or footer that links to your blog feed. Go to Appearance > Customizer to set this up.
Read Recommendations for a plugin that will add Facebook, Twitter, etc. buttons to your posts in order for readers to share with others.
Blog as Homepage
Do this if you want to show your blog as the homepage instead of using the standard Homepage. This is not common for church websites.
- Go to Settings > Reading
- Set Front page displays to “Your latest posts”