CREATING A WORDPRESS PAGE
1. To get started adding a new page to your WordPress site, find the Pages menu in the WordPress Dashboard Navigation menu. Click Add new.
The WordPress page editor looks nearly identical to the post editor, except for a few different boxes located on the right side of the screen.
2. Add the title of the page, like About. Note: If you have pretty permalinks set up, the title of your page will also be the URL slug.
3. Next, add some content.
4. The Publish section of the page editor is exactly the same as for writing posts. When you’re ready to publish, you can either publish immediately, save this or a draft, or schedule the page to be published later.
5. The Page Attributes section applies a parent page and template to your new page. For the Parent section, you can arrange your pages into hierarchies. For example, you could create this new page with additional pages under it. There are no limits to how many levels you can nest pages.
6. Some WordPress themes have custom page templates, so the next Template section allows you to apply a template to your new page.
7. The Order box allows you to order your page numerically. Pages are usually ordered alphabetically, but you can choose your own order by entering a number in this field.
8. Preview the page one last time, then click Publish. You’ve added a new page to your WordPress site.
The Add New Posts page can also be found from the + New link in the WordPress Admin Bar, also.
Click the Add New link.
Now you’ll see the Add New Post page where you can create your first post.
The first box is where you’ll want to enter the title of your post.
Next is the Post formatting section or post editor. This is where you’ll actually type the content of your post.
If you look on the right side of the box, you’ll see two tabs. There are two modes of editing posts: Visual and Text.
The Visual tab will bring up the visual WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG just means “what you see is what you get.” Here you’ll see a formatting toolbar with lots of options for formatting your posts. If you’re familiar with Microsoft Word or any other word processing software, most of these icons should look familiar.
If you click the Text tab, this will reveal a plain-text HTML version of the post editor. This version of the post editor is for editing the HTML code of your post. For most users, the Visual editor is the easiest way to write posts.
At the top of the right column on this screen you’ll see the Publish box. Here, your can save your post as a draft if you’d like to save it for later. If you click the Preview button, you can get a preview of how the post will look once it’s published.
The Status of the post will show if the post has been published, saved as a draft, if it’s pending review of if it’s been scheduled.
The next two links show the visibility of the post — or what visitors will be able to see your post. The Publish line shows whether the post will be published immediately or at a later date.
The next section are for categories and tags assigned to your WordPress post. We’ll cover these two topics in more detail later.
If you’d like to change the screen options for your post editor, just click the screen options tab in the upper right hand corner. Expand this to reveal all the options that can be displayed on the post editor screen.
Again from the post editor, you can also drag or drop the order of these boxes to customize how we want them arranged on the page.
If you ever need help while you’re on the Add New Posts page, just click the Help tab in the upper right corner. From here, you’ll be able to get a reminder for how to customize your post display, tips for adding a post title and using the post editor, inserting media and settings for publishing and discussion.
Managing Comments in WordPress: The Comments Page
Managing comments in WordPress is quite similar to the way posts and pages are managed.
From the WordPress Dashboard, visit the Comments page. This screen is customizable in the same ways as other WordPress management screens.
A yellow row means the comment is waiting for you to moderate it. You can act on comments using the on-hover action links or the Bulk Actions.
In the Author column, in addition to the author’s name, email address, and blog URL, the commenter’s IP address is shown. Clicking on this link will show you all the comments made from this IP address.
In the Comment column, each comment includes Submitted on information, followed by the date and time the comment was left on your site. Clicking the date/time link will take you to that comment on your live site. Hovering over any comment gives you options to approve, reply (and approve), quick edit, edit, spam mark, or trash that comment.
In the In Response To column, there are three elements. The text is the name of the post that comment is assigned to, and links to the post editor for that entry.
The View Post link leads back to that post on your live site. This small bubble with the number shows the number of approved comments that post has received. If the bubble is gray, you have moderated all comments for that post. If it is blue, there are pending comments. Clicking the bubble will filter the comments screen to show only comments on that post.
Managing Comments in WordPress: Dashboard Home Screen
Another way to manage comments is from the WordPress Dashboard home screen. Here you’ll see recent comments and you can quickly and easily approve, reply, edit, mark as spam or trash by hovering over these links.
WordPress Comment Settings
Don’t forget you can change your Comment or Discussion settings from within the WordPress settings menu. This page allows you to make changes to the details of comments made on your site, plus the ability to blacklist comments to help manage spam comments.
WordPress Posts vs Pages
A WordPress post is what makes up the blog aspect of your site.
- These are generally news or informational updates about a certain topic or talking point.
- Posts are listed in reverse chronological order and can be tagged, categorized and even archived on your site.
- WordPress posts are what make up the RSS content of your WordPress blog. So, when someone subscribes to your RSS feed, your posts will be the content that’s delivered to them.
- Think of the posts at the news portion of your site. They’re dynamic and constantly changing the content your end users sees.
WordPress Pages are similar to posts in that they have a title and body text, but they are different because:
- they are generally reserved for static content or information.
- Examples of this would be an About Me or Contact Us page.
- Pages are not listed by date and can’t be categorized or tagged like WordPress posts,
- Pages can have a hierarchy, which means you can nest pages under other pages by making one the “Parent” of the other, thus creating a group of pages.
- Due to their static nature, pages aren’t included in RSS feeds and won’t have date or time publishing
Scheduling WordPress Posts
This WordPress posts scheduling feature is found in the Publish box on the upper right side of the post editor page.
To schedule a post for publication, click the edit link next to Publish Immediately. You’ll now see a drop-down option to select the month, date and year to publish the post, even the exact hour and minute.
For example, if you’d like to publish this post at 8 a.m. tomorrow, select tomorrow’s date, set the time for 8 a.m., and click Ok. You’ll now see the Schedule button has appeared.
Click the Schedule button and you’ll see the status of this post has changed to scheduled with details for the exact date and time it will be published to your blog.
If you change your mind and want to publish this post immediately, click the Edit link next to the scheduled publish time. Just update the time to today’s date and the current time and this will immediately publish the post.
Exploring the WordPress Dashboard
The WordPress Dashboard allows you to control all of the behind-the-scene details of managing your site. Once you find your way around the dashboard, you’ll realize it’s really easy to use and navigate.
First we’ll take a look at the dashboard home screen. After you first log in, you’ll see a top welcome box from WordPress with some quick links to help you get started.
The next section is the Right Now section. Here you’ll see the number of post, pages, categories and tags for your site’s content. You’ll also see discussion information for comments, like the total number of comments, and numbers for those approved, pending or marked as spam.
In the Right now section, you’ll also see what WordPress theme you’re currently running on this site plus the number of widgets and your current version of WordPress.
The Recent Comments section shows you just that, recent comments. Here you can quickly unapprove or approve comments, reply, edit, mark as spam or send to trash, too.
The Incoming Links section shows incoming links to your website or blog found by Google Blog Search. Incoming links are when another blog links back to your site. If you have a brand new WordPress site, you probably won’t have any incoming links.
In the Plugins section, you’ll find information on the most popular, newest plugins and recently updated plugins from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.
If you scroll back up to the second column, you’ll find the Quick Press section of the WordPress Dashboard. QuickPress will allow you to publish or save a draft of a post straight from this screen, which is great for quickly publishing content. You just won’t have all of the formatting options like you do in the WordPress post editor.
The Next section is for recent drafts of posts. Once you start creating posts and if they’re saved as drafts, the five most recent drafts you’ve started be visible here.
The last two sections are the WordPress Blog and other WordPress News. These are Updates from the official WordPress project and the WordPress Planet feed.
If you’d like to customize what sections you see from the WordPress dashboard, visit the Screen Options tab on the top right side of your screen. Click the arrow to expand this section and you’ll see checkboxes for each of the sections usually included in the WordPress Dashboard. To remove any of the sections, just unclick the checkbox beside the section you’d like to hide. You can also choose the number of columns for the screen layout, too.
If we return to the Dashbaord Home, you can also expand each of the sections by clicking the arrow to the right. You can also drag and drop the boxes to change the order.
In addition to the WordPress Dashboard Home screen, the other major component of the WordPress Dashboard is the left-hand navigation menu. This navigation menu provides links to all of the WordPress administration screens for posts, the media library, pages, comments, appearance options, plugins, users, tools and settings. We’ll explore the rest of these menu items in more detail in the upcoming videos.
If you ever find yourself needing help, just click the Help tab in the upper corner. Click the arrow to expand and you’ll now see helpful information that walks through the overview, navigation, layout and content of the WordPress Dashboard. From here, you can also find a link to the WordPress.org Codex documentation on the Dashboard and to the support forums.