What you have here at the beginning is a framework for blogging: an admin account, one sample post, and the WordPress software itself. When you first access your WordPress blog, the only content will be a sample “Hello World!” post along with a sample comment–so you can get an idea of how WordPress looks and feels. The first thing you’ll want to do is either delete the sample post or edit it so that instead of a generic post welcoming you to WordPress, you will have a personalized post welcoming new readers to your blog. Access the administrative interface through the “Login” link on your blog’s front page and click the “Manage” tab. There you can view, edit, or delete any post on your blog.
What you are probably most interested in is creating new entries. Simply click the “Write” navigation tab in the administration panel and get started! The “Title” and “Post” fields are analogous to the subject and body of an email message. If you want to see exactly what the post will look like on your blog before you make it official, simply click on the “Save and continue editing” button; a “preview” link will appear on the right between the title and body fields in the editor. When you’re satisfied with your post, click “Publish,” and you are done: your post instantly becomes the newest post in your blog. (Note that “Save” and “Save and continue editing” will save your work but will not make your post accessible until you click “Publish.”)
If you’d like someone else besides yourself writing posts on your blog, you can add them (but they’ll need to sign up for an account first). To add a user from the wmblogs user community, click the “Users” tab in the admin dashboard, scroll down to the “Add User From Community” box, type in their WM email address and assign them a role. WordPress supports different levels of user account; users you add can range from additional administrators with full power over the blog to interested subscribers who can only provide comments (which is only useful if you disallow public comments, but you get the idea). The different types of user accounts and what they can do are described fully at http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities –but for a quick summary, scroll down to “Summary of Roles” on that page. If you need to set up accounts for students using the blog in a class, you’ll likely want to set them up as “authors.” That will allow them to publish and edit their own posts.
Finally, WordPress has a huge amount of documentation online. To help orient yourself, you might check out the document “First Steps with WordPress” available on the WordPress Web site: http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress . Of course, if you have any questions please contact wordpress@wmblogs.net.