Many of you have asked for a “How The Hell Do I Do This” Page. Here it is.

STEP ONE: Sign up for an account at WordPress.com. Send me an email to me — steviesaf (at) gmail dot com — telling me which of your personal emails you used for that account. (Do NOT send a password, ever, in an email, unless you are helping me spirit $100,000,000 out of Nigeria.)

Once you have heard back from me, here’s the guide. (Originally written for Muffy Whitney, now available in paperback.)

DON’T PANIC.

Some quickie cleanup before you start — you may want to print this for reference.

You should be all set to post now. When you login, up top you should see “My Dashboard,” at the top.

When you mouse over that, whs86.wordpress.com will drop down. Click on that.

The main entry page will come up. this is called “The Dashboard.”

Before you start writing, click on “My Profile.” We want to make one change so that when you post, your name comes up as “Your Name” and not the username you picked (as in “steviesaf”). So click on “My Profile.”

On the left, you’ll see a box with “Name”

At the bottom it will have an arrow with a dropdown box. Click on the arrow and it will give you choices. If you entered “Your Name” when you signed up, that will be once of the choices. (If it’s not there, put “Your Name” into the “Nickname” field, hit the Update Profile button on the upper right, come back to this page and do it again. It will be there.) If it’s there the first time, hit Update Profile and you’re all done.

NOW YOU’RE READY TO START BLOGGIN!

PART ONE: BASIC TEXT BLOG

• On the Dashboard, Click “Write” in the light blue bar near the top.

It will bring you to the main entry thing where you write a post. (You have a choice to write a page here. Don’t. That’s for something else. You’re writing a post.)

• Put the headline where it says “Title” and the text where it says “Post.”

You can bold or italicize using the buttons on top, the same as you would if you were word processing.

Over on the right, you’ll see some categories. This is so we can keep these entries straight. They’re also pretty fuzzy, so it’s not a strict set of rules.

• Pick as many (or as few) categories as you like.

• Hit Publish. You’ve just blogged.

For the uninitiated, I suggest just trying a text entry first, to get the hang of it. But that’s all there is to basic blogging and that’s all 99% of the planet will ever do.

When you’re ready to venture into pictures, things are a wee bit harder, but honestly not that bad. The tricky part is making sure they’re not enormous pictures.

PART TWO – PICTURES:

This is a little harder, but once you’ve done it, you’ve figured it out.

The pictures need to be about 500 pixels wide or less, give or take. How do you know how wide that is? Well, you’ve received emails where someone sent a GIANT HONKIN’ PICTURE, right? Too big. That’s what happens when someone doesn’t resize a picture they took with a digital camera.

Most pictures you have in your photo albums that you scan at the size they actually are will be perfect.

In some photo programs, you have the option to “EXPORT” or “RESIZE” a picture. That’s where you change the size of the thing. Or you can wing it, post the picture, and see if it fits. Again, experiment and if it blows up the page you can always go back to the post and kill it.

• Once you have that picture, save it on your computer.

• Go back to that POST ENTRY page in wordpress now.

See just below the post entry field where it says UPLOAD? You upload pictures there the same way you would if you were uploading them to a service to have them printed, or if you were uploading them to include them in an email.

• Click on browse.
• Browse to the picture you want.
• Choose it. You don’t need to enter a title or description.

A little thumbnail of the pic should appear.

• Click on the button next to it that says SHOW: FULL SIZE. Ignore the other buttons.

Make sure you’ve clicked inside the POST field up top where you want that picture to be, because….

You’re going back to the button next to your picture that says “SEND TO EDITOR.” That places the picture inside the post.

• Click on Publish. You’ve just posted a blog entry with a picture.

PART THREE: WHAT IF I SCREW UP?

No problem. You’re in good company. I have broken every bit of software I’ve ever used. You can always edit or delete your post.

• Click on “Manage”
• Find your post (It’s in the list and is probably at or near the top)
• Click edit
• The post will come back and you can make any changes you want OR
• Click delete and it will die a horrible and painful death.

Welcome to WAE. Thanks for blogging. Keep your hands inside the bus at all times.