Design Counts

WordPress Pages

While WordPress was started a way of creating blogs it can also be used to create a fully functional traditional website – by using WordPress Pages.

Using Pages to create a Permanent URL Website Stucture

WordPress Pages provide you with the publishing tools to create websites with permanent content. It can also be used to create a structured website content that is related. For example on this website we have a main Page called WordPress Basics, this creates a permanent URL (after setting up WordPress permalinks)

wordpress-basics/

As I have then added sub-pages or pages that are linked to the main page. For example the WordPress Page – Using WordPress Posts are then published using a permanent URL

wordpress-basics/using-wordpress-posts/

By using the WordPress Pages in this way you can create structures website content that visitors can understand while enabling a good position in search engines for the topics covered in your website.

Creating a WordPress Page

Go to your WordPress Dashboard, click on the Pages menu (left hand column) and then click on Add New. This will bring up the “Add New Page” WordPress page.

At the top is a section to put in the page Title. When using permalinks that include the page/post title – the Page Title is added to the page URL and this can greatly increase the number of visitors to your blog / website as this may help the position of the page in search engines.

Why is the Page Title Important?

Whether you are writing for pleasure or profit, or a mixture of both (the best way in my opinion) then you need to consider how people will find your website. If it is a commercial or for profit website then you can use advertising programmes including Google AdWords, Yahoo and MSN to get your message out to the world. If however you are developing a website as a hobby or you want to make money with Google AdSense or other programmes then you are often restricted in the type of advertising you can use. So what is left? Well getting your blog / website listed highly in search engines can and will allow people to find your site. This is often called organic or natural listings in search engines, instead of using paid advertisements. By creating a title that is accurately describes what you are writing about and one that is searched for by people (using search engines) you increase the likelihood that your web page will be positioned well in search engines.

By creating useful, well written content you will also encourage other people to link to your website or blog and this is one of the most useful ways of getting people to visit your website.

Hint: Use short titles of less than 6 words that match summarise up the content covered in the web page.

WordPress Page / Structure

By adding a Parent page to one you are creating then this new page will come up in a parent > child relationship. This nested page structure allows you to organise your web content in such a way to make it logical for you when adding further content, and also easier for your visitors to find information related to the area they are interested in.

When you create a Page using WordPress this page then becomes available to act as a parent to other pages and so forth. You can have many different levels i.e.

Parent > child > grandchild

Or

Main Topic (gardening) > sub-topic (vegetables) > further sub-topic (potatoes)

The above example will hopefully explain how pages can be used to nest or create sub-pages within a WordPress (or any other website for that matter).

It is probably not advisable to create more than two levels down from the main topic as this will create a menu structure that can be cumbersome. 

WordPress Page / Structure

By adding a Parent page to one you are creating then this new page will come up in a parent > child relationship. This nested page structure allows you to organise your web content in such a way to make it logical for you when adding further content, and also easier for your visitors to find information related to the area they are interested in.

When you create a Page using WordPress this page then becomes available to act as a parent to other pages and so forth. You can have many different levels i.e.

Parent > child > grandchild

Or

Main Topic (gardening) > sub-topic (vegetables) > further sub-topic (potatoes)

The above example will hopefully explain how pages can be used to nest or create sub-pages within a WordPress (or any other website for that matter).

It is probably not advisable to create more than two levels down from the main topic as this will create a menu structure that can be cumbersome.

You can see an image below of the Attributes menu. To add a Page to be a sub-page of another, click on the button below Parent and select the page that is meant to be higher in the page structure of your website / blog.

WordPress Pages Additional Tags

WordPress also allows you to add additional tags in your Pages. To find out more on this topic visit the WordPress.org site > Custom Fields

Summary

By using WordPress Pages you can create a website structure that is organised based on topics of interest you have written about. This allows you to create a website using WordPress instead of using a Website design software such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web – both costing several hundreds of pounds. There is a balance and some website developers use a combination of power website design software and the free, yet very powerful WordPress to create online content that meets their needs.

Before you start using WordPress

Before you start creating lots of WordPress Pages and (blog posts) sit down and plan the structure of the website – you can use a process called mind mapping to think creatively about the topics you plan to write about, and then write down on paper the structure you want to develop. Think of this as creating a website menu before you start. You will then have a target and plan to follow when creating your website using WordPress.