How to Create a New Page in WordPress

Creating a new page in WordPress is easy!

Lets start by looking at the Dashboard of WordPress and navigating from there.

First click the “Pages” button on the left-hand side.

wordpress-dashboard

When the “Pages” page opens, you can either click the button at the top of the list of pages or the small link that opens in the left pane to start a new page.

pages-page

A new page with its editor should now be visible. I have added quite a bit to this page already to better explain it’s function.  Let’s go over a few important points highlighted in green in the image below.

You can enter the title for the page in the title field. By doing only this and then saving the page, WordPress will automatically create the actual page URL (the address to the webpage on the website). WordPress will convert spaces to hyphens (to separate the words) because spaces cannot be part of a URL. This is also great for readability and SEO purposes as the words are cleanly separated. Think long and hard before you create that page or post name as once it is created, it can cause serious problems if you change or delete it in the future!

You can save you work on the server as a draft by clicking “Save Draft” so that you can continue to work on it another time OR you can save AND publish your work at the same time to also have it display the new page on the website by clicking the blue “Publish” button. There is also “move to trash” button in case you wish to delete the page entirely.

creating-a-new-page-in-wordpress

Editor Controls

This section will explain many of the text editor controls. Some versions of WordPress may be setup differently so not all controls may be visible or usable on your particular installation. Most all of these controls rely on you first highlighting the text or image with the mouse to designate what it is you want to change. A note about WordPress’s way of doing things: WordPress usually requires a carriage return  at the end of these edits in order to understand how the edit is to take affect. In other words, if you are having trouble getting a You-Tube video or image to show up on the website after entering it in the editor, or if heading print continues where you don’t want it to be, go back and click the trailing edge of the item that is having problems and then hit the enter button. This often fixes an invisible or misbehaving item.

Heading Text Control

The heading / paragraph drop down control sets the text heading size or sets text as a paragraph. Typically every paragraph should be just that, a paragraph Heading one is resevered for the title of the page but headings 2 through 4 are used to sub divide sections of the page into smaller parts.

heading size

Adding Images & Other Media

Adding Images and other forms of media like video and charts is all possible with WordPress however it is a two-step process: First you need to add the media to the media library, then add the media to your WordPress page from the media library. It all starts in the editor window. Here is the image we want to put on this page:

404-error-page

To do this, first find the spot where you wish to add the image or video then hit the enter button to position the cursor and then finally click the “Add Media” button.

 

Adding images

After clicking the “Add Media” button , you should get a screen somewhat like the one below. You have 2 choices:

1. Drag your image or video file right to the middle of this screen and let go of it there. This will start an upload to the media library.

2. Click the “Select Files” button to open a file dialog box (see images below this one)

drag-and-drop

If you dragged the image, the screen will turn blue to show you are about to upload that image.

drag-image

 

If you chose to open the file dialog box with a click, it should appear similar to below image.

file-open-dialog-box

Once the image is uploaded into the library, locate it and click on it (see highlighted blue box below). It is recommended that you at least enter the “Alt” text (alternate text on right side) so that users with visual impairments can understand what the image is about. Also Search engines use this information to better understand how to return search results. Once done editing, click the “Insert Into Page” button at bottom of window to put the image in its place where the cursors was last left.

select-media

Now the image should appear in its place when you return to the page that you where editing.

add-image-show-complete-page

Bold Text

Highlight the text you wish to be bold and then click the “B” bold button. Later on, if you wish to un-bold the text simply highlight it again and click the “B” bold button again.

How to bold text

Italic Text

Similar to bolding text, italicizing is accomplished in the same manner. Highligh text, then click the “I” italic button. To undo, highlight again and again click the “I” italic button.

How to italicize text

 

Strike-Through & Underline

As with the above, creating strike-through text or underlined text works in the same manner; highlight and then click the appropriate button.

Strike-through and underlined text

Bulleted or Numbered Lists

If you have a list of items, they can be easily turned into a list with “bullets” or numbers on the left side. There are 2 ways to do this:

  1. Highlight the entire set of paragraphs to be bulleted (if created first) and click the appropriate bullet button
  2. While typing in a list, click the bullet button first and then at the end of each list item hit the enter key to form the list item. Hit the enter key twice to get out of the list making mode.

How to create bulleted or numbered lists in WordPress

 

Text Alignment & Justify

These buttons allow you to set left, center, right or justified text alignment. Remember that much of how this and some other settings work might rely on the actual design and layout of the website itself.

Text align and Justify

Insert or Edit a Link

To add a link to your text first highlight the text that you wish to turn into a link – this can also be changed once editing the link.

Insert or edit a link

Once you have selected and then clicked the link button (above),  the link editor window will open.

start-of-making-link

 

Link Editor

This is where you can edit an existing link or add in the the URL and even change the link text that was originally on the page (if you highlighted it first!)

Link editor

 

In most cases is is also preferable to select “Open link in new window” so that if the user closes the current window, they will still have your website in view. When finished editing, click the blue “Add Link” button at the bottom of the window. Now you have a new clickable link in your webpage!

link-complete

Text Color

With some themes, you will be able to change the text color. To do this simply select the text that you wish to change and then click the text color tool button.

Text color tool WordPress

After clicking the button you should get a small popup to select the color of choice.

test-color-tool

Once you select a color, the text color tool will disappear and changes to the highlighted text will take place.

Clear Formatting Tool

Sometimes it is desirable to start with just text and no other formatting like bold etc.Also, you may be trying to paste text from another document that has extra formatting in it that may interfere with how the page lays out, colors, links etc. This may not be desirable and you can try to remove this extra formatting by using the clear formatting tool.

 

clear-formating

For more information about WordPress you can go to: https://codex.wordpress.org/New_To_WordPress_-_Where_to_Start

WordPress Versus Other Word Processors

WordPress functions similar to many other word processors like Microsoft Word and Open Office but outside of the processor environment there are some large differences that allow WordPress to create Web pages directly on a Website.

WordPress is Web based. You must sign in similar to the way that you would sign into other online accounts like Hotmail or gmail. Unlike computer based editors that save page to the computer’s hard drive. WordPress saves it’s pages to the server’s hard drive in a database and images to a folder on the same server.

You can save a page as a “Draft” in WordPress to keep to from being added to the Website but still allow you work on it. In order to make the page visible to the internet, you will need to press the “Publish” button on the right of the WordPress screen.

wodpres-versus-others

When you actually publish a page to the Website, the page / post title gets converted into a URL, the page URL gets added to the menu so that users can find it and a new page full of content is ready to be displayed upon request. This is great news! Now users can find the page on your site and the search engines can index it so it can be found in search. There is one caveat however. Once that page or post is saved and search engines have indexed it, or users have linked to it, deleting it or changing the URL will cause a “404 page not found” error. Later, users may follow that link someone had put up on another Website and end up at a dead stop on your website not knowing what happened to your page. The best way to fix this is not to do it in the first place. If you have just recently published this page or post, say within a few hours, then there is a good chance you can still delete it or change its name / URL without causing much of an issue.

One other major difference is that your data must be sent over the internet from your computer to the server and vise-versa. Unless you are using a secure connection (https is secure, http is not secure), this information will not be private. That’s OK in most all circumstances as you are going to want to publish what you are sending there anyway, just don’t save passwords, credit card or other private information in an unpublished page! Also remember that any built in server based email will not be secure either unless you have a SSL certificate and a https connection.