Knowledgebase
How to manage the settings and blocks on the form for adding and editing posts in WordPress
On the add/edit post form there are some blocks with additional settings. Many of these blocks are hidden by default. In this article we'll show you how to hide and display these blocks, and we'll review them very briefly. For basic information on adding and editing posts, check our WordPress posts tutorial or the corresponding shorter article version.
On the add form for posts in the admin panel there are some panels that are displayed by default. These are: Publish, Format, Categories, Tags and Featured Image. The Publish block is the most basic and important one since it contains the button for publishing and updating the post. It also contains options with which you can change the status of the post, you can change its visibility from public to password protected or to private. There's also an option with which you can schedule the post to be published on some future date instead of immediately.
From the Format block you can select one of the formats supported by the particular theme; the format changes the look of the post on the frontend. From the Categories block you can assign/unassign the post to one or more of your categories. You can use the Tags block to add some tags that you want to associate with the post. When a user clicks on a tag on the frontend all posts associated with that tag are listed. From the Featured Image block you can add a featured image to be displayed above your post on the frontend (provided the particular theme displays featured images). Just click on the Set featured image button and select an image from the media library or upload a new one from your local computer.
There are a couple of blocks that are hidden by default on the add form but are displayed once the post is published. These include the Comments and Revisions blocks. The Comments block lists all the comments submitted in reply to the particular post. You can approve/unapprove, edit or send to trash any of the comments by using the respective buttons that appear when you hover the mouse pointer over the particular comment. You can also add new comments. The Revisions block lists the date and time of all the changes made to the post.
There are several blocks that are hidden by default. You can make them visible and you can also hide any of the visible ones (with the exception of the Publish block). To do this click on the Screen Options button in the upper right corner of the page and mark/unmark the respective checkboxes. The hidden blocks are: Excerpt, Send Trackbacks, Custom Fields, Discussion, Slug, Author.
The Excerpt block has a text area in which you can type a summary of the post's content. Where the summary will be shown on the frontend instead of the full content depends on the theme that you use. It can be shown on the general pages listing all the posts. It can be shown on search result pages, on category pages, tag pages, monthly archives and pages listing the posts of a particular author. In the field that's provided by the Send Trackbacks block you can list URLs of posts from other blogs that you've included as links in the particular post which you're editing. In this way the other blog will be notified. This, however, is not necessary because pingbacks are used for that purpose and they are automatic. As the name suggests, you can use the Custom Fields block to add custom fields to the post. The field includes a name and a corresponding value. However, code changes are also required in order for the fields to be displayed on the frontend. An easier alternative is to use a plugin for managing custom fields.
From the Discussion block you can enable/disable comments for the particular post and you can enable/disable trackbacks and pingbacks. From the Author block you can change the author to whom the post is attributed. From the drop-down menu in the block you can select one of the users that you've added.
For screenshots and more details check out the tutorial on how to manage the blocks and settings on the add/edit post form in WordPress.