Blogging Fool

It’s funny how the simple things can often become the most elusive when undertaking a new venture.  In the blogging world, learning to walk before you can run applies as much as it does in any other endeavor.  One of the things I overlooked as I crammed the blogging lexicon into my feeble gray matter is how to best organize my content for the A.D.D. planet.

At first I was merely concerned with writing anything at all.  With figuring out what to write about and whom to direct it towards.  Then it was about discovering my voice.  Then I leapfrogged into the world of monetization and search engine optimization.

But I missed a little step: how to make my content as easy and enjoyable to read as possible for my new readers.  One of the best ways to do this is to follow the tried and true format of the three elements of a good article:

The Headline
The Teaser
The Content

Headline is easy – it is the title of your blog entry.

The Teaser is the initial text that lures the prospective reader into the remainder of the content.

The Content is the rest of it.

The part I missed is the simple code you need to use to break up your article.

So when the Muse is feeding you line after line of inspired elucidation, remember that no one can stand a wall of text.

Simply insert:

<!--more-->

after your teaser paragraph or click the “Insert More Tag” on your WYSIWYG editor.

To break up the rest of your wall o’ text, use the:

<!--nextpage-->

..Quicktag to create a page break.

Wordpress will display a new link to the next page of your article so it will feel less overwhelming and more akin to reading a newspaper or magazine.  Cool!

There is also a guide at Wordpress about customizing the way the page links display. Give it a look either way, it will help you better understand what is going on under the hood and someday you may feel like tuning it up even more.

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