Add Media
WordPress lets you create image galleries in posts. Put the cursor where you want a single image or gallery. Click the rectangle picture icon. (When you hover your pointer over it, it says 'Add an Image'.) Click Choose files to upload to transfer your own pictures to your server. Select one or more of them, and wait until the progress bars finish adding them. WordPress will read tags and other data embedded in the images, and then it will resize them and format them for your site.
In the Gallery tab, click Show to adjust these details, change the title, and add a description. Save those changes, and then click Insert gallery into post. WordPress then adds the '[gallery]' tag to the plain-text view; this content will become your image gallery when published.
To add video files, click the Add Video icon. Doing so will upload your finished video to your own server. That's fine if you know how to compress everything via your editing software, but it's not ideal if you haven't preprocessed the file for Web use. So instead I recommend uploading video to another site, such as Vimeo or YouTube, that will automatically format the clip for Web viewing. From there, click the option to embed the video into another page, and copy the embed code. Back in your post, click the HTML view, and paste the code.
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Tag and Manage Content
Your next task is to add tags. These simple words and phrases help readers find posts on the same topic, just as image tags do for photos. Use keywords that describe the post, specify what it's about, and even identify proper names of things inside. Separate the tags with commas, and click Add.
Categories offer an organizational structure similar to tags, except that--depending on your layout--WordPress can instantly create navigational tabs for each category. This arrangement works great if your blog has a few repeating themes, such as "work," "soccer," "cooking," and "family." I recommend that you make as many tags as you can think of--even five or so for a single post--but try to limit your categories to a few main topics. Type a name, and click Add, or use the checkboxes below to designate the category.
Click Save on the right, and click Preview this Post. If it looks good, click Publish. If you prefer to schedule the post to go live at a certain time, click Edit, and enter the future date and time when you want this to happen.
Post Via E-Mail
WordPress 2.5 can publish posts that you or others e-mail to a specific address; this ability is ideal for occasions when you want to send content from a phone away from a computer. But the default process has drawbacks: It doesn't work with SSL accounts, it requires POP3, and currently it doesn't work with photos. For these reasons I prefer the free plug-in, Postie. Besides overcoming the preceding limitations of WordPress 2.5's e-mail process, Postie can be instructed to publish only e-mail sent from a specific address, which enhances your security.
Create a new, secret mail account exclusively to use with WordPress content, and upload the 'postie' folder to /wp-content/plugins. Create new folders in your main directory called wp-photos and wp-files where Postie can save its data. (Make sure that they're write-accessible on your server.)
In WordPress, click Plugins near the upper-right. Activate Postie. Log out and then log back in as an administrator. Click Settings, Configure Postie. Enter any e-mail addresses that you want to permit to post entries to the blog. Leave the other settings at their default values, scroll down to the end, and enter your e-mail account settings. Click Update Options, and click Test Config. If you run into any problems, check to confirm that the e-mail account details are correct.
Postie should be ready to go, but you'll need to create a scheduled Unix command that regularly checks the e-mail account for new messages. In your server configuration tool, open the Cron Jobs tool and create a new job. In it, paste the text */5 * * * * /usr/bin/lynx --source http://www.mywebsite.com/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php>/dev/null 2>&1 to cause WordPress to check for new mail every 5 minutes. Now you're ready to mail in your posts. Postie will use your e-mail subject line as the title of the post, and the body of your message will become the body of the post.
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