3: Add Pages
How to create a new, sample page from scratch.
Video Tutorial
Let’s say we wanted to create a brand new page. Let’s see how we might go about that and what it could consist of. First, hover over Pages and click Add New from your main admin menu:
Let’s start simple: Give the page a title and then click below and you can just start typing.
You can perform simple formatting just by selecting text and then using the buttons in the toolbar above:
You will probably want to make pages out of more than straight paragraph text, though. This is why WordPress created their new block editor. This lets you mix and match different ‘blocks’ and types of content – text, images, embeds, buttons.... There are a lot of different elements to choose from. First, how do you access them? One way that you can pick from them as a sort of list is to click the little + button before each section (and in other spots on the page too, but for ease of use, I’ll just demonstrate this one). This will bring up a ‘picker’ for the full collection of blocks arranged into self-explanatory panels:
Let’s add a button. If I know what I’m looking for, I can just start typing it into the search bar to bring it up:
I can add my button text, add a URL or start typing a page on my site to pick it from the list, and set my styling options. Easy.
Want to know a bit about all the blocks that are available? Feel free to do your own exploring, but for a quick rundown, here’s a great website:
But let’s look at one more one that you’ll probably use a lot, which will teach you a handy shortcut. You will probably use images quite often. And we already saw one way you can add them – using the + button. But if you know what you want to add, you can just enter a new block (e.g., click Return from the last paragraph), type / and then start typing what you want, e.g. /image:
Now I can select my image, add a new one, and then, once I’ve got an image, click on the tools above or along the right hand sidebar to decide how I want it to look:
There are lots of blocks you will never use, but I can’t be sure which ones you will and won’t. But if I had to guess, I would get familiar with the ones in Common, Formatting and Layout – those will probably cover 99% of what you need to do. Possibly Embeds if you want to add a YouTube video:
When your page content is either ready to go or you are done working on it for now, you can turn your attention to the Document settings in the sidebar. Here you will want to set a Featured Image. These images are pretty ‘short’ and get cropped, so something abstract is best when you have that (to avoid the problem of cropping out people’s faces):
And then, based on where the page is ‘at’, you can pick if you want to publish it now (Publish) or save it to work on later before it goes live (Save Draft):
Lastly, you very likely will want to add it to the menu. For that, check out the section on Menus:
And that’s a quick walkthrough of how to add a new page. Your ‘Homework’ is to think of what sort of design you want to achieve and to see if you can find the best available blocks to achieve that. Make a note of the design options for each one or look at the blocks in use on existing pages to see how you are best able to layout the page the way you want. The simpler the layout (primarily text-based, for example), the quicker the job will be. So, add some flourishes as needed to bring a page to life, while keeping your processes manageable – that’s the tightrope you want to walk. Good luck!
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