How to create pages in WordPress and how to edit them

You will need to create a small number of pages for your website and typically these are the About page where you describe yourself or the website, a privacy statement where you outline your privacy policy, services you provide if you are running a business, and so on. It depends on the type of site you have.

A page is different to a post and it appears on the website in a different way.

In the previous section we created a post and it was displayed on the home page with a heading and first paragraph. New posts appear first and push down the older ones. The home page is often a stream of new posts on WordPress sites.

A page does not appear in the list of posts. The only way people will find it is if you put it on a menu.

When a wordpress.com website is created, a dummy About page is automatically created and it appears on a menu on the home page.

In this section we will edit the dummy About page and make it our own, then we will create a brand new page and put it on the menu.

Edit a page

Log into your website by going to yourname.wordpress.com/wp-admin

Click Pages in the sidebar to list all the pages.

Mouse over the About page and click Edit.

Replace the content

The same editor is used for pages as was used for posts. Show the extra toolbar buttons with the toolbar button on the right.

Now delete the old text, type in new text, select text and click the B button to make it bold or the I button to make it italic.

You can also create links as we saw when creating posts. Click and drag over some text to select it and then click the Link button in the toolbar. Type in the URL to link to.

Add an image

Images can be added just as we saw with posts.

Click the Add Media button and select the Upload Files tab.

Drag one or more images from the computer’s disk using Explorer or Finder and drop them on the WordPress window.

Select the Media Library tab and select the photo to insert

Down in the bottom right corner are the settings. For this image a left alignment has been selected and the size set to Medium. Click Insert into page.

Update and publish

Here is what it looks like in the editor. The image is inserted wherever the cursor was. It was positioned in the top left corner of the article, so that’s where the image is.

Click the Update button. The button is Publish when a new page or post is created, but when an existing page or post is edited, the button is Update.

View your About page

Let’s see how the updated page looks. Go to your website by entering yourname.wordpress. com and click the About link in the the menu (top right corner with this theme).

Notice how the text wraps around the image. If the image alignment is set to right, it would appear on the right and the text would wrap around the left side.

Create a new page

We now know how to edit a page. Let’s create a new one from scratch. Return to your site by entering yourname.wordpress.com/wp-admin and select Pages in the sidebar on the left. Click Add New (see the first screenshot).

This will be your privacy page because every website needs a privacy policy.

Enter Privacy in the box at the top. This is the title of the page.

Enter your privacy policy in the editor below.

Here’s a tip: Go to automattic.com/privacy and copy the privacy policy. Replace Automattic with your own name or website name, delete the bits that don’t apply and you have a great privacy policy.

Automattic is the developer of WordPress and allows you to use the privacy policy on your own website.

Click the Publish button.

Add the page to a menu

After publishing the page, it needs to be added to a menu or visitors to your website will not be able to find it. (This is one of the ways that pages differ to posts.)

Click Appearance in the sidebar and then click Menus.

On the left side is a list of pages. Select the page you just created, Privacy, and click Add to Menu.

On the right is a list of the menu items on the website. The order can be changed by clicking and dragging them up or down the list. Click Save Menu to save the new menu,.

Notice the option down at the bottom – Automatically add new top-level pages to this menu. If this is ticked, every time you add a page it will be automatically added to the menu. You might find this useful.

View the page

Let’s take a look at your new page and menu. Go to your website with yourname.wordpress.com and in the top right corner is the menu. Click the new Privacy menu and the Privacy page is displayed.