How to Post a Story/Article/News/Blog to OCScanner.News

Before I go any further I feel the need to state. WordPress is a “blog” focused Content Management System. It was originally designed for personal blogs and later expanded to offer other functionalities. It started as a basic tool and later expanded into a very professional group of software for managing a fully featured website, a system that most major media outlets have begun to adopt.

As such, we are currently utilizing the “Blog” or “Posts” function of WordPress to post our news stories. It is possible that in the future we may switch to a different content type such as “News” or “Article” but for now, I will be switching between the terms “Story” “Stories” “Post” and “Posts” — All of which I mean to describe a pieces of content, article or story that will auto-post to the OCSN Facebook Page and other social media outlets.

 

First you need to visit https://OCScanner.news/wp-admin to log-in.

Use your username and password to log in, and you will be shown the admin dashboard.

Once there, you want to click the 3 Bars (3 lines) in the top left to bring down the side menu.

Then expand the Posts menu (push-pin icon)

Alternatively you can use the + sign menu in the menu bar at the top

In the Posts Menu click “Add New” in the Plus (+) menu click “Post” to add a new story/post.

You enter the Title in the “Enter title here” box and your “story” goes into the big whitespace at the bottom. Between those two boxes you have a series of WYSIWYG style buttons and menus. As well as an “Add Media” button. The “Add Media” button is used to add pictures and videos from your computer or phone.

Once you insert your story text and title as well as any images, video or other “media” elements, you want to scroll down and select from the Categories list, the categories (can be more than one) that are appropriate for your story/post.

From there, you will want to scroll down further and Add any TAGS you may feel appropriate. For those that are used to things like Twitter and Instagram, TAGS are basically the WordPress equivalent of #HashTags – Things used to help find similar content, that aren’t really a defined category. You can type anything you want in here, but try to keep tags to as few words per tag possible and separate tags with comas (,) so for example [WordPress, Login, Posts, Stories, Directions, Howto, Admin]  would probably be a good selection of tags for this page. and [WordPress howto on how to post, a story, the news] would not be good. The more simplified the tags, the more they will be likely used, and there by link similar content so that we can suggest other stories to our readers.

After “Tags” you want to make sure to set the “Featured Image” by clicking the “Set Featured Image” link. The “Featured Image” may or may not be an image that you used before in your story or article. It’s the image that will show up on the Front page of the blog, and in the “preview” for the post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. If you do NOT set a “Featured Image” you will get a “Breaking News” post but setting a relevant featured image (Stock images are fine if that’s what you have) are essential to making our content stand out, and bring in more readers.

From there you will want to scroll back up, and find the box shown above. From there you can “preview” how your article will look when published. You can also save it as a “draft” if you aren’t ready to publish it yet (if it’s non breaking news, and you want it edited, or want someones opinion on something), or you can Publish it (make it live).

Once you press Publish, the article will go LIVE. It will be auto posted to various social media outlets, and you are done.

For the time being, we are currently using “Comments” section to add updates to the story. These comments are not currently exporting to social media, but we are working on that. Also, the method of using comments may change as we develop our platform and expand.