How To Create a WordPress Page
Welcome to the first tutorial in our WordPress Beginner’s Guide series! We’re starting on the first page. The first WordPress Page, that is. Our examples today feature Chimera, an easy-to-use WordPress framework created by the development team at Navigator Multimedia.
WordPress Pages are commonly used to present timeless bites of information, such as an “About” or “Contact Us” page does. You can see from the WordPress dashboard along the right hand side that you have options for “Pages” and “Posts”.
Do not confuse Posts with Pages; Posts are for blog entries.
To create a new Page, start from your Dashboard. Click Pages > Add New.
Stay on the “Visual” tab as you add and edit content.
Your page title goes in the top text space. Page titles should identify what the content is about. Titles are important for SEO, so don’t muck around here. We’ll talk more about tailoring titles and meta-data for SEO purposes in an upcoming post.
Now you can input some delicious content! This goes in the whitespace you see below the editing options. Do not copy and paste content straight from Microsoft Word or your browser into the text box. Instead, use the “T” button. This prevents code you can’t see from being copied and pasted into your site, breaking your site’s formatting.
Copy and paste your content into this box, and click Insert. Font sizes, styles, and links are instantly adapted to fit the page.
It’s easy to personalize the appearance of your WordPress site with font resources like FontSquirrel.com. You can download free typeface kits to import onto your WordPress site, or have your web developer do this for you.
You can organize your Pages to include SubPages, which creates a hierarchy of information. For example, you might have an “About” Page that features four SubPages: Stakeholders, Customer Service Representatives, Company History, and a Message from the CEO. With SubPages, there’s no need to cram excessive information about a topic onto one Page.
Besides, you may want some space on your Pages for images or media. You can upload files from your desktop by clicking Upload/Insert. This button is located above your Visual editing options.
When you click the button, a pop-up will appear.
Identify the file with a title. Use the Title and Alternate Text space for keywords that are relevant to the file’s subject matter. This optimizes the media file or image for SEO purposes. Medium size works best for most images, so stick to that for now.
Now you have your content ready for the Page. Before you click Publish, which will present the Page live on your site, make sure to Save Draft. Hit Preview to open a new tab and check out your work before publishing.
If you’d like a Page to appear on the Homepage Menu, click Appearance > Menus. Scroll down to Pages, and click the boxes of the Pages you want on the Main Navigation. Click Add to Menu. The highlighted Pages will now appear on your Main Navigation tab. Click Save Menu after you make the changes!
Some WordPress themes come with SEO features. Widgets for SEO can also be downloaded and applied to your Dashboard. The SEO Options are maintained on the Page editor.
