WordPress SEO Tip #1 – Carefully Choose Keywords for your Content

We see a lot of automated tools shoot out keyword recommendations. A careful analysis to sift through the keyword noise and pinpoint the right targeted keywords is a good way to boost your business strategy.

Need help narrowing down keywords? Try our Free SEO Analysis Tool. Our SEO Analysis tool even highlights peak se

arch times within the year to help you raise your ROI and conversion rates.

Once you’ve narrowed down keywords you want to focus on, start including them on your website to build up that highly necessary content with our following tips!

WordPress SEO Tip #2 – Title & Description

These can be a major help for your visitors as well. The description tag will often be used to populate the search engine listings and are often the first things that a user will see just before and sometime just as they visit your website. Be sure to include the focus keyword in both and also make sure they make sense to a pair of human eyes.

You’ll love this quick check. Right-click on your website homepage and scroll down to “View Page Source”

Within the top 5-10 lines, you’ll see:

<title>**Your company name here**<title>

This is a prime location to place your targeted keywords.
For example, <title>Sacramento Youth Adult Soccer League and Clinic <title>

This is an important and powerful placement of keywords. Be sure to check this across all of your pages. If you own a floral business, make sure your floral pages contain all your local floral keyword search terms. If you have an events page within your business website, make sure your page lists your city name, events, music, calendar, and so forth.

WordPress SEO Tip #3 – Check for Broken Links

All too often we see websites with broken links across their homepage. With over 75% of web traffic landing on the average home page, you want this page to be flawless. Run a scan and check for any broken links. It’s easy to make a mistake when you update your own WordPress site so run scans frequently! We recommend running a scan twice a month, depending upon how frequently you update your pages.

WordPress SEO Tip #4 – Image Descriptions

Articles containing relevant images have 94 percent more total views, on average, than articles without images. There is a surge in high-quality images that people are sharing through-out social media portals so choose your photos well!

The biggest mistake we see are beautiful images but they are missing search-optimized captions and metadata. Thoughtfully describe your images and and their relevance!

Last Tip – Install a WordPress Plugin (link to ScribeSEO) to help you monitor your progress or Sign up for our weekly auditing and analysis reports. Stay on top of your optimization and you’ll be on your way to success!

Still need help? Contact us and one of our development experts will get back to you!

WordPress SEO Tip #5 – Use a Fancy Tool To Help

There are some great tools to help you analyze your page as well as pinpoint some relevant keyword phrases.

• WP SEO by Yoast
  We’ve found this to be a very helpful tool and the most complete SEO plugin we’ve used for WordPress. Definitely worth checking out.
• Scribe SEO
  Scribe SEO has proven itself to be a helpful tool and works really well with WordPress. Check out a full review here.
• Get the Pro Tools
  In conjunction with the above mentioned tools we’ll use sophisticated reporting tools to help analyze the data and  compare your ranking and keyword focus with that of your competitors. Fill our our form for a Free Website Analysis and we’ll be in contact pronto.

A quick refresher

Raw Formulas

To calculate, roughly, how long a brute force attack will take is (number of possible combinations) / (number of tries per unit of time). Usually, the number of tries per unit of time starts with seconds and then can be converted from there. A simple bench mark would be 1000 guesses per second. So you would take the number of possible combinations, divide it by 1000 to get the number of seconds it would take to crack that password. From there, you can divide by 60 to get the number of minutes, 60 again for the number of hours, 24 for the number of days and so on.

To find the number of possible combinations is a bit different. They all take the form of (number of possible characters) to the power of (length of password). The number of possible characters is based on a couple of assumptions. For example, on a keyboard, is it pure lower case? Pure upper? Mixed? Are there numbers? Other symbols? The more of these assumptions are true, the more secure the password.

Example: Password Math with Three Characters

For example, let’s look at a three letter password. This will never, ever, be secure, but the numbers are small enough we can work with them. Using just lower case letters, we get 26 to the power of 3, or 26^{^3} which equals 17,576. Divide that by 1000, and it will take just 17.576 seconds to crack that password. However, if we make it mixed case, we’ve doubled the number of possible characters from 26 to 52. This changes the formula to 52^3 which equals 104,608. At 1000 guesses per second, that’s 104.608 seconds. Divide by 60, and we get just under 2 minutes. Still some room for improvement there, so let’s add numbers and other symbols on the keyboard. At my count, we end up with 92 characters. 92^3 equals 778,688. Divide by 1000 to get 778.688 seconds, so divide by 60 and we get 12.978133 minutes. For just 3 characters, that’s not a bad at all.

Example: Password Math with Five Characters

If we increase the number of characters by just two, we end up with 92^5 which equals 6,590,815,232. A rather large number, so let’s divide by 1000 to get 6,590,815.232 seconds. Divide by 60 to get 109,846.920533 minutes. That’s still big, so let’s divide by 60 again to get 1,830.782 hours. One last operation, a division by 24, and we get 76.28 days. Let’s translate this so that it makes sense. A 5 character password that uses both upper and lowercase, numbers, and the various other symbols on a key board would take roughly 76.28 days to crack at 1000 guesses per second.

Final Example: Jack and Jill

For one last exercise, let’s take a look at the Jack and Jill sentence from the last article. That’s 92^17 which is a ludicrously large number. After running through the above conversions, we end up at 76,839,841,072,114,873,112,110.175764522 years to crack it. That’s right, years. 76 quadrillion of them. For reference, the universe is only(!)  about 14.6 billion years old. So it would take 5 trillion times the current age of the universe to crack that password. Pretty impressive, isn’t it?

Assumptions and Other Things to Note

One final word of warning: Yes, “Jack and Jill” is pretty dang secure, but there’re a few underlying assumptions in the background. For one, it’s using the figure of 1000 guesses a second. That’s not bad, but with some time and effort a hacker can manage a guess rate much higher than that. Currently, some of the fastest machines can manage 11,000,000,000 guesses a second. That’s 11 billion, and thus much, much faster than just 1000 guesses a second. Granted, it would still take a lot of time to crack, but this is where the other major assumption comes into play. These figures are based on the idea that the brute force program is just putting in characters at random. Odds are that, at some point, someone will find what letters and symbols are most often used in passwords and where they tend to be located inside the password. Once that’s known, the program can give preference to those letters and symbols and their locations to speed up how quickly a password is found. “Jack and Jill” are pretty safe for now, but the game is always changing.

If you’re looking for some further reading, Xato.net is a place with some good information.

The Old Song and Dance

In a standard phishing scheme the con artist, who shall henceforth be called the phisherman, selects either a single target or a group and contacts them using some type of electronic communication, such as email or text message. In said message, the phiserman claims to be from some trusted company, spins a tale making it sound as if the target’s account will be in trouble if they don’t do something RIGHT NOW, and gives them a link to carry out said action. The catch is that the link doesn’t actually go to the web site it claims to. Instead, it leads to a website made by the phisherman that looks and acts just like the one it claims to be. If they fall for it, the target will log into the fake site, find that the problem has been resolved and be sent back to the real site none the wiser. However, the phiserman now has the target’s account information to do with as he pleases.

In some cases this can be, relatively, benign. For instance, someone claiming to be you on a message board or social network can be a hassle, but in most cases any damage is reversible.

But what if the company the phiserman claimed to be with was the the target’s bank? Now they have access to the target’s bank accounts and, if the phiserman is smart, they can do a lot of damage before getting caught, if they ever are. If the phiserman is really smart, or really good, they can get access to hundreds or even thousands of accounts.

 How Can I Stay Safe?

So, you ask, how can I stop myself from becoming a target? Surely there must be some way to keep these crooks away?

The bad news is, there isn’t. The sheer size of the internet combined with the fact that computers are very, very good at doing the same thing over and over means that someday a crook will come across your email or phone number and try to con you. The good news is that, almost every time, these schemes can be defeated with just a bit of thought.

 How Can I Defend Myself?

To start with, almost every company out there has a policy that says they will not contact you asking for account information. When they say that, they mean it. Don’t listen to anything that says “in an exception to company policy” or “because of the extreme danger” or anything else that tries to explain away the violation of company policy. The most potent weapon in a phiserman’s arsenal is panic. If they think they can inspire a panic through strong wording, or very large numbers “disappearing” from your bank account, they will use that in an instant. If they can inspire panic in the target, that target won’t think rationally. They won’t think about the violation of company policy. They won’t question if the person sending the email really is who they claim to be. They’ll only see danger, and a way out. The trouble is, panic is very, very difficult to fight. If you’ve looked something over several times and find the danger too large to be ignored, there is something else you can do: Contact the company directly.

By taking the initiative you ensure that you’re talking to the real deal, not just someone that claims to be from the business. Almost every time, the company won’t find any problems and your conciense will be soothed. However, phones open another avenue for danger to use. If a phiserman calls the target, they have less time to think. They’re also much more likely to take the phiserman’s word that he is who he says he is.

So how can phone phishing be fought? The same way as email scams. The above info about company policy is still in effect, and so are all the warnings. Again, if the danger seems too extreme to be ignored then find a way to polity tell the phiserman that you’re busy and call the company afterward. Whether or not a phone call counts as phishing or another type of con is a matter of debate, but the danger is still very real.

If for some reason you can’t contact the company, there is another option. There are a number of sites that are dedicated to keeping track of phishing scams. If you’re ever in doubt check out one of the following:

• Snopes
• AntiPhishing Working Group
• MillersMiles

What is Phishing? You Tell Me!

Hopefully, having read this, you are now more aware of the danger phishing poses and how to fight it. Now that you know the answer to the question “what is phishing”, don’t be afraid to share what you know. As much as we try to keep people educated, an alarming number still don’t know the basics. So please, if you ever hear the question, don’t be afraid to answer it or send the questioner here. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and will be back to read more in the days ahead.

Do you have any stories of being targeted by astoundingly incompetent phisermen? Please, feel free to share in the comments.

Online Privacy 101: Sharing

Probably the first thing to keep in mind is that you don’t HAVE to post everything, in fact, it’s a good idea not to. Keep your personal information personal. Even sharing personal data online with people you trust can end up in front of the wrong eyeballs. If you have a personal message send a private email rather than posting it on a public wall for the whole world to see.

Watch out for Malicious Applications

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to be careful about the apps you install. Not only can they be invasive to your private data but a clever app may pick at your friends data as well. Birth dates, Full names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses are all bits of information that can be used to spam you or even worse commit identity fraud. So make sure that you trust the applications that you allow to have access to your profile and account. Always remember that plenty of people have plenty to gain from violating your online privacy, and many won’t think twice about tricking you into giving up your information.

Adjust Your Privacy Settings

Take some time to adjust your privacy settings. Some quick steps to setting your Facebook privacy settings(currently) are as follows:

• Read Through Facebook’s Privacy Information: Click the Privacy link at the bottom of Facebook.
• Click Home > Privacy Settings
  • Manage what your friends can see
  • Manage what the public can see
  • Manage your Apps
  • Block People and Apps

It will probably take some time to go through all of it for your accounts and those of your family members, but in the end you should feel better about yourself.

Social development and pressure in middle school and high school is already a stressful time for teenagers. Social Media can augment and accelerate those challenges if not careful. Typical problems that arise from interaction with peers can also happen online. Bullying and gossip are not so private on social media making vicious comments spread faster to a broader audience. Teenagers need to be aware of the impact they can have as well as how to practice social media safety to prevent a situation where they could be bullied.

Choose Your Friends Wisely

One of the simplest ways to avoid bad situations is much like we would in face to face interactions. Simply don’t be their friend. Choosing friends that uplift and help is as important in the virtual world as it is in the real world. Being selective of friends can also help with popularity anxiety and feelings of inadequacy based on the number of friends they might have on Facebook. This is the easiest way to practice social media safety.

Set Limits

Probably the best thing that you can do for yourself as well is your kids is find the right amounf of time to spend participating in social media venues. Learn what your limits are and realize that it can be a time consuming endeavor.

Know the Risks

I personally believe that knowing what the risks are before hand and making decisions on how to handle them before encountering them can really help avoid some nasty pitfalls in general. Have a discussion with your family about the things that can happen on Social Media sites and the type of people that they can run into.

Be aware that social media can be a venue for predators and avoid the following activities:

• Chatting and sharing information with people you don’t know or have only known online.
• Sharing provocative images with anyone online or via text is just a bad idea. Sharing is only a button push away.
• Downloading Unknown Applications (Even if they are new and cool)
  These can introduce Malware, Adware & Viruses or share your information with people and machines you may not want your information shared with.

Also be aware that Social Media sites have become an inexpensive way for others to get an idea of who you are. Potential employers, schools and even potential in-laws might dive into your social life online to find out more about you.

In short make sure that you are keeping your profiles in order and not sharing everything with the world. Some people or computers just might use it against you.

It’s time to look at both the good and bad of Social Media. For over a couple decades now, the Internet has been presenting media and data to broad audiences around the globe at astounding rates. This inherently makes available to a single individual an incredible amount information and relationships with a simple finger swipe or mouse click.

The masses have excepted main stream media to come with some boundaries and certain expectations. Going to a movie or book store and being able to purchase or select a limited amount of media made the user selective in their choices. With media being available with such little effort or investment, it would seem that the days of the pensive consumer may be behind us.

This new way to select and interact with people and organizations has changed the expectation for the consumer. Unlike produced film, music and video games that you might purchase from a store. Media on the Internet, and particularly Social Media, must be approached with as little naivete as possible. Keep in mind the following for yourself and your family members.

• The author can be anyone, from anywhere
• The content can literally be about anything
• It will likely not contain a content rating
• It’s instantly available
• Many Social Media applications will share information on usage
• Precise demographics (they know who you are, and what you like)
• Easy for anyone to participate as well as fake information
• Not limited to home computer
• Information is archived
• Information is generally owned by the entity that holds the data

With an understanding of what to expect with Social Media, I believe that it empowers the user to avoid explicit content, being involved in unhealthy relationships, or damaging healthy ones. The next post will go more into what challenges teenagers are facing because  of Social Media.

An Introduction to Social Media: What is it?

Social Media is used to generate and stimulate conversations… about anything. and is now used by just about everyone. There are numerous platforms to get involved in Social Media and are used by friends, acquaintances, family members, business associates, churches, schools and just about any organization you can think of. An easier question to answer would be “Who doesn’t use Social Media?”. In fact, chances are that you and your family are already involved, voluntarily or not, in some form or another in social media. The valid question at this point is “Are you using it wisely”?

Types of Social Media

Social Media now covers a broad spectrum including

• Blogs (web logs)
• Instant Messaging
• Community Sites (My Space, Facebook, Google +)
• Microblogs (Twitter)
• Image Share (Flickr, Pinterest)
• Video Share (YouTube, Vimeo)
• Location Sharing (Four Square)
• Business Networks (LinkedIn)

Social Media Isn’t Going Away

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.” – Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics

How well are you using Social Media. I’m not referring to how much money or friends are you making on social media. I’m referring to how wise and prudent are you and your family using Social Media? Do you understand the platforms and media that your children are inherently engaged in?

What Does This Mean for our Family?

With Social Media interaction already all over the place, the question from parents are stacking up. Should they let their children have a Facebook page? Who or what will they find? What good can come from it? Just like other forms of media, Social media can be a powerful communication tool which can enlighten, uplift and help us do more than we could have before. However, used incorrectly it can demoralize, hinder and become a stumbling block for a healthy daily lifestyle.

Social Media is only going to become more a part of our everyday lives. We find social media in things like our cars, televisions, cell phones, tablets, appliances and are becoming more a vital part of the school, business and shopping experiences. As parents it’s important to know what it is and not simply put it aside as something belonging to the younger generation. By helping our children understand it, what to watch out for and how to use it properly we can help them harness the power of Social Media correctly.

In the following series post I’ll go into more detail on what makes social media so good and on the flip-side what can make it so bad.

The Media Library

In the main navigation menu you will find the Media menu item. Expanding the menu item will reveal the options Library and Add New. Let’s start by taking a look at the library itself. Go ahead… click it.

Add New Media

Before we get into working with WordPress images, let’s first take a look at getting images into WordPress in the first place. Click Add New in the Media menu and you’ll be transported to the Upload New Media view. Here it’s pretty simple. Click the Select File button and you’ll be able to navigate to the files of your choice. You can upload files other than images. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll stick with images. You can also select multiple files at once, and the uploader will begin the sequence of uploading the images one at a  time. Once the image is complete it will show an Edit Image view. If you’ve uploaded multiple images you will see a Show link to the right. Clicking it will expand into an Edit view, which you can collapse by clicking the now viewable Hide link. If you’re bored at this point, feel free to alternate clicking the Show and Hide link several times.

Edit Media

Within the realm of Edit Media resides the current information on the image,  and you can change a few things on the image here; such as the title, alternate text, the caption, description and location of the file or the file URL. You will also see a button under the thumbnail that reads “Edit Image”. At this point the thought, “Aren’t we already editing the image?”, may be scurrying through your mind. If is, you are right, but there is more. If you venture to click the Edit Image button you’ll see what I mean. The thumbnail is automagically(you bet it’s a word!) replaced with a mini image editor where you can crop, rotate and even flip the image. You are also empowered with the ability to apply the changes to all image sizes, just  the thumbnail, or all sizes but the thumbnail. Cropping can be a bit tricky and the (help) link can be helpful. For the most part make sure that you click and drag to highlight the area that you want to crop first.

The Library List

This should resonate a little Déjà vu. The list itself is very similar to the list for pages and posts. Mousing over a list item will present the following options as well: Edit, Delete Permanently and View.  From the list you can venture off further into the image. View will take you to an image view from your website and Delete Permanently will… well, you know, delete the image. Clicking the thumbnail, the file name, or the Edit link will take you to the basic Edit Media Screen. Don’t forget to click save when you’re done.

Adding an Image

We have some of the basics of how to get images into WordPress, now let’s see how you use them. Go ahead and start a new post. Above the editor you’ll  notice “Upload/Insert” with four icons to the right of it. The first icon is the Add an Image icon. Click the Add an Image icon.

There are four main sections in the Add an Image window, however at this point only three will be available. From Computer should be the section that is highlighted by default and basically is a repeat of the Add New Media. Also, any images that are uploaded here are added to the Gallery and the Media Library.

The second section is From URL. This will allow you to grab a URL for an image on the web and plug it into your post. Be careful of copyright infringement on this one. Just because an image is on someone else’s website doesn’t mean you have the right to put it on yours. Also, be careful about the stability of the URL. If the source for that image changes, then you suddenly lose that pretty picture you just placed on your post.

The third section is the Gallery, and you will only see this section if you have uploaded an image to this post or inserted an image from the Media Library to this post. In essence, it shows a list of images that have been attached to this post.

The final section is the Media Library and shows a list of images that are in the Media library. Since you’ve mastered the Media Library or at least read up on it a bit, you will be able to manage this section without a problem.

So how do I get the picture in the post?

From any of the lists that are available in the above mentioned sections you can click on the Show link next to the image you wish to place in the post. This will take you to the Edit Image view with a few extra options at the bottom of the image info area.

The Link URL is an important item to note. This determines if anything happens when your visitors clicks on the image. You can click None which clears the Link URL and essentially means nothing will happen when the image is clicked upon. The File URL will take the user to the image file itself and the Post Url will take the user to the image view section, basically placing the image in a post like setting. It’s not a bad idea to experiment with these so that you have a good idea what each link option will do for you. You can also place your own URL as well taking the user to any website you so desire.

Notice the Alignment and Size options as well. Alignment will assign an alignment property for the image and effects how where the image is placed on the page and how the adjacent text flows with the image. The Size option will determine how large of a file to stick into the post (These default sizes can be adjusted under Settings > Media in the main navigation menu).

Featured Images are a neat and fairly recent addition to WordPress. If your theme supports a featured image it will place the set image in a predetermined location and size. This can make life a little easier and your website a little more uniform. If your theme doesn’t include a home for a featured image than you don’t need to worry about it.

The Delete link is a seemingly obvious option here, but alas, expect the unexpected. Clicking the Delete link will show a text confirmation that appears below the Delete link rather than a pop-up asking with the big OK / Cancel options. No worries though, for you are now prepared to handle this elusive change. And no, I didn’t beat my head for 3 minutes trying to figure out why my image wasn’t deleting… it was 2 minutes. Consider yourself 2 minutes richer. You’re welcome.

Finally, we get to the Insert Into Post button lingering at the bottom. Your options are set and your link is entered. Click the Insert Into Post button and see the fruits of your labor. Good job, take a 5 minute break and enjoy your victory.

Pages on the other hand can get tricky with images… oh wait, it handles the same. You should be good to go there as well.

Moving on from Wordpress Images

Congratulations ! You’re done! You now know all there is to know on the basics of using WordPress. Of course, there’s always more to learn, but you now know enough to get a site rolling. Go on now, have at it!

To start off, you can click on Posts in the main navigation menu and you will see a list of your posts similar to the Page view. You will also find the Quick Edit link with the appropriate variations to the options reflecting Categories and Tags. And of course, clicking the title of the post or the Edit link will take you to the Edit Post view.

Categories

Instead of grouping your content using a hierarchy of parent pages you group blog posts together by using categories. The categories make it very easy to group your content and give your visitors some conformity in navigating the content on your website.

You can set one or more categories (oh ya, you can have more than one) for a single post. On the right you will see a section for Categories. All you do there is check next to the categories that you would like to associate with the post. If a new category is needed, just click on the “+ Add New Category” link located at the bottom of the section and you will be able to type in a name for the new category and even set a parent category.

There is also a Categories section of the administrative panel to work more with categories. The link to this is found under Posts in the main navigational menu.

Tags

It seems that at this point the word tag has been thrown around quite a bit and though good folks are familiar with the word, they lack the knowledge of how to put it into practice. First of all, tags are by no means required. You can post all day long and not have to worry about adding a single tag and your visitors will be able to still use the site. However, there are some benefits to taking some extra time to add a few important words or phrases to the tag section of your post

If you look at categories as a means of broadly classifying your content, you can look at tags as a way to zero in on specific and important keywords that are contained inside the content itself. Tags can be referenced as micro-categories. For example; a website may have a category named “Fast Food” that contains a numerous amount of posts. One post may be or even contain key phrases such as “McDonald’s” or “french fries”. “McDonald’s” and “french fries” would be good words to add as tags. This will allow internal and external sites have an inside look into what is important about the content of a particular post. Depending on your layout, you may even have a tag menu or tag cloud incorporated into the site navigation, allowing your visitors to jump straight to popular or important topics in your site.

Adding the tag itself is a piece of cake. You type in the word and click the Add button. If you want to add multiple tags at once all you need is a comma between each tag. Once a tag is added you will see the tag under the “Add New Tag” field with an (x) next to it. Of course clicking the (x) icon will remove the tag. There is also a helpful link “Choose from the most used tags”, which will show you the tags that have been used throughout the website. Simply select the tag you wish to associate with the current post you are working on, and it will be added to your list.

Here is a good article on the importance of tags and gets past the basic introduction and more into using tags for search engine optimization.

Moving On from Wordpress Posts

Now that you have one more skillset, WordPress Posts, under your belt we’ll take you to the final article in our Getting Started series for WordPress. We’ll get into the basics of working with images, so that you can add a little pizazz to the black and white text on your pages and posts.

Page Attributes

It would be a good idea to at least familiarize yourself with the various page properties that you may run across as you work. Here is a list of a few that you may not be savvy on when you first jump into it.

Slug: If you’re like me you’re thinking of a slimy snail with no shell. However, in this case the slug is actually the word(s) used to create a user friendly URL. For example, if the slug for my page was “snail”, the URL that I would send my visitors to would be http://www.yourdomain.com/snail.

Date: I am taking a shot in the dark and guessing that you have a good idea what the date is for. I make mention of it, because it’s good to note that you can change the date and that if you set the date for a future day and time that it will remain unpublished until that time is reached. I know… it’s cool.

Parent: Grouping pages can be extremely useful. Using the Parent attribute is how it’s done. Let’s say that you want to group pages based on department contacts for your company. We would first create the page, “Contacts”. Then we would create a page for “Billing”, “Sales” and “Slackers” with the Parent attribute set to “Contacts”.

Order: Some navigation, or page lists, will reference this property and order the pages accordingly by number.

Template: This can be a tricky item for some. The template is what determines the layout for a given page. The templates themselves will vary dependent on the theme (I know we haven’t covered themes, but chances are for the basics you’re okay wrangling that one later). Typically, you’ll be able to select between a default template and a full screen template.

Allow Comments: If for some reason you want to allow the fine folks that pay homage to your site to comment on the page then make sure this option is checked.

Status: This is an important property. Your visitors basically won’t see your page until its been published or the status has been set to publish. This is nice if you need to work on a page for a few days. Simply make sure that the status is set to Draft or Pending Review and your creation will be kept from public eye until you’re ready.

Current Pages

Typically you will be able to direct yourself to the Pages list by using the Pages section in the main navigation menu on the left. You may shortcut to this list from the Dashboard as well. Once in the Pages view you will see a list of the existing pages.

Pages List View

You can of course click on a page name and you will be taken directly to the Edit Page view. Or, you can have some fun with a little WordPress dazzle. Move your mouse over the name of one of the pages and, Voila! You now have some convenient options that you can execute on the page- without having to leave the current view. You should notice the following option appear: Edit, Quick Edit, Trash and View.

Edit

The Edit link will take you straight to full Page Editor view where you can change all aspects of your Page.

Quick Edit

The Quick Edit link will keep you on the same view and will allow you to change the primary attributes of your Page. The Quick Edit is handy if you just have a few small things to change such as the Title or Status of the Page. The following are available: Title, Slug, Date, Password, Parent, Order, Template, Allow Comments and Status.

Trash

Clicking this fine link will remove the page from your list but will not permanently delete it. If needed, you can retrieve an item that has been trashed by clicking the trash link that will be seen above the Page list after items have been placed in the Trash.

View

The View link will direct you to the page on the website itself. This allows you to check out your masterpiece and make sure it looks as nice you had hoped.

Creating and Editing Pages

Add New Page

You can add a new page by clicking the “Add New” link under the Pages section in the main navigational menu, or by clicking the “Add New” button at the top of the Pages page. Once you’re there, the view is almost identical to “Editing the Page”. The difference being that the fields are blank and the button in the Publish section says “Publish” instead of “Update”.

Welcome to the Add/Edit Page

Once you are in the Add/Edit Page view there can be a lot going on. Again, since you’re just getting your feet wet we’re only going to cover the essentials for now. I’m also not going to cover images in this section, but will address it in a later post in the series.

The Title

The first area is for the Title of your Page, and it conveniently says “Enter Title Here” inside the input field. Don’t overlook the importance of this one field. It needs to be short and sweet. Not only does it give your visitors some intuitive insight to what this page is about, but is also looked at by the search engines. Keep it relevant.

The Content

Under the title you’ll see a text editor. This is for the meat of your page and where all that great content you’ve had rolling around in your head is waiting to be placed. Granted, the interface is simple, but did you want something complex? There are a few buttons that are overlooked on the toolbar.

Link and  Unlink: These are handy tools for easily adding links to your text and images. Just highlight the text where you would like your link, and press the “Link” icon.

The Kitchen Sink: Oh ya… the kitchen sink is included. Basically, this expands the toolbar to reveal some other options for editing the text.

Full Screen: This crafty little button will expand your text editing screen to full screen. Very useful when you have a lot of editing to take care of and want more than a 2 inch space to work in. To exit full screen, simply click the icon again.

Paste From Word: I don’t recommend that you use Microsoft Word to draft your content. It gets messy trying to get the special characters that MS Word uses cleared out without butchering formatting, etc. If you must, use this tool as it usually does a pretty good job of cleaning things up. And yes… you will have to reapply any formatting changes.

The other icons in the text editor toolbar should be pretty self-explanatory.

Saving and Publishing

We’ve covered the attributes of the page earlier. The Publish and Page Attributes sections will be to your right. Just remember that your page is not “live” or visible to your visitors until you publish. It’s about this point that you should have some confidence in moving forward and creating pages of great worth (well, pages with words on them anyway).

Moving on from Wordpress Pages

Now that you know how to create WordPress pages, it’s time to look at the other side of the coin. You already know that posts exist as a part of wordpress, but what are they for? Let’s move on and take a look at them.