This post is dedicated to my friend Sally Hogshead who is still learning how to blog with Word Press.

The more I use Word Press, the more I’m glad I use it instead of other blog software like TypePad. The way Word press handles each post is easy and elegant- just the way I like it.

When you post (add an entry, publish) it is placed on your blog as
the most recent post- at the top- reverse chronological order – we’ll call this “Post A”. It will appear on the index.php page, which is the default home page (default means you don’t have to do anything other than type in the url- like www.blogosopher.com)
However- when you post again (we’ll call this one “Post B”) – “Post A” will move down the pecking order- and be the second post on your page. If someone wants to send a link to “Post A”- they wouldn’t do www.blogosopher.com because it would be to the blog- and the most recent post- not “Post A” or “Post B” which will continue to move down the page as newer posts are made.

So- instead- click on the headline of the post you want to send, (try it with the subject heading of this post- it will take you to a single page with just this post on it) or link to- and it will refresh an actual hard page with it’s own url- in this case: http://www.blogosopher.com/?p=29
(the next post will be p=30) it’s not a sexy title- but it doesn’t have to be- since when I bookmark it- it pulls the page title: and calls it :Blogosopher » Blog Archive » Trackback, Permalinks, Pinging or how to make your post connect to other blogs” same as the title.
This is Word Press’s way of creating a PERMALINK- one that anyone can link to in their blog. To do this in TypePad you need to click on a button called “Permalink” to get the url for the specific post.

Permalinks are a permanent address for a specific post in your blog- they don’t change, even if you later edit the post.

But- here is where they become really important and valuable- when you comment about something in another blog- which will create an automatic link back to your site- called a trackback. But- it is only automatic when working with another Word Press blog- other blog solutions can require you to do a bit of extra work- so read the following carefully:

When you post- and put a url for another Word Press blog permalink in the post- Word Press automatically pings (sends out a message to the WordPress search engine- for lack of a better name) and sends a message to the other Word Press blog that you’re talking about it- automatically accomplishing a trackback (an automatic comment on the article on the other blog, with a link back to your comment about it).
If you look in the ADVANCED section of your write post page- down below where you hit publish- it will say “already pinged” and have the permalink url for the site you mentioned.

However – if the other blog uses that other blog software (which is more complex) we have to do 2 things- we have to go into their comment section to get a “PERMALINK” url which we use to link to the post- so it’s not to the blog in general- but that post in particular- and- we have to get a “TRACKBACK” URL and tell Word Press to “Trackback” to it- in the advanced area below where you post- “send trackbacks to” where you can put as many “Trackback” url’s in as you need to.
This is how you build relationships on the web between your blog and other blogs, which help you get better results in search engines- and better results, means more traffic- which should generate more business for you!

This is an issue that keeps coming up- and the way to judge is: is it something every visitor coming to my site might want to read? Good “Page” content would be: a contact page, a bio or about me page, legal information about your site, a reference page, or my favorite- a list of all your competitors- so you can not only make a statement: “here is my competition- check them out”- but to also have a shot at being part of the “evoked set” when someone is searching for your competition. Here is an example in my site “Agencies that aren’t The Next Wave” which brings a lot of hits – from people who are probably in the market for services similar to what I offer.
For the more advanced websites- a page can also contain code that may not use the style sheet of the “post” entry- so that you can have a different layout. The next version of Word Press (1.6) is rumored to have more flexibility in this area.
Some themes don’t make automatic page lists- and only offer a few static page buttons. These static buttons have to be hand coded to link to the Pages you create in Word Press. The CoffeeCup theme is one example- as used in this site: www.davidcousino.com

Above- image of quicktags menu (click to enlarge)

WordPress includes many tools to format your content. Quicktags are the ones you’ll use the most. One note- some browsers don’t display the quicktags – so we recommend Firefox
The word “Firefox” that’s highlighted was an example of the “link” tag. When you are in write post mode, you can select a word or sentance (highlight) and then click the “link” box- you will get a dialog pop-up that looks like this:

Enter the url (the location of the site you want to link to) usually: http://www.thenextwave.biz for example- and you’ve created a link. If you want to make it a link to send an e-mail to someone, change http:// to mailto:[email protected] and you will create an e-mail link.
Here is a site with full description of all the buttons on the quicktags list.