In Tutorial #4 of this series, I discussed
the difference between WordPress Post and
Pages and we went on to create a post of the
site.
In this tutorial I'll demonstrate how to create
a WordPress page.
We already have one page within our WordPress
site as part of our sample data.
It's this page, the Sample page, which we
can find on our main menu.
By default, when we create new pages in WordPress,
they're added here, to our top primary menu.
In the next tutorial, I'll show you how to
create a custom menu, but for now we'll return
to the WordPress dashboard to create a new
page and we'll go to the "Pages" option in
our toolbar.
Notice how our Sample page is listed here
and we can click on the "Add new" option in
the toolbar or the "Add New" button at the
top of the Pages area to create a new page.
First, of course, I'll add in a title for
our new page and the title should be relative
to your content.
This is going to be our static homepage for
our site and I'm going to go to a Microsoft
Word document and copy some text that I've
written for this static front page.
I'll show you how to make this the static
front page in just a moment, but for now let's
go ahead use the Paste as text feature to
paste this text in as plain text, removing
any formatting that came from Microsoft Word.
I'm going to add some formatting to the first
line of this paragraph.
This is something I discussed in more detail
in tutorial #7 of this series.
I'll also add an image into paragraph and
I've already selected an image from my computer
and uploaded it to the site.
Again, this is something I discussed in greater
detail in tutorial #8 of this series.
Notice off to the side how I can also select
a parent for this page.
Pages are organized differently than posts.
Posts have categories, but pages have parents
and if add a parent to this page, this page
would become a sub menu item, or a child page.
I'll show you that in a later tutorial, but
for now I'll publish this page and it will
automatically be added to the top primary
menu on the homepage of my WordPress site.
So I'll return to the home and refresh the
page.
Notice how Welcome to Guitar Central is now
an option in my top primary menu.
I want this to my homepage, though, and it's
not.
If I click on the Guitar Central option here
in my theme, my homepage still features my
posts, and if I want my posts to be featured
on an inside page, I need to return to the
WordPress dashboard and click on the "Add
New" button to create a brand new page.
I'll add in a title here to indicate that
this is a page for my blogs, a page where
people can come and see my posts.
I'm not going to add any content in here though.
I'll go ahead and click on the "Publish" button
to add this page to the top primary menu.
To change my home or front page from being
a stream of my posts to being a static page,
I'll go to the "Customize" option under "Appearance"
in the toolbar.
In tutorial #3 of this series I demonstrated
a lot of ways to customize a theme, but we
didn't talk about using a static front page.
Right now, my front page is my latest posts.
I'm going to go ahead and change this to a
static page on my site and in the drop down
window for my front page I'll go ahead and
select Welcome to Guitar Central.
Next, on my Posts page, I'll select the Guitar
Central Blog, that second page that we just
created.
I'll click on the "Save & Publish" button
at the top of this area and I'll return to
the front end of my WordPress site and I'll
refresh the page.
You'll notice that the Welcome to Guitar Central
page is now the static front page for my WordPress
site.
It's the first page people see when they visit
my URL.
I also have the Guitar Central Blog menu item
in our top primary menu, and the Sample page.
Before we visit the blog though, we want to
get rid of that Sample page, so let's return
to the WordPress dashboard and I'll close
down this customize area.
Then I'll go down the "Pages" option and select
"All pages".
I'll click on the check box next to the Sample
page and click on the "Trash" option.
This will remove the page, it's not permanently
gone from the site, but it will be deleted
form our menu.
By returning to the front end we can refresh
the page and we we'll see that the Sample
Page disappears.
We can also go to our menu and click on the
Guitar Central Blog page, which contains our
posts.
The next tutorial will focus on customizing
this menu and creating additional menus for
the WordPress site.
