Editing Your Posts
The Posts Screen provides the facility to manage all the Posts in your site. Via this Screen, Posts can be edited, deleted, and viewed. Filtering, and searching, also makes it easy to quickly find Posts matching certain criteria.
Several powerful features allow Posts to be edited in bulk (en masse) allowing fields such as Author, Status, and Sticky to be changed for a whole batch of Posts. In addition, a Quick Edit feature provides an easy method to change a mulitiude of values, such as Title, Slug, Date, and Category, for a given Post.
Edit Posts
Table of Posts
A table lists all of your Posts, by row. The Posts are listed with the newest Post first.
The table of Posts contains the following columns:
- [ ] – This checkbox, when clicked (checked), ‘selects’ that particular Post to be processed by a Bulk Action.
- Post – This is actually the Post’s Title displayed as a link. Click the Title link to allow this Post to be edited. Next to the Title, if a Post is of a Draft, Private, Pending, or Password Protected nature, text will display showing that.
- “ID” – This is not a column in the Table, but by hovering the mouse over the Post Title, the Post ID is revealed as part of the URL displayed in the browser status bar (in Firefox the status bar is displayed at the bottom of the screen). A Post’s ID number is the unique number WordPress’ database uses to identify individual Posts.
- Author – Displayed in the form of a link, this is the author who wrote the Post. Clicking the author link causes all the Posts authored by that user to be displayed in the Table of Posts (thus allowing a Bulk Action to be applied to all Posts for a given author).
- Categories – Displays all the Categories, in the form of links, to which this Post belongs. Each Category link, when clicked will cause the list of Posts assigned that Category to be displayed in the Table of Posts (note the Category Filter box at the top of the Table will depict the Category being displayed).
- Tags – Displays all the Tags, in the form of links, associated with a Post. Each Tag link, when clicked will cause the list of Posts assigned that Tag to be displayed in the Table of Posts.
- comment bubble – A comment bubble is the column heading, and each Post row has comment bubble with the number of comments for that Post. If a Posts has any comments, then the number comments is displayed in a blue bubble. Clicking on a blue comment bubble causes the Comments Screen to be displayed to allow moderation of those comments.
- Date – The Date column for each Post shows the Date ‘Published’ for Published Posts and the Date ‘Last Modified’ for other Posts. If the Post is a “future Post,” the number of days until that Posts is scheduled for publishing is displayed.
Search
Above the Table, to the right, is a search box where you can enter a word, or series of words, and click the “Search Posts” button to search and display all the Posts meeting your search words.
Actions
Actions describe the process to be performed on particular Posts. There are two styles of Actions that will be referred to as Bulk Actions and Immediate Actions.
- Bulk Actions – These Actions can be performed on one, or more Posts, at one time, if those Posts have been previously selected. Bulk Actions are available, when appropriate, as choices in the Bulk Actions pulldown box, above the Table. The only Bulk Actions allowed are Edit and Delete.
- Immediate Actions – Immediate Actions are performed Immediately, on an individual Post. Hovering the mouse cursor over the Post row reveals the Edit, Delete, and View options under the Name column, in that Post’s row. Clicking on a Post’s Name will also initiate the Edit Action.
- Edit – This Action can be either an “Immediate Action” or a “Bulk Action”. The Immediate Action, initiated by click on the Post Name or clicking on the Edit option just below the Post Name, causes the Edit Posts screen to display. Edit is also available as a Bulk Action for the selected Posts, so see the Bulk Edit section for details on the Bulk Editing process.
- Quick Edit – Quick Edit is an “Immediate Action” that allows a quick in-line edit of certain fields related to a Post. See the Quick Edit section for details on this Action.
- Delete – This Action deletes the Posts. Delete is available both as a Bulk Action, and an Immediate Action.
- View – This Action presents the Post as it appears in a single Post view on your blog. View is available only as an Immediate Action.
The following describes these Actions:
The available Actions are described below:
Bulk Edit
The Bulk Edit Posts ‘screen’ is displayed below the Table Of Posts header once, one, or more Posts, have been selected, and the Bulk Action of Edit is Applied. Bulk Edit allows the fields, Author, Comments Allowed, Status, Pings Allowed, and Sticky, to be changed for all the selected Posts. It is important to note, Categories and Tags can be ADDED in bulk to a set of Posts, but it is not possible to CHANGE, or DELETE, a Category, or Tag, for those Posts.
- Cancel – Click Cancel to cancel and abort the Bulk Edit of these Posts.
- Update Posts – Click Update Post to save the Bulk Edits made to these Posts.
Quick Edit
Quick Edit is an Immediate Action performed on one Post by clicking the Quick Edit link, under the Post Title in the Table of Posts. Quick Edit is just an in-line edit that allows you to change the following items–Title, Slug, Date, Author,Categories, Tags, Status and Make this a post-sticky.
- Cancel – Click Cancel to cancel and abort the Edit of this Post.
- Update Post – Click Update Post to save the Edits made to this Post.
Editing Individual Posts
This mode is essentially the same as the Posts Add New Screen so see the Posts_Add_New_Screen for the specific details of writing a Post. The only difference is that the button to save your work is called “Update Post” instead of “Publish”.
Apply
After one or more Posts are selected, and after a Bulk Action is specified, the Apply button performs the given Action on the selected Posts.
- Apply – Click the Apply button to execute the Bulk Action, specified in the Actions pulldown, on the selected Posts. Remember, prior to executing Actions, one or more Posts must be selected, as described before.
