From this, via MNTLPLX:

To this (mentioned above):

To this gem, reported by Zoron’s own Hygh Dephunychun:

Talk about transcendence!

I’ve been working on Planet Zoron’s new design. While it’s not complete, yet, I (as the designer and all) am perfectly content with giving sneak peeks and glimpses into the overall process.

So from the Alien files, we have this fella:

That came, compliments of MNTLPLX, and school just happened to provide me (with a bit of ‘direction’ from me) the opportunity to work on the Zoronic logo to kick off the redesign I’ve been itching to do for well over a year now. So, for my final design in my advanced illustration class, I submitted this (well worth the fight I had to have to get to do him up for it!):

Thanks to some tricks I was learning in my other class (advanced imaging), I managed to squeeze in this header design:

After surviving my 3D Modeling class (more on that particular fiasco later on), I finally got a chance to get my schemes and plots underway. To see a live version of the undertakings – until I pull in my next clients’ plots and schemes – visit my devLab. If it’s not there, of course, you can always visit Zoron ’cause I’ve likely seen my plots and schemes through to fruition.

But, just for the sake of my Archives:

I can’t wait until we’re done and ready to launch!

Me, of course…it takes me time…I suffer from ADD, OCD, occasional dyslexia, and flat out airheadedness! A day of working off and on over about 8 hours (all told) I was about ready to pull out my hair and give in. But when I finally put together that last tiny piece of the puzzle…It’s just too hard to not brag about it and share how I did it!

Now, for those of you I’m working for (the select few I do, anyway) – if you want it, let me know when next your site is called for a redesign! LOL For the rest of you who might be coding or want to – those of you know you’re at least this brave and handy with image editing – here’s an awesome tutorial for doing rollover menus with CSS instead of Javascript!

CSS Image Rollover Tutorial on WebVamp.

Painstakingly tedious but awesome nonetheless. And REALLY not bad for someone who’s only ever sat down to draw one other face in her 30ish years of wielding a marking utensil.

I sketched up the above, after a couple of rather horrible attempts at going about it digitally to start. A quick TWAIN capture later, I was on my way to tracing her electronically. Hundreds upon hundreds of penstrokes, Ctrl+Zs, and drags of little tiny dots later. (After what felt like only an hour – but was closer to 3):

I went to sleep, finally crashing at about 2, and I swear I dreamt I was editing that sucker most of the night.

I couldn’t resist. As soon as I got my morning ‘duties’ out of the way and was waiting for the munchkin to finish getting ready for school, I hopped back into Illustrator to see if I could figure out where/how I needed to tweak to get her looking at least a little better. I didn’t get much done until I got back home from dropping her off at 8:30 and – only an hour or so of tweaks later – I proudly present this:

Anyway, it recently came to my attention that I’m at 97/124 credits for school, officially a senior, and they’re finally getting to stuff I don’t know. Last session I had a video production/marketing course and this session I have advanced imaging and illustration – both of which are kicking ass and it’s only the first week. I’ve already come up with a few images but I’m sittin on one in particular cause it’s a music thing and isn’t official til it’s official.

Meanwhile, my first weeks’ class assignments:

“Eden’s Pets Presents: Baby Makin” (A buddy’s mating his albino and I’m expectin on a baby!)

“Effective Use of Time” (A combo punch kindly provided by Duct Tape Marketing and The 8th Habit)

Most of you (musicians, poets, and professionals) fall into one of a handful of categories:

1. Paying for hosting through a company like Yahoo or GoDaddy (the nightmares that they are) so that you can enjoy having your own name/brand on a corner of the web.
2. Wanting to have your own name/brand on a corner of the web but haven’t followed through on it yet.
3. Utilizing ‘free’ blogs because you have a lot to say – more than social networks and micro-blogs allow – and don’t think you can afford (or want to pay) what it would cost to run your own site.
4. Having no online presence beyond social networks, music sharing websites, and things of that nature.

Major brands all across the board wouldn’t be caught dead with a URL that was anything but their name and you shouldn’t either. I’m on a mission to upgrade you all.

Over the next month or so, I’ll be working to get set up as a bonafide web host. This will mean that, instead of dealing with the big dogs trying to get your website set up and maintained, you can go through me. And, unlike the big dogs, I’m setting up on a sliding scale – ready to spread the wealth.

So, to start, here’s what I want to offer: $3/month (just $36 for the year) and $11-20/year for your domain name of choice, depending on the name and assuming it’s available for regular purchase/renewal. (Most will be $11 but there are some few and far between exceptions.)

And here’s the cool part: My goal is to have at least enough people to drop the cost for hosting to $1/month as we head into 2012. Once we reach that point, I’ll be rewarding my early birds with free hosting and, if they’ve brought friends in with them, free domain renewal.

Good? Good.

Whether you have your own site already or want one made, if you want to get in on this, email me with details and any questions you may have. kiva[at]authenticvisionllc[dot]com.

Let’s get it!

Let it be known, however, that I only endorse their editing tools for smaller jobs and easily updating your previously uploaded images should your sizing requirements change. It’s easier and far more efficient to edit lots of pictures offline then upload!

On to the Finale!

Well, the last for the time being at least. Heh.

First, make sure your cursor is where you want the image to ‘pop up.’ If you have the cursor in the middle of a sentence and insert an image, that image will show up smack dab in the middle of that sentence, chopping it up who knows what kind of way. Once you’re set where you want to be, pressing the Add an Image button up there by Upload/Insert brings a dialog box much like the one below except blank at the bottom. Notice the tabs at the top. To save myself some space, we’re going to pretend that I pressed the Select button, chose my picture, and it uploaded successfully.

1 – From Computer

WP makes it EZ: You can choose multiple files easily (if you have them and want to) and have them all upload at once. To select all the pictures (say, 1 through 10) use Ctrl+A; select pictures 2 through 5 by clicking on 2, holding down shift, and clicking on 5; OR select by holding down Ctrl and click to choose 1, 3, and 9. If you do upload multiples, you will have a rather small listing of the pictures and clicking ‘Show’ next to each one will get you to all the options. I’m about to cover.

2 – The image thumbnail.

The image thumbnail – and the image as a whole – can be edited via number 3, the Edit button. Assuming you haven’t already processed your images, pressing that will give you this (sliding it in just above all the stuff I showed above):

The absolute first thing to check out here is j/k – Thumbnail Settings – down on the bottom right. J shows your current thumbnail and k gives you the options to edit all the image sizes (more on those in a few), just the thumbnail, or everything but the thumbnail. If you’ve done your processing, the only thing you’re likely to want to edit is the thumbnail so make sure that option is selected. Take care with the other two!

a/i – There are a few ways to go about cropping (cutting up) an image, should you be so inclined. The easiest is to click and drag across the left hand picture to make a box outline. Doing this makes numbers start scrolling in the selection box (i) off to the right. A more specific approach is to type the numbers into that box directly after you start your click/drag box. This is handy if you know exactly what you want the final size to be. Another method is to use aspect ratio. As examples for the aspect ratio: same-number ratios (1:1, 2:2, etc) create boxes, 4:3 is a slight rectangle, much like older television sets, and 16:9 is a flatter rectangle that would be shaped like a hi-def plasma screen. Once you have your box how you want it, selecting the crop button (a) will apply the change.

b and c rotate your images left and right while e and f flip the whole image vertically (upside down) or horizontally (left to right). I always have trouble remembering which is which. LOL

f and g let you undo and redo any edits you make until you hit the Save button. (Then you’re stuck. )

h – Scale Image – Where crop cuts portions of the picture out, scaling makes the entire image bigger or smaller, depending on what you tell it to do. Just set your desired size on either the height or width (WordPress adjusts the other automatically so it stays in proportion) and hit Scale.

L would have been the Save and Cancel buttons had I remembered. Don’t forget to save before you scroll down to fill in the information for the image!

Now going back to my first screenshot…

4 and 5 can, realistically, be the same thing. I changed 4 to ‘WordPress Add an Image Dialog’ then copied and pasted it into 5. They deal with the ‘web’ stuff – accessibility and SEO, mainly. As usual: use keywords and be descriptive but concise.

6 and 7 are more for WordPress. Depending on your theme settings both the caption and description can/might be displayed. 6 is more likely to be displayed and can be the same as 4 and 5, if you like. And you can use 7 for a more detailed description of what’s in the image. Like, say…hmmm…an album or t-shirt description.

8 relates to what happens if an image is clicked on. If I wanted my examples to point to WordPress, I’d type in wordpress.org. Selecting File URL will point to the image on an otherwise blank page – handy for when you have an image that is larger than your theme will fit and you want readers to be able to see the full size. Selecting Post URL will send the clicker to the post where that image appeared (if there is one). Selecting None will make it so the image isn’t clickable, which might be preferred if there’s no good reason to link somewhere else.

9, Alignment, is pretty self explanatory. Floats left or right or centered. Whichever tickles your fancy!

10 lets you chose the size of the image when it goes into your post but comes with an aside:

The reason you’re given 4 options is because WordPress automatically generates different sizes of your images. The benefit to this comes in if you’re making use of the Gallery (more on that in a few) or want to have different sizes on hand to display in different areas. This means that for any one image, it’s possible to have up to 3 other smaller sizes. It also means that you can have 4 versions of the same image taking up space on your server. Depending on your host and how many images you have (or plan to have), this could mean serious hits to both your server space and/or the number of files you’re allowed to host on the server.

If you want to disable this auto-generation for one (or all) of the sizes – and you have the proper privileges – you can change the settings in the left menu under Settings -> Media. There (under Image Sizes) you will see the sizes set for each image and can change them according to your needs. Setting one or all to 0 will disable the generation, saving you the space.

11 will insert that image into a post (remember your cursor placement!) and right beside that, we have delete (that will confirm your decision to trash it so no worries there). If all you have (or want to show) is that image, that’s where you’d stop and go on about your business.

But just so you can see, here’s what WordPress puts out:

<a href="http://poisondesigns.authenticvisionllc.com/files/2011/05/edit-img-diag.jpg"><img src="http://poisondesigns.authenticvisionllc.com/files/2011/05/edit-img-diag.jpg" alt="Wordpress Edit Image Dialog" title="Wordpress Edit Image Dialog" width="532" height="505" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2383" /></a>

Looks pretty complicated, right? Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to type all that? Get used to seeing it though.

And, just so you know, a good way to adjust images on the fly (after they’ve been inserted and you don’t want to go back into gallery for one tiny fix), you can simply edit the height and width right in the code. If you wanted to adjust the width, the best way to go would be to delete height="505" and replace the 532 in width to whatever you want it to be (say, 500). To do height, you would want to delete the width. Doing it this way keeps your images from stretching all sorts of funny ways.

If you uploaded more than one picture and you’ve made it this far, you can scroll to the top of the dialog and push the ‘Hide’ link to close it then scroll allllll the way to the bottom (if you need to) and hit ‘Save All Changes’ – my unmarked 12. Don’t fall into the trap I do and think you can edit multiple images and not get tripped up – it happens to the best of us. Save often!

Doing this will take you to your Media Gallery tab (up by number 1). The gallery is pretty cool. Check it out:

It looks pretty much like the short list I mentioned. You can edit the rest of the pictures here, same way I just outlined (show/hide). I’m just going to play with the Gallery Settings while you do that!

u – There are no numbers in the boxes at first but you can put them there to arrange the images how you like. Mine were backwards and my OCD just can’t have that so there ya have it.

v – Once again – links the image to either the blank white page mentioned above or an attachment page. An attachment page might be styled slightly different, depending on your theme but for the most part, it will likely look like another page in your website with just the image on it.

w – Order by – This drop-down gives you 4 options: Menu Order (how they’re ordered in v), Title (to the left of v), Date/Time (obvious, I hope), and Random. Random is good for large galleries. While you might have 50+ thumbs on a page, the content seems to be ‘new’ each time a visitor comes so they’re maybe they’ll see a picture they might have missed on the previous visit.

x – Order – Which way w will count – up or down, forward or backward, etc…

y – the number of columns you want the thumbnails to display in. Since I only have three, that’s all I need and hitting ‘Insert Gallery’ (z, at long last!) will give you this:

Wanna know what’s real funny? All you’ll see is in Geek (unless you’re lookin at the source code) is [gallery]. Ain’t it grand?!

Two more things real quick:

The Gallery tab relates to the post you’re working in. The Media Library is all the images on your website and looks like the Gallery tab, save the filtering and search abilities.

The From URL tab is a way more tricked out version of the img button I mentioned the other day. If you you’re reading this and can’t figure out what it all means, I don’t know what to tell ya beyond scroll up! LOL

For surviving this crash course, I here by dub thee a productive member of the WordPress society. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a hot date lined up for the weekend and I have got to get some of this school BS knocked out.

Sure, push button editing of any sort seems ‘cool,’ and is supposed to make stuff easy but if you’re serious about writing out here on the Wild Wild Web (or coding it up) and being effective, you have to know some basics. Obviously, the book I mentioned before (and now over there —>) is one way to go about it but all you writers don’t need to get that in depth, especially if you’re working with WordPress and/or have me runnin thangs. For any up and coming code Geeks – please do yourself a favor and learn this stuff before you dive head-first into adoration and worship of Adobe’s ‘tools!’

But enough preaching! Let’s see how long this one takes me!

I don’t feel like making a list so I’ll just go with that icky icon bar I mentioned over here. Bar 2.5!

First off, for those of you who would rather press the buttons despite my gravest warnings, if you must use them…The proper (and most idiot-proof) way to do it is to select all the text you want to apply the formatting to then press the corresponding formatting button! (You can use the ‘close tags’ but if you mess up somewhere or forget to press it in the proper spot at the proper time, you could have one of those situations people pay me to fix. LOL)

Second, two ‘carrier returns’ are what make a paragraph through WordPress (they make it easy) but should you have to use code, you would use <p> and </p> at the beginning and end of said paragraph.

Remember that your readers process ‘jagged’ writing over block after block of text all squished up – stuff that could easily be separated into three different paragraphs. And if you’re going to be writing, make liberal use of common sense when it comes to what you write and how. You know…spelling (unless intentional), punctuation….we went to grammar school for a reason! While I might seriously abuse the English language with my ‘twang’ writing style, I know my language (as the Nazi editor in me shows at times) – and how to break my ramblings and ravings into digestible chunks.

Third, how some of this code shows up depends on the styling provided by your WordPress theme. Each of these elements can be styled in several ways. The most commonly formatted elements are the quotes and lists.

But back to those damn buttons…

The first, b, translates to something like this. In Geek: <strong>this</strong>

i ends up like this. In Geek: <em>this</em>

link is…easy but…here’s the thing: SEO! If you click the button, all you have to do is type in (or paste) a link and it gives you the code

(<a href="http://poisondesigns.com">Poison Designs</a> and we’ll pretend that I highlighted ‘Poison Designs’)

But you can do more! Another boost would be to do something like:

<a href="http://poisondesigns.com/geek-ish-getting-started-with-wordpress/" title="Poison Designs: Geek Ish - Getting Started with WordPress">Getting Started with WordPress</a>

This helps with SEO (keywords in yet another spot!), accessibility, and gives you the neat little ‘popup’ that comes up when you hover over a link – providing readers with a preview of where they’ll go when they click. (By way of mention, this is one of those cases where you’d be switching between code and visual editors – awkward!)

b-quote is shorthand for blockquote (Geek: <blockquote></blockquote>). This particular feature comes in handy if you’re quoting an article (or someone) and want it to stand out from the rest of your text. So pretend I highlighted the quote below and hit that button. This is how it would look:

Vision? What do you know about my vision? My vision would turn your world upside down, tear asunder your illusions, and send the sanctuary of your own ignorance crashing down around you. Now ask yourself, Are you ready to see that vision? (Compliments of Huey of the Boondocks variety. And very fitting for the tribe’s movement.)

del is fun if you want to pretend to obliterate erase something. In Geek: <del>obliterate</del>

ins puts out something like this: <ins datetime="2011-05-11T04:00:53+00:00">, though I have no idea what it’s for.

img is a super-easy way to link to a picture (copy/paste or type in a link to the image – same as mentioned above for links) but I wouldn’t recommend linking this way, especially to a picture on someone else’s website – that’s considered hotlinking and is frowned upon. Otherwise, I’m impressed that they included a second popup for ‘description’ and once again – here’s another spot to slide in some SEO! In Geek: <img src="http://poisondesigns.authenticvisionllc.com/files/2011/05/new-post-scrn.jpg" alt="Wordpress 'New Post' Screenshot" /> (WordPress + Image Tut on deck next!)

Take note that there is no </img> here. IMG is what we Geeks refer to as a self-closing tag (there’s nothing BUT the code vs. something IN it – like words). In Ye Olden Days, you could do that and others like <hr> (horizontal rule – or line) or <br> (‘break’ or one carrier return) with no issue. These days the ‘proper’ thing to do is have a / before the >. So we’d have <hr/> and <br/>, etc.

ul and ol (Geek: <ul></ul> and <ol></ol>) are for unordered list and ordered list, respectively. li stands for list item. Any item you want to include in the list should be enclosed in <li> and </li>. So…

<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item B</li>
<li>Item X</li>
</ul>

Would yield:

• Item 1
• Item B
• Item X

Now most blogs have some sort of formatting for lists but I stripped all mine. An unordered list typically has a disc or some other shape next to it where an ordered list would be numbered. While you might not have much of a use for these elsewhere, they are used rampantly in the sidebars of most WordPress setups, improve accessibility, and make your website more robot friendly.

code is used to ‘escape’ code (with the help of a plugin) or just sets the text enclosed apart from the rest of the text (without the plugin) – it makes it so what I use to show you <em>this</em> shows up like that instead of like this, keeps the code from doing the formatting – makes it just sit there.

more is easy enough, it does what I like to do for most of my entries: chops them up so they don’t make the front page a mile long – gives users a link to click on to read the whole thing. And it’s customizable. If you visited this from the main page, you saw ‘But enough preaching!’ as the link to continue. I think WordPress say’s ‘Continue reading’ by default but don’t hold me to it. Anyway, in Geek <!--more Insert witty text here.--> You can change ‘Insert witty text here.’ to whatever you want but make sure you don’t type <!-- more... or it won’t work. Just be sure to make your ‘teaser’ good enough that folks will want to click through!

lookup comes in rather handy! I just discovered that it lets you look up a word for definition at Answers.com.

And close tags…already covered that one. Use at your own risk.

You know, I think that about covers it. I can’t think of anything else. Right now, at least. If you’re working in HTML view, you’re gonna see a lot more stuff as you write (embeds are fun) but if you take the time to ‘read’ it, you’ll have at least a vague idea of what does what and that can really help you in the long run.

I know what I’ve shown you may seem like a lot, especially to the ‘n00b’ but I swear on my Geek title that it’ll become second nature if you just keep at it. What I’ve shown (or perhaps asked of) you is a breeze and, especially in the case of a web designer/developer, should be known. These pieces of code are the building blocks to most of the awesomeness you enjoy or want to emulate here on the web! Having started my coding/web years with with lynx and notepad, I can say just plopping down an entry with all the page structure automatic is a whole lot faster – and way easier – than coding a whole page by hand! And this is why I recommend WordPress to anyone who will listen. If you don’t believe me, just figure out how to ‘View Source’ in IE or hit Ctrl+U in Firefox/Chrome.

I’ve got some coffee brewing so I think I’ll take this opportunity to crank out one last must-have for the Tribe so I can at least try to focus on school BS tonight. Heh.

Just as a starting note, the layout of my page looks different compared to what WordPress provides from the jump. You’re more than welcome to leave your setup as is but I’ve learned that having the categories and tags before the publish section ensures I don’t hit ‘publish’ before I’ve had a chance to properly categorize it. Lucky for us, you can drag and drop the sections as you see fit – just click and drag the gray bar at the top of the desired section.

Moving on!

Number one, title considerations. Titles are just one of several ways you can optimize your search engine rankings. As a matter of fact, they are one of the first things seen by the robots so it’s important to use keywords (more on those soon) whenever possible. And be descriptive!!

Some examples from my own stash(es):

Do It Yourself Music: CD Cover Templates
Reverb Nation for the Artist
Umbravo and Lil 850: Southside Choppin 2.5
SEO Tips n Tricks: Awesome Links
All About Images and the Web

As a slight aside, if it is at all possible (you’re an administrator and your host allows), you should consider editing the permalink options in your WordPress settings (left menu again, in the bottom section). WordPress uses some very unfriendly links, like something with yourdomain.com/?p=123 – which tells visitors (and you) jack about the post. A bit of investigation will lead you to more options but I use a custom structure: /%postname%/. This allows my entry pages to use the title of the entry as the URL (another biggie in the whole SEO thing). So using the first of my examples as another example, the link would actually be http://authenticvisionllc.com/do-it-yourself-music-cd-cover-templates. Long, yes, but it provides more SEO credibility and gives your potential readers a chance to at least see what they can expect in the post. That said, most search engines only use the first 60 characters of a title (spaces included) and WordPress truncates titles after a certain amount of characters (unsure how many) so, while you should be descriptive, be concise! Also, take care messing with the permalinks. I know there are some web hosts who don’t know how to handle or allow postname settings. (Not an issue if I’m hosting your site! )

Moving down a step, we have the media buttons. (“Upload/Insert”)

From left to right, we have Add an Image, Add Video, Add Audio, and Add Media. The only button I ever use is the Add an Image. (One image tutorial can be found here and there will be another – for images in WordPress – coming soon.) While the other three might come in handy, WordPress only comes with the ability to link to anything other than an image. There is no embedding videos you’ve uploaded (versus sharing one from YouTube or another video site) unless you have a plugin or, I’d imagine, go at it manually. (Still working on that.)

There are lots of buttons below the media upload that help you format your post text but unless you at least half way know what you’re doing, you could end up with a jumbled mess and yanking your hair out trying to figure out why your whole post shows up as a link or doesn’t do what you want it to do. Soooo I’m skipping on down to number 3: the post body. (After a bit more chatter;)

Granted, I have the advantage of doing ‘this’ for a living but I think it benefits everyone to know at least a few basic pieces of code. (I’ll write on those soon, too.) WordPress comes with two options: HTML editor and visual editor. The HTML editor is where you can see everything that is going into your post, code and all. And you can think of the visual editor as similar in workings to Microsoft Word. In Geek terms, the visual editor is WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get. What you type in, or add, will show up in the published post just as it looks in the editor. While this comes in handy for certain users, it can come with a disadvantage to more advanced users who might have reason to switch between views. And yes, there are very good reasons to be switching unless you stick strictly to HTML (that I’ll get into soon). Anyway, if you’re editing in the visual editor, switch to code view and switch back to visual, you run the risk of losing elements (like an embedded video).

To prevent this, any time I set up a WordPress user the first thing I do is edit their profile to disable WYSIWYG. You can do the same through the Users section of the left-placed menu by either clicking on Users and the user you want to edit or by clicking on Your Profile (assuming it’s just you you’re doing this for). At the very top, there is a checkbox next to ‘Disable the visual editor when writing.’ Hit that, slide to the bottom of the page, hit save, and you’re all set.

Beyond that, write to your heart’s content. (Hopefully you know how to do that on your own! ) Once you’re done, it’s time to move on to number four: categories.

Categories are just what they’d seem to be: a system of organizing your posts. Generally speaking, they should be…well…general. Some categories I’ve used on my sites include DIY Music, Graphic Design, and Web Design. Adding categories is as simple as checking the box next to the category you want to use. If you’ve not set up categories (or want to add another), you can do it right there by clicking ‘Add new category.’ In that section, you can type in the category name and choose a parent category to make the new category a subcategory of something else (if you want it to be a subcatergory, that is – if not, leave it blank). For instance, I have CD Covers, Flyers, and Logos as subcategories of Graphic Design. Once again, there is benefit to SEO here. Choose keywords and phrases that are descriptive and fitting.

Number five brings about tags. Tags are kinda like categories but they are more for other notable things mentioned in your post that don’t necessarily have a place in your categories. As another example of my system, I designed a CD cover for Alabama Blakk so I categorized the post as CD Covers (which automatically makes it show up under Grahpic Design since that’s the parent) and tagged it Alabama Blakk. And? You guessed it! Keep SEO in mind when you’re tagging as it’s another way to improve your rankings.

You can use multiple categories and tags for each post, just make sure you have a good system in place and stick to it! Trust me when I say it will save a lot of hassle in the long run – especially when it comes time to track down an entry.

Last, but certainly not least, we have the Publish section. If you’re not ready to publish yet, you can ‘Save Draft’ and post it later through your Posts page (left-placed menu under Posts section). The status section will remain ‘Draft’ until published. The other status option, Pending Review, has benefit to more advanced WordPress systems where users registered as Contributors (lower-level users) can send their articles to wait for approval from an Administrator or Editor (highest- and higher-level users). The visibility options are pretty self explanatory: public entries can seen by anyone, ‘sticky’ posts will remain the first entries listed in your blog (you can have several) regardless of its age in relation to later posts and password protected posts can only be seen by those who know the password (set in a box that shows up when the radio button is clicked). The private option is a bit misleading so bear this in mind: it does not mean you will be the only one able to see the post! It will be visible to you as well as other Administrators and Editors that are registered with the website. Below the visibility options, we have what will initially say Publish immediately. Clicking ‘edit’ will allow you to set the date for the entry. Setting the entry for some time in the past (say, January 1965) will assign that date to the entry and the entry will show up on that date. Setting the date to sometime in the future (June 2100) will automatically post the entry on the specified date – a great option for those who want to write multiple posts and have them show up later on – while you’re on vacation, for instance. Once all is written and set as you think it should be, you can hit ‘Publish’ and your post will be live for the world to see.

Three pages later, we have some very basic stuff that will (hopefully) get you on your way to becoming a most-awesome content manager. Good luck and happy posting!

Original Front Cover:

(SO meant to ask after that grunge effect but forgot – surprise surprise)

Twerked Front Cover:

Original Back Cover:

Twerked Back Cover: