Well, you have posted and categorized, uploaded and configured, but you haven’t yet created a page. Why would you? What is a page to a blog, which is, after all, a chronological series of entries—practically a journal?
One type of useful page is loaded by default in the system: to look at it, click on “Manage” and then “Pages” and you will find a listing for “About”. Click on “Edit” and you’ll find that the same interface you have been using to write posts comes up. There’s some nice introductory text about the page which you might very well change. So far, so good, but I still haven’t answered the “Why?”, have I? Read on.
As I mentioned, most blogs have a whole heap of content which is posted within a timeframe; however blogs also often have a requirement to make some pages accessible at all times and to all of their audience—in other words, pages on a website which ’stick’ around and don’t get lost in the depths of last July’s archive.
About You
An “About” page is a typical and excellent example of a stick-around static page. Often your readership will want to know a little about the background of the author whose posts they are reading (even if it only says that the only time he goes into a McDonald’s is when he has a hangover and needs a chocolate milkshake to sort his bilious stomach out). Other common static pages are “Contact”, “Links” and “Sitemap”. This unique WordPress feature is a wonderful way to create keyword-rich content that provides a stable foundation for the rest of the blog.
Parental Control
The static nature of pages allows a different kind of navigation hierarchy. As you scan down the right-hand side of the page creation page, you’ll see the third tab is titled “Page Parent”. The expanded menu allows you to create full and detailed information structures based on the parent/child format. By default “Main Page (no parent)” is selected. I’d recommend keeping page length to between 500-800 words with further information held in child pages or in subsequent pages at the same level in the hierarchy (see “Page Order”, below).
Templation
The WordPress Default theme has two templates installed (other than “Default”); these are “Archives” and “Links”. To use the latter, just enter a title for the page, select the relevant template from the right-hand side blue tab “Page Template” and click “Publish”. When you browse to this page you’ll find both monthly archives and category archives all on the same page—very good for search engine optimization, as is the links page. The “Links” template outputs all of the links in the “Blogroll” section of the website. In the default installation there will be six blogs listed. This page is very useful as a reinforcement of the links carried in the sidebar.
Note: And yes, you can create your own templates. For example, if you wanted to create a static client portfolio, with standardized layout and information, you might create a template for this (that’s how the Blogging Expertise portfolio works). This requires some knowledge of HTML and PHP, or at least a willingness to experiment; look at how other templates have been set up and use one of them as the basis for yours.
Other Page Options
Kind of like the Category slug described in our previous entry Becoming Part of the Management, the “Page Slug” can be used as a tag for various applications to use pages in special ways. This is often utilized to create a static front page. Next, “Page Author” allows you to specify the displayed name of the author—this is great is you are going to use ghost writers, or a range of contributors to the blog, or even give your blog a larger profile than perhaps it would if you were writing only as yourself. Finally, “Page Order” can be a massively useful function in specific circumstances, but you probably won’t need to mess with it in general.
Note: Trackbacks and the Optional Excerpt fields are not available for pages, because these pages do not enter into the chronological order of the blog and therefore do not generate an RSS feed.
