A quick display tip
When you first visit the Edit Post page, some of the advanced options ( Excerpt, Custom Fields, Discussion, Revisions, Author, and Format) are open below the post content. If you never use them and want to clean up the look of this page, you can single-click each bar and they'll collapse. You can also rearrange them by dragging them to form a new order.
You can also use Screen Options (top right of the page) to uncheck certain boxes, and thus not display them at all.