A quick pointer to a really useful series of Vim articles by Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier that also appear on Linux.com.

Of course it had to happen! Just a couple of days after I write up on adding posts and adding pages in WordPress I find a 3 minute intro to WordPress movie.

It’s just a quick run through of an earlier version of WordPress but is still useful to watch. Being a Flash movie you’ll need the free plugin to watch it but it’s more than likely you already have it installed.

Having given a basic run through on how to add posts in wordpress the next step is “Pages”. A WordPress “Page” is basically a fixed post in that it has a link in the page navigation and it’s own link such as http://www.mysite.com/my-new-page/. You can edit it in much the same way you can a post with a few specific differences which I’ll go through.

Create Page

Like a post a page has a Title and Body of text. The main additional settings for a page include:

Page Parent

This is the parent of the page in the site navigation and is only relevant if you have a page needing sub-pages

Page Template

This will change the look of that particular page. Only relevant if you have different page templates.

Post Slug

This is the “my-new-page” bit of the page link; http://www.mysite.com/my-new-page/ and is produced automatically when you “Create Page” but you can change it if needed.

Page Order

This determines the order the page appears in the navigation. If you do decide to set the order of the page you need to make sure you alter all pages influenced by the page order as well as the current one.

Manage Pages

This is not much different from the “Manage Posts” page except for the fact that you access it via Manage > Pages instead of Manage > Posts. Clicking “Edit” brings you back to the page where you can …ahem… edit it.

Because I couldn’t find a simple how-to for this process I decided to throw my own together. It’s intended to cut to the chase as quickly as possible so is not overly detailed and relies on the images a fair amount.

Find the login link

First find the login link on any page on your WordPress site. This could vary wildly depending on your site layout but I often put it in the footer.

Sidenote: If you’re already logged you may also look for a link that says “Edit this entry” which will take you straight to the “Edit Post” page in admin for that piece of content.

The login page

Once you’ve found and clicked the login link you’ll end up, unsurprisingly, at the login page. Fill in your details and click “Login”.

The “Dashboard”

After logging in you are brought to the “Dashboard” from which you have access to a whole load of stuff. In this case we’re only interested in the link to “Write a Post” or Click “Write” on the top navigation and then when a subnavigation appears click “Post”.

The “Create Post” page

On the “Write Post” page add the Title, Body and choose a relevant category for the post. You can “Save and Continue Editing” as you do this and it will keep you on the same page. If you want to leave it until later click “Save”. If you’re happy with it click “Publish” and it will be live on your site.

Once you have saved a preview will appear lower down on the page which is useful for checking edits as you go.

The “Manage Posts” page

Having saved or published your post you can access it via the Manage > Posts page. Click “Edit” on that page to get back to the Edit page.

Footnote

A fresh unaltered install of WordPress version 2.0.4 was used in this how-to.

We’ve been working with Tim and Wandy, the owners of Planula Bed and Breakfast/Divers Retreat, for over three years now on their site underwater.com.au and for almost the same amount of time have been saying that we need to update the Planula site.

Well of course we’re happy to say it’s now done and was released a few days ago.

Having successfully maintained their own website for years, Tim and Wandy were, and still are, understandably hesitant about moving from a static HTML site they knew, to a new database-driven solution. I’d like to run through a few of the reasons we encouraged (bullied?) them into using WordPress.

I’ve mentioned some general reasons to use a solution like WordPress in a previous post. Here are a few more specific ones which, while referring to Planula, are equally relevant to many sites.

Speed and relative simplicity of publishing.

They were already doing a lot of copying and pasting to add new content which works fine for consistent content but is a more work if, for example, new pages need to be added.

Consistency.

It’s very easy on a static html site for small inconsistencies to build up over time and become harder to change, e.g. with navigational elements. Altering the left navigation in the new site is now as simple as adding new pages and/or shuffling current ones in admin.

Syndicated content

Their latest content can now be consumed by anyone who subscribes to it via the automatically generated newsfeeds. This is an effortless form of marketing and can be used in a variety of ways such as their “Latest News” on the Planula listing page on underwater.com.au.

More freedom to change their minds

There are always sections in websites that aren’t immediately clear and need time and use to get a better idea on how they should be approached. This is much easier if things can be moved around quickly to respond to changing needs or circumstances.

But what if…

It would be naive to pretend that this solution is the be-all, end-all and I’ve already mentioned Tim and Wandy having some hesitation. Their primary concern was how much they would be tied to this solution and what if they needed to change to another or back to a static HTML site?

Thankfully this is also a common concern for developers and therefore there are several solutions or “exit strategies”:

Changing to another system

Methods exist to import WordPress data into other solutions, such as Textpattern and Drupal. As a sidenote; It’s quite notable just how many more there seem to be for [importing into WordPress](http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content “Importing content into WordPress).

Converting back to static HTML

It would be possible to do this via WordPress itself but there already exist other solutions like Blue Crab which “is a program that you use to copy the contents of a website to your computer, in whole or in part”. This is a Mac desktop application but of course Windows equivalents exist

Some other things

Another point worth mentioning; the site has now moved from a tables-based layout to one based on CSS stylesheets which on the whole (apart from the markup introduced by a few plugins) means somewhat smaller pages sizes and more content dense HTML. The separation of the page styling also means future changes to the look of the site can be introduced across the whole site much more quickly.

Final words

We’re waiting to see how these changes affect the visits and search engine behaviour of what is already a popular website. Of course we’re hoping they improve even more.

So go visit the site and even better visit Byron Bay and stay at Planula!