In this tutorial, we’re looking at Pages. This is based on the 2021 installation of WordPress.
We always get asked about the difference between Posts and Pages, when should you use Posts, and when to use Pages?
Posts and Pages are very similar. Think of Pages working more for a service-based website if you’re working with clients, e.g., plumbing, electricians, dentists, web agencies, e-commerce websites etc. With these types of service-based websites, the content is created through WordPress Pages.
Pages are more service-based. TutGurus, for example, has a few pages, but because we work interactively, we want to create discussion and build a community, so we use posts to do this.
Pages include Home, About, Contact, FAQ, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Shop pages, Shop Category pages etc.
How to Create a Page?
Go to your Dashboard. Next, come down to Pages, and you’ll see two options: All Pages or Add New Pages. Click on Pages, and when you look at a fresh install, you’re displayed with a “Hello World” demo page – as always, you can delete the “Hello World” pages as you don’t need them
It’s a good idea to keep your admin clean. You’re going to end up with so many pages and posts that it can get messy with too much old imagery, pages or posts – and your WordPress website is going to suffer. Try and stick to whatever you use in your WordPress site and delete the rest.
As in all different parts of WordPress, there are always options at the top of the page. One of them is screen options, which allow you to turn off either ‘author’, ‘comment’ or ‘date’. If you click on them, you’ll notice they disappear. You can bring them back if you want by ticking the boxes. You can choose how many pages are displayed in one particular page in this admin area – so if I want more than 20 shown, I’ll add them in. You can select Compact View or Extended View to choose how you want your display to look.
How to Use Pages Bulk Action
You can filter when a page was created by selecting the month in the date box and click Filter. You can also use ‘Search Pages’ on the top right of your display. Type in the page that you want – you need to make sure you search for the title of the page, and it will then display the page once you choose Search Pages.
When you hover over the “Hello World” page, you have different options – dependent on what plugins you’re using; you might have more options to edit a page with, e.g., Elementor or Duplicate; these will be displayed underneath the page title.
How to Use Pages Quick Edit
Aside from those, you also have ‘Edit‘,’ Quick Edit‘, ‘Trash‘ and ‘View‘.
If you click on ‘Quick Edit’, you can change titles; you can change the ‘slug’ (slug is the URL of the actual page), which doesn’t have to be the same title; it could be anything you want. Just make sure there are no spaces. If there is a space, fill it with a hyphen to make one continuous hyphenated string.
You can also choose certain templates to assign your page to.
Another route is to go via the ‘Edit’ section, which you find under your page title. You can view your page by control-clicking on ‘View’, and it will open in a new tab.
You will see this looks similar to posts. You have different options for creating your pages: you can have paragraphs, you can add quotes, imagery, videos and have complete control over those. But things like creating the style, stretching out two columns, using one bigger image and one smaller image, creating funky effects and hover effects can become a little more complicated.
Because this method can be quite limiting for creating page content, you could try using drag and drop. We use Elementor Pro, and that’s always our choice when it comes to creating websites. It’s quick, and we want you to produce your websites faster, so we’ll shortly go on to Elementor.
Update Option
Back to your Page. In the top panel, you have ‘Switch to draft‘, ‘Preview‘, ‘Update‘.
‘Update‘ is used when you’ve made an edit. You click Update, and it will update it. There’s the clog icon, which opens and closes a settings panel on the right. Inside this panel, you have ‘Page’, which shows the status, whether it‘s Public or Published. You can move this page to Trash if you don’t want it (you can also do that from the previous page). It shows how many revisions have done – click on Revisions, and it takes you to the area where it compares versions of the page.
Next, click ‘go to the editor‘ to return to the Update option.
Now you will see Permalink: again, here is the URL, but as mentioned, it could be different; it doesn’t have to be the same as the title.
Under Featured Image, you can add a featured image for this page if you like. You can add an image by clicking on it and then upload files, either from your computer or free image site suggested.
Page Attributes
A common question is about ‘Categories’ and where categories are located for these pages. When you create a page, in theory, you’re creating the category for it. You can also add it using the top navigation. For example, add a new page, name it ‘Contact Us’ and publish it. Then go back again and choose another new page. When creating a website, it’s always helpful to name the pages first so that when it comes to stylising links and making them look good, you have something to work with
Moving pages to trash
You can move any pages you don’t want to Trash. When you move something to Trash, it doesn’t mean you’ve deleted it entirely. To do that, go into Trash, select the item and choose ‘delete permanently. If you have multiple pages to delete, tick the box; if you only have one, you would choose ‘delete permanently. But next to ‘delete permanently’ is a life-saving feature,Restore; clicking this brings your page(s) back to the Pages section.
pages and Categories
Back to pages and categories.
The categories of your pages are used when you create your top navigation later on. To find out how to create menus and create these to be categories, follow this link to the tutorial on Navigation Menus. The tutorial explains how you can call upon these different page names and use them as categories, so that when someone comes to your website, the top navigation bar could have ‘home’, ‘about’, ‘contact us, or any other page that you created.
How To Use WordPress Pages 2021 - Wrap Up
Posts and Pages are very similar. Think of Pages working more for a service-based website if you’re working with clients, e.g., plumbing, electricians, dentists, web agencies, e-commerce websites etc. With these types of service-based websites, the content is created through WordPress Pages.
So that’s how you create pages, add pages and delete pages. Pages are fantastic; you’re going to end up with lots of them. Think of them as service-based information, client type of pages: home, about, contact us, FAQ and so on.
