A Quick Guide to Adding Entries to the NIWeekBlog
Thank you for your interest in publishing your thoughts on the NIWeekBlog. This guide contains everything you need to know on how to use WordPress, the engine that makes the NIWeekBlog possible.
Logging In
Main Welcome Page
Create a New Entry
Uploading Images
Manipulating Images
Attaching Images
Logging in
To login to the NIWeekBlog click here or go to the home page and click on the Login (To Post) link. You will be brought to the main WordPress login page. Please enter the username and password you created when you registered. This can be changed after you login.
Very Important. Do not select "Remember me?" if you are on a public terminal!
Main Welcome Page
Once logged in you will see the main welcome page. From here you can write a new entry, edit your existing entries or edit your profile. You can start authoring right away.
Create New Entry
After you log in you should see the Write page. If you don't then click on the Write link. Another page will be displayed. Here is where you enter your message, commentary etc. First you need to give a Title. This will be displayed at the top of your message (always remember to create a title). You can optionally select a specific category that you feel applies to your post. These are used to organize posts on the main page. If you cannot find an appropriate category then do not select any category or pck the General category.
Post Status
Selecting "Publish" will cause the post to be published to the weblog. (Note that a post marked "Publish" can be changed to "Draft" later by editing the post.) Selecting "Draft" will cause the post to be saved; it will show up in the "Your Drafts" section of the "Post/Edit" page, but will not be published to the weblog.
Quicktags
A series of buttons above the top of the "Post" box that help to insert markup in the body of the post. Most of them work like "toggles;" the first time you click them, they insert the open tag (for example, <strong> ) and the next time you click them, they insert the close tag ( </strong> ). They also have keyboard shortcuts; you can use these in most browsers by hitting the 'alt' key (meta on Mac?) along with a letter. (See table below.) Quicktags for "image" and "link" insert a single tag with no close-tag, so they do not function as toggles. They pop up entry boxes that ask for the information needed to insert the tag properly. Try them and see.
The "Close all open tags" Quicktag button (labeled "Close Tags ") is cool; it will add all required close tags at once, and in the right order. So if you have inserted <li><em><strong><u>some text , just click "Close Tags " or hit alt-c (for "close") and you will get </u></strong></em></li> . Another thing. When using the LINK button, make sure you first highlight any text you want to use as a link text in the entry fields.
Uploading Images
You can only upload JPG file format images. The size of the images can be any size. When you upload the image, WordPress automatically creates a 640x480 version of the image for you so you don't have to resize the image before you upload, it is done for you. It also automatically creates thumbnails to include in the post. If you need to rotate the images, you can also do that as well, right within the web interface. You don't need to rotate before you upload. Before you can upload and add an image you must click on the button labeled save and continue editing.
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After this is done, your window below your post will look like this: (you might have to scroll down to see this section in your browser).
On the bottom you will see a frame where you can manipulate images. You can upload new images one at a time and then decide to embed selective images wthin your post. If you click the Upload Ne File link you will be prompted for the image form your local hard drive. Click on the Browse... button to select an image path from your local hard drive to upload to the niweekblog. Click on the Upload Files (s) button to upload the selected file.
After the image has been uploaded you will see the status in the file list.
Manipulating images
Before you attach an image to your post, you can edit your images. If you hover over the image icon 
you can see a preview of the image on the server.
You can also rotate the images clockwise or counter clockwise by clicking on the rotate icons.
Of course you can also delete the image form the server by clicking on the trashcan icon. Be careful not to delete images that are linked and inserted into an existing post. If you want to organize your images then you can also create subdirectories and upload to them if you like.
Attaching Images to the Post
Now that you uploaded the image onto the server, you must tell WordPress how to include the images in your post. To include the image just click on the image icon in the file list. This will cause the image(s) to be placed in the frame on the top. If you want to include a whole directory of images at once then just click on the subfolder
icon. Make sure the preview checkbox is enabled for all the images.
That's all there is to it! When your done with all the text and image editing, you can click on the Publish button to make your masterpiece visible to the world. If you are not ready to publish then you can click Save. This will allow you to log-in again later and
If you like, you can now go back and upload more images and include them in the top image list field. Don't forget that when you're done to click either Publish or save to get the article posted to the blog main page.
Very Important. Don't forget to Logout from your current session after you have finished your last post. Another way to automatically log-out is to close down your current internet browser.