[Connor]

Some WordPress bloggers, I’ve discovered, try to take their limited knowledge of HTML and apply it to their blogs. You can’t do that. The reason is real simple: You aren’t building a web page.

If you want to build web pages, that’s fine. Do it in a text editor and ftp it. WordPress was not designed for that. You can build really cool web pages in WordPress, but not in HTML. All you have to do is create a page and start typing. WordPress does the rest. That’s the beauty of the software program.

That said, there are some limited HTML code that you can use to enhance your blog posts. Even then, WordPress has tag icons that you can click on for most of them:

b for bold
i for italics
link for hyperlink
b-quote for block quote
img for inserting an image from another place online
ul for unordered list
ol for ordered list
li for list time
more for creating jumps
All you have to do to use any of these icons is highlight the text you want it to apply to and click the icon. You’ll get bold text or a hyperlink, or whatever it was you were trying to create. Other tags you can use for which there are no buttons include:

p align=”right” or “left” for text or images you want aligned and wrapped a certain way
center is a tag you can use to center photos and text
strike is a tag you can use to strike through certain words, like this
u is the code for underlining a word
Beyond these, there are certain tag attributes that you can use as a part of your tag and code strategy. Title attributes, target=”new” for opening a link in a new page, height and width dimensions for graphics, and other similar attributes that you can add on to your tags are acceptable. You can even create tables as long as you don’t get too complex with your codes. But that’s about it. There aren’t a lot of other HTML options for you.

WordPress does not play well with CSS, Javascript, DIV tags, and other languages. Don’t even try it. You could screw up your templates and wreak havoc in other ways if you try to do too much coding. WordPress already has all the code it needs to translate your simple text into great web pages.

Nick Stamoulis