Editing pages
Pages and posts (news, events, blog posts) are where you will be authoring the majority of your content. Posts should be where you keep your regularly-updated content and pages you will use more widely for static content (ie. an "about" page or a set of pages offering guidance on a topic).
Page title
Page titles are added in the top text field, and should include relevant keywords for the content of the page (for optimisation with search engines). The URL for the page will be derived from the page title, and once you have added the title this should appear as a Permalink under the page title field. Titles should be kept short where possible – as a general rule they should not exceed 75 characters in length (the text input provides visual clues about the number of characters you have left, and when you have exceeded this).
Page templates
When you create a page it will be created in the "Default template". There are 2 templates you can choose from...
The default template
This is intended for the majority of the pages on your site and where possible you want to create the majority of your content using this template. The default template supports:
- Writing rich text content (text, formatted-text, lists, links etc)
- Images and basic image galleries
- Info panels
- Buttons
- File download links
The Widgets Page template
This is intended primarily for landing pages (pages which are used to signpost visitors to particular sections of your site). The Widgets Page template supports:
- All of the above features in the default template (as part of the "content widget")
- Page banners
- Accordions
- Featured content
- Cards
- List Navigation
- The Gallery widget (for featured images and videos)
Which one to use?
Where possible try to use the default template for your core messaging. Content placed in the default template works best with the search functionality and will contribute to better search engine rankings.
As mentioned, if you want to produce something visual to direct visitors to your key messages, use the Widgets Page template to create a landing page. You may also find you need to use some of the features in the template which aren't available in the default template.
To switch templates select the Template option from the Page Attributes area (usually on the right-hand site of your page editor).
Page hierarchies
When you build a hierarchy of pages (as you see in this guide), the pages should use the sidebar in the theme to provide contextual navigation for the section (showing/hiding the sidebar is achieved using another box on the right side of the page). The sidebar shows links to any number of nested pages in the section.
To put the pages in order, go back to the pages list (by clicking on the link to Pages in the main administration menu on the left) and drag/drop the pages to the order to want. You can also use the Quick edit feature on this page to change the page title, parent page or page URL without having to navigate to the page editor.
Publishing the page
To the right side of the screen, you should see the Publish box. You can use this to publish pages as Drafts or make pages Pending Reveiw which will prevent them from displaying on the site while you edit their content.
Changing the visibility of the page to private will also prevent the page from displaying, but the page content will only be accessible by you.
The publish date is only important for posts (as they are ordered by their publish dates), although you could use this to set the publication date to a date in the future. This will result in the page being Scheduled for publication on that date.