Happy New Year!
I hope everyone had a fun and festive evening last night – we did! Today, we’re taking it easy and waiting for the snow which is supposed to arrive this evening and last until Monday!
This is part 4 in my series of posts about starting your own blog. As I’ve mentioned before, having an internet presence is almost a must these days, particularly if you run a business. In my previous posts, I talked about how to set up a free blog on WordPress, how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog using your own domain name, and the pros and cons of both formats.
Today, it’s all about the pages on your blog. When you first start a new blog, it’s not always easy to know what type of information to include and where to put it. The first thing I do when starting a blog is to create pages with all the information that remains constant.
| Pages vs. Posts |
Pages are the static parts of your blog, where you want to put information that should be visible at all times. They are usually displayed in tabs up top or in a list in a sidebar (sometimes using a widget).
Posts are published in chronological order, with the last one first, and when you have a lot of posts, your earlier ones will be buried deep in your blog, and people will only find them if they search for them, so that’s not a good place to put contact info, rates, etc.
| What Kind Of Information Should I Put In My Pages? |
I recommend at least including the following:
- An “About” page where you tell people who you are and what your blog is about, maybe include a photo of yourself.
- A “Disclaimer” or “Terms & Conditions” page, where you legally protect yourself by stating that you are not responsible for actions taken by people based on what they read on your site, etc. (look at mine, or do a search online for inspiration). This page is especially important if you’re in the health care field, but in this day and age, everyone needs to protect themselves from lawsuits.
- A “Privacy Policy” page where you tell people what you do with their info. If you never capture any information, say that, but if you have an email sign up button, you need to mention that if they sign up for email updates, you will have that info, and let people know what you will do with it (sell their email address to advertisers or not, for example). If you use Google ads on your site, there is specific wording you need to include (take a look at my Privacy Policy as an example).
- A “Contact” page where you let people know how they can get in touch with you. My Contact page has an online form to fill out, and I will talk about how to add that in a future post (it’s a plugin).
| Optional Pages |
- If you have an office or clinic, set up a page with your hours, address, phone number and how to schedule an appointment. If you do home visits, mention that, etc.
- If you accept advertising on your site, add a page with rates and info about that
- If you do demonstrations etc. at charity events and such, an Events page is a good idea (I would also mention the events in posts – more on that in a later post)
- If you want to have a sitemap of your blog, that should also go in a page
| How To Publish A Page |
To zoom in on the screen shots, just click on them and they will open in a new window.
To create a page, log into the dashboard on your blog and go to Pages – Add New
This brings up a new window where you will create your page. The first thing I do is to go to the Publish menu on the right hand side and change the visibility to Private. I like to keep it that way until I like the way it looks and I’m ready to publish it.
Next, type in the Title of your page in the window up top and hit return. You will see a new line of text appear beneath the Title window. This is the URL for your page, and if you don’t like the way it looks, you can change it by clicking the Edit button, change the text, and click Save. This will not change the actual title of your page, just the URL.
Now we’ll add the text part of the page. I usually type the text up in word and spell check it before copying and pasting into WP. Once you’re done with your text in word, select it, copy and paste it into the HTML tab in the text window. If you paste it in the Visual tab, it can sometimes end up looking very strange so I always use the HTML. Click on Update Page.
Switch to the Visual tab to add formatting to your text. You can do it in HTML, but in the beginning, it’s easier to use Visual. Eventually, you may want to just type in the HTML code in your word document before copying it. (I find that easier, but you need to learn some HTML first.)
In the Visual tab, you will see your text, plain but separated into paragraphs. To bold a string of text, select it with your mouse and click on the B up top. Do the same with any text you want to italicize, underline or change in any other way. Once you’re happy with it, click on Update Page again.
To preview your page, right click on the Preview button in the Publish menu and select Open Link In New Tab. This will open a new tab in your browser with a preview of your new page. Your title will say Private: until you change it to Public and publish it.
I like to work this way because you can go back and forth and tweak you page in WP and see what it looks like immediately by just refreshing the preview.
When you’re all done tweaking your page, it’s time to publish it. Go back to your new page window, change the Visibility to Public and hit Publish. That’s it – your first page is up!
In my next few blogging posts, I will talk about how to publish posts, include pictures, install plugins and some other tips and tricks.
Related posts:
- Starting Your Own Blog – Part II Today I’ll walk you through how to start your...
- Starting Your Own Blog Part V: Posts We’ve come to the 5th part in my series...
- Starting Your Own Blog Part VI: Plugins This is the last post in my series about...
- Starting Your Own Blog – Part I These days, when you own a business, you almost...
- Starting Your Own Blog Part III – 8 Steps To Get Your Self-Hosted Blog Up And Running In this post, I will take you through 8...
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