You’re doing great! You’ve installed WordPress, changed your permalink settings to a more user-friendly format, and customized your general settings.

There are a few more settings to go through, but first I want to help you get started creating pages.

Page, Post – What’s the Difference?

WordPress beginners often ask me what the difference is between posts and pages. WordPress.org explains it this way:

“Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. [Note from Revka: Settings can be changed to force your blog posts to appear on a page other than your home page.] Pages, on the other hand, are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and are often used to present information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless — information that is always applicable.”

Read full explanation here.

Writing a Page

To create a page, log in to your WordPress admin area. In the left sidebar, look for the Pages link. Click on that. You’ll see two more links drop down underneath as shown in the image on the left. Click on the Add New link shown highlighted in yellow.

When you click on that link, you are brought to the editor.  This editor is how you create all of your pages (and posts, which we will talk about later).  The page and post editors are very similar so let’s take a look at it now. You’ll need to click the image to view it full size and read the notes.

You’ll want to insert the page title and then start writing the body of the page. To use any of the tool bar buttons, first click and drag to select the text to which you want the formatting applied then click the desired button.

Publishing a Page

Once you’re done writing and formatting your page content, you’re ready to save, schedule, or publish your page. These options are all found in the Publish section at the top of the column to the right of the editor.

To save your page to be completed at a later time, click the Save Draft button underneath the Publish heading.

To change the date your page is published, find and click the Edit link to the right of Publish immediately. The time should be entered in 24-hour format. (If you don’t want to convert afternoon times to 24-hour time, just publish everything in the morning.)

When you’re ready to make your page live, click the blue Publish button at the bottom right of the Publish section. (Note that if you have changed the Publish date to a future time, the button will say Schedule instead of Publish.)

Need Help?

We just covered the basics of creating pages in WordPress. If you’re feeling lost, you might benefit from a one-on-one WordPress training session. During the session, you will be taken through all sections of your WordPress admin area and given thorough instructions for how to use and manage your site.

You’re also welcome to post your WordPress questions on our Facebook fan page. Questions are answered on our wall on Thursdays.

The WordPress Wednesday series offers a weekly tip to help you get the most from your WordPress powered site. Click to view all the posts in this series.

Welcome back to WordPress Wednesday where we share a quick tip to help you get the most from your WordPress powered site. Click here to view all the posts in this series.

Today you’ll learn how to customize your general settings. These settings are pretty easy to understand.

You can access the General Settings by clicking Settings in your admin area sidebar. Underneath, another menu appears where you can click General.

You’ll want to make sure the Site Title and Tagline fields are completed. Unless you have an image header, whatever you fill in here is what will appear on your blog. If you have an image header, I’d recommend filling these fields in anyway as search engines will often “see” these items even if they aren’t visible on your site.

Typically, WordPress address (URL) and Site address (URL) will already have the correct URLs filled in. Do not change these unless you know what you’re doing. Changing them incorrectly could break your site.

Email address – this is used for sending you various updates regarding the site, like user registration notices.

Membership – I’d highly recommend leaving this unchecked unless you have a good reason for allowing memberships. If you’re not running a membership site, there’s next to no reason for allowing members, and hackers love to exploit open membership settings.

New User Default Role – If you have unchecked the membership box, set this to Subscriber. That role has the fewest permissions. If you have a membership site, you’ll need to decided what default role you want members to have.

Timezone – I’d recommend setting this so that scheduled posts will actually go live when you intend. Click the dropdown and choose a city in your time zone. Then daylight savings time will automatically be taken into account.

The remaining settings can be set according to your personal preferences.

If you can’t figure it out or don’t want to bother…

you can have us customize your WordPress settings for you. Go to our Services page and look for 1/2 hour of maintenance. This will allow us time to customize all of your settings to your desired specifications.

What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment or contact us with your feedback or questions. We love hearing how we have helped people and how we can improve to help you better.