WordPress Pages

In the previous chapter, I went over the WP Post system. In that chapter, I explained a number of the important areas on the post creation screen. Many of those sames areas exist when you create pages, so I will not revisit those particular points. In that regard, make sure you have read the previous chapter before going through this chapter.

In WordPress, the Pages menu can be found in the main sidebar menu on the left:

Unlike Posts, the Pages menu only has two links - one to view/edit existing pages and another to create a new page.

This means that Categories and Tags ARE NOT USED with Pages!

In WordPress, Pages are not grouped together at all - they're just simply website pages.

There are a few reasons why I like using Pages instead of Posts:

1. I get to control all of the content in Pages.
    
2. Pages are not associated with a specific date. This is definitely better for sites that will not be updated on a regular basis! I also believe date based posts can sometimes lose their ranking power on search engines over time, while pages do not seem to experience it (just my personal opinion here but could be true).
    
3. I can still manually group pages together and even create my own customized “Category” pages (not WP Categories - WP Pages that essentially act like a Category page by linking to related pages on the site).

I am now going to create a WP Page to show you how this system works and how it compares to the post system.

Start out by clicking on the Add New link in the Pages menu.

You should notice that everything looks very familiar here because it is extremely similar to the Add New Post page.

I'm going to go ahead and set the title and content of this page to be identical to the previous page, so the differences will easily stand out. I went ahead and deleted the previous Post that I created.

The picture below shows that initial content being added to the Add New Page screen:

The main differences with the Page editor compared with the Post editor actually involve the various settings boxes that are on the page.

For example, the Categories and Tags boxes are no longer in the right-hand column.

Another main difference, at least if you are using the Weaver II theme, are the options that are provided by the theme for Pages. There are actually many more options available here than there were for Posts, yet another reason why I like to use Pages over Posts.
Here is a picture showing just the top section of options available through Weaver II on the Page Editor:

At the top are a number of checkboxes that control the display of various parts of the website, so you can easily disable page titles, menus, headers, footers, and more.

The drop-down box towards the bottom of this picture is something I commonly find myself using. You can easily disable the sidebar entirely on a specific page using this drop-down box (other options are also available, but this is the most common reason I use it).

Even more options, that are not pictured above, can be used to hide or show specific widget areas on a specific page (without affecting other pages on the site).

I'm going to go ahead and publish this page so you can see what it will look like live:

At the top, there is still the breadcrumb link that goes back to the home page (this can be disabled in the Weaver II options - it is the Info Bar).

Beyond the breadcrumb link, the only other content that gets displayed on this page is content that I have complete control over! This is why I like to use Pages - because they are not filled up with junk content that I can't control and may not even be that helpful for the visitors of my site (at least with the way I build sites).

This allows me to make each page into whatever I need it to be. If I want to make a page that has some content and then links out to other pages on my site (ie, a custom-made category page), then I can simply build the page that way.

Obviously, the idea of doing something like that may be a bit daunting for a first-time user.

You may actually be thinking that the Post system looks easy to use, while my method looks more complicated. Honestly, that is entirely true.

The point of using the Page system is not to make it easier on the site builder but to make the site better and easier to use for your website visitors.

I believe it makes more sense to take the hard part so I can make it easier for my site visitors. After all, isn't that who the site is really being made to cater to?