Anatomy of a WordPress Blog Page

Although the appearance and features in a WordPress blog can vary depending on the theme file that determines its appearance and any plugins that might be installed, there are several basic features that can be found in most WordPress blogs. On these pages, we show you some pages from a sample blog, Camden Lady (camdenlady.wordpress.com; Figures 7 and 8) and explain the commonly found blog components they include.

Figure 7. The home page for a typical WordPress.com blog.

Figure 8. Clicking the title of a post or a Comments link displays the post and its comments in a page with a comments form.

1. Header

The header, as you might imagine, appears at the top of each page. It normally contains the name of the blog and a brief description.

2. Links to static pages

WordPress enables you to include static pages in your blog. Most bloggers use them to provide information about the blog or themselves, but they can be used for any content. Links to static pages can appear in the header, as shown here, in the sidebar, or elsewhere.

3. Posts

Posts are individual entries in the blog. Each post normally includes the post title, the post date (and time), and the post author (if the blog has more than one poster). Posts can be as long or as short as you like. In some blogs, long entries are truncated and a Read More link appears so readers can read the entire article. This makes it possible to keep the home page short. As you can see here, posts can also include images and links to other pages. Comment links offer access to comments by readers, along with a comment entry form (Figure 8).

4. Footer

A footer appears at the bottom of each page. It normally includes copyright information and may include details about the blog's theme. In some blog themes, you can find the RSS feed links in the footer.

5. Sidebar

The sidebar, which also appears on every page, usually includes a variety of navigation links and other features:

• Search form makes it possible to search the entire blog for entries that match a search word or phrase.

• Calendar displays links for dates with posts. Click a link to view that day's posts. You can also use links in the calendar to view previous or next months.

• Recent posts lists recent posts. This is especially useful if you only display a few posts on the home page.

• Category list displays a list of all categories in the blog. Categories are used to group entries by topic. Click a category name to view a page with recent entries in that category.

• Archive is a list of months for which entries exist. Click a month name to view entries for that month.

• Links lists favorite blogs and other Web sites. Links are usually organized by link category. In this example, you can see Blogroll and Interesting sites.

• Feeds are links or buttons for accessing post and comment RSS feeds.

• Meta, when present, lets users log in or register and commonly includes links to check XHTML and CSS coding.