1.) Log into the Administrator with your username and password



2.) Select Content > Article Manager > Add New Article





4.) Type in the Title of the article.




5.) Type your article into the editor panel.

Warning: Do not paste content from Microsoft Word (or any other word processor) directly into the editor here. Hidden tags and information is transferred into the article which may be detrimental for SEO rankings. Refer to the Content Preparation Instructions for further explanation.




6.) Adding the "Read More" link. Place your cursor at the end of the paragraph where you would want the "Read More" button to appear. Next, click the "Read More" button at the bottom of the editor.


7.) A squiggly red line will appear after the first paragraph (or wherever you had place your cursor.)



8.) Status and Category: On the right side of the page, make sure the article Status is Published and the Category is set to Blog (or whatever your webmaster specifies.)




9.) Featured: If the post will be featured on the homepage (or elsewhere in the site), set the "Featured" toggle to "yes"  [OPTIONAL]



10.) Tags: Depending on how the site is organized, you may need to specify a tag for this article.



 Publishing Dates




11.) Select the "Publishing" tab near the top




12.) Set the Publishing info


  • "Start Publishing" set to today's date or a future date if you desire the article to publish later.
  • "Finish Publishing" is left blank. (By default, article will publish 'forever' unless a specific expiration date is set.)
  • "Created Date" set to today's date.
  • [OPTIONAL] Select the proper user for the "Created By" field. This will default to your login.
  • [OPTIONAL] You may specify a different creator of the article by filling in the "Created By Alias" field. (Example: "George Washington")

Leaving these fields empty will cause the article to publish immediately.







13.) Add the Meta Description and Keywords if relevant.  The Meta Description shouldn't be more than 144 characters or so.  Meta Keywords are ignored by search engines, so do not spend a lot of time picking out words (just saying.)





 Images and Links


Specifying the Article Intro and Full-text Images

For many blog posts, you will want a small image to appear in the blog's listing page to create interest for the visitor. Make sure to crop, resize and optimize images before uploading into Joomla.
Instructions are found here: http://jsnegley.freshdesk.co/support/solutions/articles/1000194432

The Intro Image (or sometimes called the "thumbnail image") should be between 240px and 420px wide. We recommend it to be 420px wide in order to scale well between all the different mobile devices.



And then the same image or even a different image to appear within the full blog post as shown below. Notice how each image has different sizes and orientation. In this example, the large Full Article Image is 640px wide. Again we recommend this image be no less than 640px in order to adjust between all the various devices loading this content.




14.) Click the Images and Links tab




15.) Select the images


Click the Select buttons to choose the images you want inserted into the article. The pop-up media manager will allow you to upload new images. The images being uploaded should be web optimized before inserting into the web site.  Read this article on how to optimize images.

Decide how the images will be floating on the page. Specify an alternative text description for good SEO practices. Captions may be left empty.



16.) Add external links. Three optional links to external (or internal) sources may be specified. Leave blank otherwise.


(Note: Some web site templates use the Link A field for other purposes. Check with your webmaster if there is a question.)


 



17.) Save the Article by clicking the green "Save" button.



18.) Click "Preview" at the top to review the article.

(Note: If this button is not available, request your webmaster to install this third-party plugin.)

A pop-up window will appear displaying the article loaded within the site. Review this and make any changes as needed.


Click the 'X' in the upper right corner to close the pop-up




19.) Click "Save and Close".



20.) Done. Return to the public web page and refresh the page (CTRL+F5 on a PC)