To get started on your website, you will want to create some initial content. There are several pages you will want to create, and if you are blogging you will want to create one or two initial blog posts. This chapter describes the mechanics of adding things to your site. It does not describe what makes good content. For what makes good content, see Part 3: Portfolio Contents.

Websites and Blogs

Merriam-Webster definitions:

Website: a group of World Wide Web pages usually containing hyperlinks to each other and made available online by an individual, company, educational institution, government, or organization.

Blog: a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer.

The key difference between a website and a blog is that a website is made up of pages and a blog is made up of posts. A blog exists on a website. When creating a portfolio, your blog is part of your larger website. 

A single entry on a blog is called a blog post; however, it is becoming more common to refer to a single post as a “blog” as well as using the term “blog” to represent the collection of posts. Typically you create “pages” for the static content on your site and you use “posts” for your blog posts.

Ipsum Generator

When you are setting up a new site, you might not have enough content. You need content in order to determine if the theme (the look-and-feel) is what you want. One tip is use Lorem Ipsum. Lorem Ipsum is placeholder Latin text that is designed to look like English text - that is, it has the same general sentence word length variability, sentence length, and paragraph length. 

Lorem Ipsum is a great choice for filler text when setting up your website and exploring themes. I recommend creating posts and pages with 3-5 paragraphs. 

There are standard ipsum generators and some fun ipsum generators. For example:

1. Standard ipsum generator 
2. Pirate ipsum generator 
3. Star Trek ipsum generator 

For a longer list of options see the Ultimate list of lorem ipsum generators.

Typically, pages contain static content that does not change often, where posts are dynamic content. Blog posts are dated journal entries and are constantly being added. They are posts. Where the “About Me” page is static content that rarely changes. 

To create a new page or post, from your Dashboard select either Posts >> Add New or Pages >> Add New.

Video: Creating pages and posts in WordPress

Using the Block Editor

The Block Editor, sometimes known as Gutenberg, is the current way to edit WordPress content. 

Video: Tips for using the block editor in WordPress

What is the difference between patterns and reusable blocks? In both cases they are a collection of one or more pre-configured blocks. The difference is that a pattern is designed to be changed. Once you have placed a pattern on a post or page, there is no longer a link to the pattern. The underlying pattern could change, but it would have no affect on the post or page. A reusable block is a configured block that is repeated across pages. If you edit the reusable block, it will update that block on all pages where it is being used. 

I recommend reading this article about re-usable blocks written by WordPress, which describes how WordPress envisions blocks and re-usable blocks are to be used.