I fought long and hard to change the name “Pages” in WordPress jargon. After failing miserably, we’re now almost two years into spreading the word that the pseudo-static web pages on WordPress are called “Pages” and all other pages generated by WordPress are called “web pages” or “post views”. While most of the confusion seems to be cleared up, and I still haven’t gotten my wish to be in charge of naming things in WordPress as they haven’t done a very good job with Pages and Widgets ( 😉 ), let’s move on and dig into what these pseudo-static Pages on WordPress really are and help you understand what to do with them.
A Page in WordPress is similar to the old static HTML pages. It just sits there, separate from the rest of the content. But that’s not a good description either.
WordPress pulls content from its database to generate web pages, be it posts, Pages, comments, link lists, or other elements into content place holding template files that make up your WordPress Theme. The content from your posts and Pages are stored in the database, but they are treated differently depending upon how they are retrieved and used on your WordPress blog.
Posts, your blog content pages, are pulled in from the database using the PHP WordPress Loop which showcases the posts in chronological order on your front page, archives, search, and categories called multi-post view web pages, and showcases the post alone on single post views.
A Page is generated from the database only when requested. You will only see a list of links to your WordPress Pages in your sidebar or header. After clicking the link, you can only see a Page as a single Page view.
You will not see a chronological listing of all your Pages, as whole content or excerpts. Pages are not featured in your archives, categories, or other multi-post views. Until recently, Pages didn’t even show up in the built-in WordPress search function. There are now WordPress Plugins you can use that will also include Pages in the overall search. Pages do, however, show up in search engine search results, so your Pages are being found.
The only way to “see” if a Page exists on your blog is by using the wp_list_pages() template tag in your WordPress Theme template files which generates a links list of your WordPress blog Pages. All WordPress Themes feature the list pages template tag, usually found in the header or sidebar, and occasionally in the footer.
What Should I Put in a Page
WordPress Pages confuse many because they don’t know what to do with them. By default, many WordPress blogs come with the About Page enabled, but left with place holder information awaiting the user’s input.
The About Page is the most popular Page most people make, a Page that lets people know who you are and why you are blogging, setting a purpose for your blog.
Other Page types include:
Contact: A Contact Page hosts information on how to contact you. It can include a list of other blogs, email addresses, or even an email form for emailing directly to you from your blog. The Contact Form ][ for WordPress 2.0+ by Chip Cuccio, based upon the original by Ryan Duff, is a popular Plugin that allows easy integration of an email form on a Page.
Events and Schedule: If you travel, teach, or present programs, you may want to keep your upcoming schedule on your blog as a promotional device, or at least to help people find you.
Link List/Resources: If you have a technical, tips, or how-to blog, a link list or resource list Page is a good option, providing external related resources to your readers to help them find the information they are seeking. Or it could be a list of your favorite sites. A Link Link or Resource Page is a great way of listing sites you recommend to your readers.
Products/Services/Utilities/Tools: If you offer products or services, then a Page listing your products and services helps your readers learn more about these. If you offer WordPress Themes, Plugins, or any downloadable utilities, tools, or software, consider creating a directory Page that lists all the posts or Pages for these items. The Page can include links to download each item as well as version numbers and summary information. A one-stop Page resource for your readers.
Subscribe/Feeds: Many bloggers put their feed lists or subscription information on a Page, putting all the information on how to keep up-to-date with the blog in one spot.
Site Map: A site map is a table of contents listing of your blog posts, categories, or whatever information you want to use to help people navigate and find information on your blog. A site map should be required on all extensive and complex blogs and websites.
Authors: If your blog features more than one author, you may want one Page showcasing bios and information on all of your blog’s authors, or you might want one Page per author. WordPress automatically creates an author category page view, but you might want a customized author Page.
Credits: Many blogs use content, images, and information from various sources. Giving credit where credit is due should be a high priority for these types of blogs. A Credits Page helps to acknowledge and thank those who help create your blog. On my family history blog, I use a Credit Page to acknowledge the various contributors of content, images, documents, and historical stories and resources my family and others have contributed to the blog. Without their family records, documents, stories, and images, mine would be a boring genealogy blog.
Static Information: There is also a wide range of what I call “static information” that would be good to put on Pages, information necessary to your blog’s content but qualifies to be highlighted separately on a Page. For example, on my family history blog, I have Pages set for specific family trees such as the Nicholas Knapp Descendants from the 1600s. This is static information that needs to be featured in my blog’s sidebar as a Page since it is important to family members and those researching my family trees, working well outside of the chronological blog post information.
Creating Sub-Pages
WordPress Pages can have subPages, creating a hierarchical Page structure for your blog.
For example, on Taking Your Camera on the Road I have nineteen different Pages. I certainly don’t want all 19 Pages listed in my sidebar. So I’ve grouped related Pages under a parent Page. Under my About Us Page, I have 10 subPages which relate to information about us, the blog, and its policies. The subPages include the Copyright Policy, Legal Policies, Accessibility, List of WordPress Plugins, and Feeds List.
On your WordPress Pages, you may want to feature the subPages for the parent Page you are viewing, especially if you have set your subPages to not show on your sidebar. This way, visitors can find them “under” the appropriate parent Page.
To showcase subPages on WordPress Pages, you can manually type in the links to the subPages, or take advantage of the Subpage Listing WordPress Plugin by Mark Jaquith.
Inside of the Write Page panel editing window, where you want the list of subPages to appear, type in <!–%subpages%–> after activating the WordPress Plugin. When the Page is generated, all subPages under that Page will be listed. If there aren’t any subPages, the link list will not appear.
In my footer, I want the Copyright Policy and Legal Policies subPages to be visible, but I don’t want all of the Pages and subPages listed, so I manually created a paragraph of links to those Pages in my WordPress Theme footer template file.
Creating a Customized WordPress Page
By hierarchical default, when generating a WordPress Page, WordPress looks for a template file in the WordPress Theme named page.php. If that is not available, it looks for the index.php template file and loads the information for that Page from the database into that template file.
There is, however, another method of designating which template file is used to generate the look of a WordPress Page. Unlike with posts, you can choose which template file to use with any specific Page. From the Page > Edit panel, there is a drop down menu that allows you to select from your various template files choices.
The WordPress Codex article, WordPress Individual Pages, will take you step-by-step through the process of creating a Page template file and understanding more about how Pages work.
In general, a WordPress Page template file can be designed and setup just like any other WordPress template file, but it can use the default page.php template file name or be a separate file name for different Pages.
The original Default WordPress Theme featured three Page template files. One was the basic page.php which covered all Pages except those designated for use with the archives.php Page for displaying your past posts, and the links.php for displaying your link list from Links Manager, now known as the Blogroll.
You may want a totally different layout or look for your Page featuring biographical information or software or product information. So you can create different template file layouts for products.php and bio.php. Just select the template file from the drop down menu list and you have your unique Page design applied to that specific Page.
Linking to Your WordPress Pages
You can list your WordPress Page links manually, or list subPages from within your parent Pages with the Subpage Listing WordPress Plugin, or you can use a template file you’ve designed especially for your Pages.
The wp_list_pages() WordPress template tag is used to generate a list of your WordPress Pages from within your WordPress Theme template files. Typically, this template file is used to list Pages in your header or sidebar template files.
By default, wp_list_pages() displays all Pages sorted alphabetically by title in ascending order in a list without the open and closing UL tags. The latter is important because you can use the Pages template tag inside of a list of other links, adding to the template tag’s versatility. I’ll cover this more in a moment.
For our experimental list of WordPress Pages, the default Page list would look like:
- About
- Copyright
- Legal Policies
- Contact
- Itinerary
- Link List
- Site Map
We can change the order and specify which Pages to include or exclude. In this example, let’s change the order from alphabetical to Page Order, which is set by the user on each Page’s edit page on the Page > Edit panel, designating in which order the Pages should appear.
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order'); ?>
</ul>
The resulting list might be:
- Site Map
- Contact
- Itinerary
- About
- Copyright
- Legal Policies
- Link List
Excluding Pages and SubPages from Your Page List
You may not want to feature all your Pages on the front page of your blog. Or you might want to list only a few of your Pages on your blog’s footer. To exclude Pages from your Page list, you will need to know the ID number of each of the Pages you wish to exclude and include them in an exclude argument inside of the wp_list_pages() template tag.
In this example, I’ve decided to exclude the Itinerary and Link List Pages which are Page ID numbers 10 and 17. Listing these Page ID numbers in ascending order, the template tag looks like:
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=10,17' ); ?>
</ul>
To combine this with the Page Order, the template tag would look like:
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&exclude=10,17'); ?>
</ul>
The end result would be:
- Site Map
- Contact
- About
- Copyright
- Legal Policies
You might not want to see the subPages or children Pages on your blog’s front page. To exclude the children or subPages, you would use the depth argument in the list pages template file. By setting the depth to -1 no child pages are shown. Setting the depth to 1 shows only the top level pages.
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1'); ?>
</ul>
In our example, it would then list the following Pages in the link list:
- Site Map
- Contact
- Itinerary
- About
- Link List
If we were to put all of the three elements together, showing our Page list in menu or Page order, with no child or subPages, and excluding Pages with ID numbers 10 and 17, the code would look like:
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&exclude=10,17'); ?>
</ul>
And the Page list generated would look like:
- Site Map
- Contact
- About
Including Other Links in Your Page List
On Taking Your Camera on the Road, I call my Page list “Connect the Dots”. The list includes links to non-Page web pages as well as Pages. I wanted a link to the front page called “Home”, helping people navigating through more than 40 categories find their way back to the front page. I also wanted to highlight some specific Pages and categories, while excluding others, especially child/subPages.
Remember earlier when I said it was important that the default function of the Pages template tag did not automatically include the UL tags? This is when that feature really shines.
To include static links, simply start a list of links and then you can add the wp_list_pages() template tag into the list without breaking the list up into too many nested lists.
Here is my sidebar Page list, which includes the “Connect the Dots” in a list, followed by the nested list of the Page and links list:
<ul id="startmenu">
<li><?php _e('Connect the Dots'); ?>
<ul id="pageslist">
<li><a href="/index.php" title="Home Page" accesskey="1">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="/index.php?cat=7" title="Blog" accesskey="a">Blog: Journal Thoughts</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=497, 595, 848&depth=1&use_desc_for_title=0&sort_column=menu_order&title_li='); ?>
<li><a title="Books and book recommendations" href="/index.php?cat=34">Recommended Books</a></li>
<li><a title="Links and Resources" href="/index.php?cat=33">Links</a></li>
</ul>
<!-- ends pageslist -->
</li></ul>
<!-- end startmenu list -->
The end results looks like the graphic here to the right, showcasing the home page link, my site blog, this blog, my genealogy blog, what’s new, and other Pages and categories on my blog. The Page link list now highlights what I want shown, not every Page on my blog.
There are many ways you can sort and control how your Page link list is displayed. On my main blog, I list only the Pages I want manually in a list on my footer, without using the Page list template file. Your Page list can be an unordered list, an ordered or numbered list, a horizontal list, or featured in a drop down menu. The design choices are up to you.
Have some fun and experiment with all the different methods of displaying your WordPress Pages.
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90 Comments
Thanks for the comprehensive overview. I’ve recently started using Pages more – I’ve just added an extra sidebar with pages about my services and links to books and useful links for my readers. I like the way pages allow you to highlight resources that are likely to be ‘permanently’ useful to readers.
Pretty good tutorial, Lorelle, i wish i could write one for PS too.
Excellent tutorial, it will help differentiate between Pages and web pages.
Would just like to add that wp_list_pages associates the current page you are viewing with the CSS class current_page_item, which you can use to highlight it in the page list.
Wow… what a comprehensive writeup on WordPress pages. I just bought the WordPress visual quickstart book today, just to make sure I don’t miss anything out from what I already know… but think your tutorial is better! 😀
Nice and timely. I’ve had a real hard time feeling motivated to play with pages, this re-energizes me! Recently I’ve been trying to get a magazine-style site going and have considered using the page feature primarily (vs. posts) as the cms vehicle. Likely this will require a bit of template/theme tweaking. Can anyone point me to some good examples of this? What pro/cons would I be facing? Cheers!
I would NOT use Pages over posts as the main core of content. Remember, Pages can’t be searched by WordPress’ built-in search capabilities (but there are Plugins that will improve the search or replace it) and you can’t categorize Pages, though they are working on that feature.
You can still get CMS features using posts as posts and Pages as Pages.
There are many articles out there on turning WordPress into a CMS and/or magazine-style website. I’ll be writing about this soon, so you can search or stay tuned for more fun!
One thing you might want to highlight: if you change the hierarchy of a page, you’ll change the URL and you might break any links to that page.
engtech: You mean that if you change a subPage to a Page or the drop a Page to a subPage, moving it “up” or “down” a level, that will break links?
If you are using Permalinks, that’s very possible. I’ll have to look into that more. Thanks.
Setting up any hierarchy levels, even with categories and subcategories, needs to be really thought out in advance and well planned to avoid link breaks when using Permalinks. Permalinks are a great WordPress feature but they can cause nightmares in the site structure.
Lorelle – as ever, an excellent and comprehensive article – thank you. Although on my own blog I only use pages for Workshops/Services, Profile and Contact type of pages (as you outline above), for small business clients I am starting to change that around and use the page facility to create a “static” site with the “real blog” part (ie posts) then becoming a subsection.
I presume that this is the CMS functionality that you mention above in the comments, and for small businesses it is proving very attractive because of the control over content and adding extra sections or pages that it gives them, while still providing the marketing power of a normal blog. Definitely the way things are heading in my opinion.
Keep up the great work! Mark
Yup yup. What I find can be a real killer is switching from a no-navbar theme to one with a navbar… suddenly you’ll see all these top level pages showing you want to hide… so you start rearranging and all of your permalinks are messed up.
Changing the date on posts can break permalinks as well.
(I have a friend who manages to hit every gotcha likes this on his WP.com blog)
I guess what I miss, is the imability to set up pages as separate blogs.
I appreciate that these are meant as static pages, but what if I want a page called “Books” to talk about books I have been reading but to keep this away from the main blog page as an aside. It would be nice to be able to add entries in a blog format as opposed to a static page format and much as I have tried, I can’t find an easy way to do this.
You must be confused with Pages and Categories. Which can also be an aside.
You need to be clearer about what you want to do. You can have a blog within a blog within a blog if you want with WordPress. It’s fairly complex, but it can be done. But I’m not sure what you are trying to do.
If you would like to have a category of posts about “books”, another about “trains”, and another about “planes”, and you would like to have these shown as separate “columns” of posts on your front page, I will have an article about this out soon, but in the meantime, check out Adding Asides and other similar articles on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress users.
To learn about how to customize your category pages, which are what I really think you want to do, see Category Templates. You can see these in action on my blog, with every category page looking different, Taking Your Camera on the Road. Click any of the categories across the top or from the sidebar, etc.
Hi Lorelle.
Nope – I understand categories pretty well but I think I explained it badly, it was late 🙂 Let’s see if I can explain more what I was after.
Let’s say I have a basic blog – The first and only “page” is called blog, and allows you to post to it in a blog format.
Now say I create a page called Books, where I want to record books I read and write reviews of them – I don’t want any of this to show up in the main blog, so it makes sense to separate it into a new page but the problem is, the format for a new page is just that, a page. What would be more convenient would be for it to work more like a nice clean blog that doesn’t interfere with the main blog.
I can fudge it by having the books page as a single stub type title entry and then make “posts” as comments, but that is just a hacky mess.
It’s probably not possible and I may just be better off setting up a new blog for each and having them on a side links section, but it would be neater if I could incorporate it into the pages look so that they show up as nice little tabs in most of the skins.
Michael.
Again, what you want to do is create custom category templates. See the links I’ve already offered.
Then, on the front page of your blog, put a conditional statement in that says “DO NOT SHOW category X (books) posts on the front page”. Hopefully you will be able to provide links to that category elsewhere so people will find them. See Conditional Tags for the specifics on setting up such a query.
The issue at hand is jargon. A Page, currently in WordPress venacular, is for the “about”, “contact”, “events”, and psuedo-static information, not anything that generates posts. Category, Archive, and other multi-post view pages are for that.
If you want a separate blog, get a separate blog and keep them separate. If you want some interaction between the two category topics, then put them together. With WordPress, all these are possible.
Please search the WordPress Support Forums for more help. I am currently traveling and you may need help faster than I can provide it right now. I understand totally what you want to do, and I use this technique on my main site. I have over 40 categories, but you only see the ones that apply to the main categories you are visiting when you visit any web page on my site. You could say that I have 7 different blogs within my own single blog.
Cheers. Will look into it. It seems to be just what I want!
hello, i am wondering how you managed to arrange the order of your pages. i see in the example above, “connect the dots” that the pages are not alphabetical. i did play around with the page order, in wordpress, but it didn’t seem to have an effect. might you be able to shed some light on this? thanks so much, gwen
Check out WordPress Order Pages Plugin which allows you to control the order of the Pages on your WordPress blog. That might help.
Thanks for the great article. I have a question. Since “pages” are not considered part of the blog posts, how does that effect “follow” on any links that I place in this static page. I do constantly update my Resource page – but I find it does not appear in Technorati, for example.
I am assuming any links I place on this page contributes to that blog’s or website’s page rank. Is that the way links from these static pages work?
Thanks
Links to and from your Pages have nothing to do with your ability to show up in Technorati. Totally different issues.
A “web page” gets into search engines and directories. They don’t pay attention to whether or not it’s a post or Page. So no impact there at all.
Technorati can be a weird duck when it comes to what is there and what isn’t. Do you know that you do not have a single tag on your Resource Page? Not one. Technorati deals with tags, links with
rel="tag". Without a tag, it’s web crawler won’t find much of value when it comes to call.Also, updated posts and Pages often don’t ping search engines as they already have. After you have added some tags, why don’t you manually ping that Page. See Pinging With Pingers and Tags and Tagging in WordPress and Everywhere for more information.
Hiya
I have a quick question – can i exclude the entire top level of navigation? I could use “exclude” but this would mean changing code if a new top level Page was added. I just want to display all sub navs of a given section, as i have my top level links in a different menu on the page layout… if you see what I mean 🙂
Currently, if I understand what you are asking, you can only use exclude. There is no “no-parents” parameter. So you have to change the tag if you change the structure of the Pages.
hi, great article, i’ve learned a lot. But, hehe, there is allways a but, I was looking for something just a little different. What you did with your pages, I’d like to do it with my categories and sub-categories. I have about 15 categories and each of them has between 1 and 8 sub-categories. now i’d like to have a static page called for example “Content” which displays:
– categories in alphabetic order
-after each category the sub-category
-subject one (permalink)
-subject two …
–
–
– next category
next sub-category
-subject…
and so on. Since my english is not so good I don’t know what the plugin that could do that, could be called.
Maybe you have an Idea?
Maybe have a look at my Blog at the left sidebar to see what I mean.
Thanks
Are you talking about a Site Map? You can learn more about them in The Art of a Good Site Map and how to create one.
As for creating subcategories, you can do that already with WordPress. The issue is whether or not your WordPress Theme displays “children” or subcategories. See wp_list_categories in the WordPress Codex for details on how that template tag works.
Is this what you meant?
Here’s my question about pages in WordPress – if my WordPress installation sits at http://www.domain.com/blog, is it possible to create a page that resides at http://www.domain.com/other?
Only through some redirects and a lot of work. If you installed WordPress in its own directory, then all WordPress links are based upon that directory.
Oh how I loathe the words Page or Pages for these static areas on WordPress. It makes it so much more difficult to discuss the real problem of real pages. Meaning the pages generated by 10+ posts (what the heck am I supposed to call it otherwise?) And what is the problem you ask? WordPress’ reveresed page order, putting new posts on “page one”
I shall not be satisfied till there’s a solution for this.
Regarding “pages” (see how confusing it is when you guys make it mean two things?)
Ya gave me some good ideas for what to make of them. When you’re presented with the default About page it kinda kills your creativity and makes you think, oh well I guess I don’t need anything else.
If I follow you, you, like millions of others, hate the name choice for the word “Page”. 😀 I tried. I really tried to get it to be anything else.
As for the order of posts (they are posts and Pages), there are WordPress Plugins that you can use that will reverse the order of the posts from chronological to oldest to newest.
The About Page should be one of the first things you publish on your blog. And if you can’t fill it out with information about you and the purpose of your blog, honestly, you shouldn’t be publishing anything in your blog. It’s that important and critical to the process of your blog. You can always change it later, but it is part of defining your blog.
Do you know if it’s possible to display JavaScript based widgets on a ‘Page’ (pseudo static pages).
I’ve read your post on displaying JavaScript on a post, and it worked (thanks, btw). But i still kinda need to display one on a ‘Page’.
A little update on my previous comment.
I found that by using Text Control plugin i can put a Javascript on my post. But the same method does not work on my page. (Because the plugin did not control my page/writing page thingy).
I’ve also tried combining both the call to the script file with the call to the Javascript itself and it didn’t work on page.
Anyway. Thanks for your posts. It really helped.
I have javascript working on Pages with TextControl. I was to recommend you try PHPexec, but I see it is no longer supported and not working in the latest versions. Did you put the script in your
header.phpand then put the call in your Page content area? Or did you put the script in yourpage.phpand call it from there or within the post?Hi Lorelle,
Thanks for the WordPress Page article, which is quite helpful to a newbie in WordPress like myself.
Using the following HTML code, I’d like to create a “click to enlarge” images in a WP Page. How can I implement it given that I can’t put it directly in the Write Page editor.
Thanks.
Using the Images feature in the Write Page panel, just insert the image as a thumbnail set to link to the “file” and it will automatically embed a thumbnail image with a link wrapped around it to the larger image. Is that what you needed to know, or how to do this manually?
See Using Images for more information on how to use images in your WordPress blog.
Hi Lorelle,
Yes, that is exactly what I’d like to do. Actually, that WP Page will be full of images, which I hope that I can put them in a table. I will experiment it this weekend. Thank you so much.
table? Table? TABLE? NOOOOOOO!
NEVER put anything except data in a table. Not your images. ICKY.
Use CSS. Or just use the “align” tag to “float” the images to the left or right so they line up. Wrap a link to the larger image around each thumbnail and be done with it. But NO TABLES!
SIGH. I feel better, don’t you?
Check out what I did with my Gallery of Photography. Not a table in sight.
Okay, I see. No tables. Your photo site looks great, it is exactly what I need to do for my WP Page. Thank you very much.
Lerelle,
There is one more question regarding ‘click to enlarge” images.
Instead of opening up another browser for the enlarged image, I wish to put the enlarged image in a HTM page with the default layout in the same browser. Do you know how to Code it if it can’t be done directly in the Write Page? thanks.
@Misty:
I’ve not been able to figure out how to do this, other than to manually create a post or Page with that image and then put that link to the post or Page wrapped around a thumbnail. I’ve struggled with this before, and I think there is a WordPress Plugin that will do this, but I can’t find it again.
Thanks, Lorelle.
I will have to use the method for images you have mentioned for now.
I can’t understand WP Write Page’s behavior after each Save:
1. The line breaks “br” that I’ve added to a WP page are always removed
2. The reply form at the end of the page is somewhat shifted
I have to re-edit the page to tweak the line breaks and fix the form code each time I update the page. How do I preserve whatever I had in the page as is until new changes in this awkward editor? thanks.
@Misty:
Turn it off. Turn the Rich Text Editor off in your Profile panel. I hate it and have tried and tried to use it but only have been frustrated.
Make sure the line breaks are single space and the paragraphs have two spaces. To “force” a line break you can use <br /> but only in that format. I’ve written up an explanation of this in Writing with Single Lines Not Double in Your Blog Posts.
And if you want it to say preserved and have total control, then use HTML for everything, but only the most simple paragraph, line break, and such tags.
Remember, you are working around images, and images will push things around unless you are pushing your images around using class styles with floats to keep them in the right “place”.
And don’t try to do captions. I’m still not successful with any HTML caption technique. I go round and round with that ever few months and I hate all the methods I’ve tried.
Lorelle,
Yeah, I am totally with you. I’ve just begun to use Write Page, but I already wish that I can throw it out the window if possible ;-).
Can’t thank you enough for teaching me all the stuff.
Cheers
Hi Lorelle,
Regarding the “click to enlarge” image topic, I’ve found the following plugin for Flickr Photo Album, which I don’t have. Any comments? Thanks.
http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/photo-album
@Misty:
tantannoodles is a fantastic blogger and has created some great tools. I know nothing about it. Give it a try and see if it works for you. A lot of people use it, and I just found a fix for those who use it, mentioned in this week’s WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp Israel Full, Tag Frustration, Security Tips and Plugins, Drupal, wPhone, WP-Cache, Akismet, and Mailing Lists on the Blog Herald.
Lorelle,
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Photo Caption Zoom works in WordPress? There is only one image file.
I will even take it without the caption(i guess caption won’t work per your recent post) if I can figure out their non-caption version work.
I have done a quick test of their zoomed photo and it doesn’t work for me.
Lorelle,
Just to let you know that Photo Caption Zoom PZ3(http://randsco.com/index.php/2006/04/10/photo_caption_zoom_version_3) works for me now via WordPress. The owner (Scott) of the technique has told me that it’s applicable to any HTML page (which means it’ll work in WordPress, or b2evolution, or just a plain-old HTML page).
Hi Lorelle,
I have a question on how to implement the dates and user of a linked WP Page in another WP Page.
I have a WP Page 2 that contains a link to another WP Page 1, I would like to Page1’s date and user info in Page2 whenever Page 1 is updated. Is this possible and how should I do it? Thanks.
@Misty:
That would require PHP code to be used within a post, and I don’t know if you are using the full version of WordPress or WordPress.com. You cannot do this in the latter.
If you are using the full version of WordPress, you would need to have a Plugin that would allow implementation of PHP within a blog post and you need to inquire further in the WordPress Support Forums as I don’t know which query would be appropriate for calling dates, especially dates for post updates.
Thanks, Lorelle.
I am using the full version of WordPress.
I have found a thread that maybe useful for me. They mentioned the following functions, which I need to learn how they really work.
get_day_link($year, $month, $day)
get_month_link($year, $month)
get_year_link($year)
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/121729
Lorelle,
Happy New Year!
I wonder if there is a way to display multi-byte languages(for example Korean, Japanese and etc) in the Worpress Pages. Thanks.
@ misty:
Thanks. See:
WordPress in Your Language
Blogging in More Than One Language
WordPress Help in Your Language
Translation and Multilingual WordPress Plugins
Blogging Outside of Your Community By Not Blogging in Your Native Tongue
If you are just going to put in excerpts, not blog specifically in the language, the language must be “translated” into browser readable code in order for it to be displayed. WordPress does this automatically if you copy from the browser generated language web page and paste it directly into your post/page content area. Test it and see if it works. It should, but if not, they you will have to post the character entity codes that the browser can interpret into characters.
Thanks, Lorelle. Only putting excerpts. I have tried WP Page that changes the Korean into questions marks as soon as I save the Page. I’ve found out that Windows Word Pad does the same thing unless I save it in the Rich Text Format.
Wondering how I can save the WP Page in Rich Text Format.
@ misty:
That won’t work either. You need to install a WordPress Plugin for blogging in more than one language if you want to blog in English and Korean, which will handle the translation easily for you. If this is a single occasion use of Korean, then I recommend that you contact someone via the Korean WordPress Support listings on the WordPress Codex. They will be able to help you specifically as I can’t get the Korean character codes to be recognized via my browser since I don’t have the language installed on my machine. They will be able to help you with all your Korean language issues with WordPress. Let me know what you learn as I frequently publish articles on language and translation issues.
Okay. Solution is found per Moshu WP Support.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/149773?replies=1#post-669369
I can display foreign words after removing these lines from wp-config.php:
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8’);
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);
Thanks much!
Lorelle,
Is it possible for WordPress to support the Last Post(with Dates, Time and Author the way they are in this forum?
Thanks.
@ misty:
I’m not sure I understand your question. If you want to display posts with dates and times, like a forum, then you add the date and time information to the WordPress Theme in the appropriate place. The WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, has information on setting date and time tags in your Theme.
Posts are automatically displayed in chronological order from most recent to oldest. Adding the date and time information is just a design element using the time and date tags.
Lorelle,
Dates and time currently work in all my posts and WP pages.
I would like a WP page having basically two columns such as Topic and Last Post. The Topic column has numerous topics that are links to other pages. The Last Post column would show the date and author whenever the linked page is updated.
For example:
Topic Last Post
Topic1 Date, Author
Topic2 Date, Author
Lorelle,
Per your suggestion, I’ve found the following WP codex maybe what I need. The Post Title would be my linked Topic page, Author and Posted would be my Last Post. I can even added the Updated info since I have the plugin already in the article on Post Meta Data Sections.
POST TITLE:
AUTHOR:
POSTED:
I will try it out. Thanks a lot.
Hmm…, I don’t know how it would work for my case given that the_date(), the_time(), and the_title() are designed for the Current post.
For my specific needs, I am processing the Date and Author info in a different page other than the “Current Page”. The_date() needs to be able to find the page ID or the post ID before issuing the correct date for that Page or Post.
Let me know if I have missed something here. Thanks.
@ misty:
I still don’t understand what you are trying to do. If you are using the Date and Time template tags within the WordPress Loop, the date and time for the post will appear. I don’t understand why you want a date and author info from a page that is different from the post. This is their jobs. Many WordPress Themes feature dates next to the post title on various pageviews including the front and category pages.
@ misty:
Ah, I missed your other post, and really, you can get a more responsive reply from the WordPress Support Forum.
It looks like you are trying to show when a post was “updated” not the published date. I assume you will be having a lot of post edits. Look for a “last updated” or “modified” WordPress Plugin or see Showing a WordPress Posts Last Modified Date. Maybe that might help.
Hi, great article. I have a problem though I can’t find the answer to anywhere! On my site, I have several subpages under the parent page Artist Directory. These subpages NEED to be alphabetical… but for some reason they just aren’t. I have no idea how to make them display alphabetically in my sidebar.
@ Red:
The Pages article on the WordPress Codex gives you tips on how to set your Pages template tag to sort alphabetically using
wp_list_pages('sort_column=post_title'). By default, WordPress sorts by ID number, so you have to set it to sort by post title.Hey, thanks so much for the tip. I’ve looked over that page many times before and never found what I needed. Much to my surprise and delight, it was there this time! So, I was able to go in, tweak the code, and now it’s perfect. Thanks again!
Lorelle,
Early in this thread (Comment #6 in 2006) you wrote: “you can’t categorize Pages, though they are working on that feature.”
Do you know if any progress has been made in this regard — or, if there is a stable plugin that could provide this functionality?
Thanks,
Metta
Hope it still works in 2.3.3
Mett: I believe that the next version will allow categorizing of Pages, even though I haven’t found a reason to do so as I don’t like category clutter.
David: Can you be more specific about what you think will work in the mandatory security release of WordPress? Pages are not impacted at all.
Hi!
Perhaps somebody can help me! I am a total newbie, and perhaps a moron, but I cannot seem to find how to show a page without the date, author and comments. What I am doing is showing a page of all my NextGen Gallery photo galleries, and I just want them to show up with none of that extra stuff. I suppose my standard template is set to show date, author and allow comments on all my pages? I’m so confused!
@ spenny:
Name calling certainly won’t help. 😀
You can create custom Pages using templates files that look the way you want them to look, stripped of whatever you don’t want and including what you do want. See Creating your own Page Templates in the WordPress Codex for step-by-step instructions.
God Bless you Lorelle for such a beautiful tutorial.. its answered all my doubts regarding pages in wordpress. I owe you a treat when you come to India 🙂
Do you still check this blog? Please help me…
WordPress is awesome, first and foremost. I am using it and I see its unlimited potential.
I have one quick question though (maybe two). Now, WordPress aside, your web site is:
https://lorelle.wordpress.com
and if you were going to create a subfolder called “olympics” and place an index.php file inside the “olympics” folder, you could navigate to that page by going to:
https://lorelle.wordpress.com/olympics/
Is it possible for WordPress to acknowledge this somehow, and even better, is it possible to do this AND the page be somehow included in the search results? Please respond, as this is the only thing that is preventing me from continuing with content creation. Thanks in advance.
@ Patrick Lewis:
Subfolder? So you want to create a blog within a blog? Like example.com/olympics as the blog’s URL and have no blog at example.com? Just do that.
But if you are trying to add a category name into your URLs, then don’t do it physically. Do it virtually with pretty permalinks, which are simple and easy to do.
If you are trying to create a Page for, say, the Olympics, then create it and that would be the URL.
This is really a question for the WordPress Support Forums as I’m not clear exactly what you are trying to do here. I don’t know what you want WordPress to acknowledge. There are many ways to do all kinds of things with WordPress but I’m not sure what you are looking for.
I used to have a very hard time making the transition from static HTML web pages to dynamically generated ones. I wanted to have my categories, which were actually directories on the server with keyword names, in the URL. Since WordPress works with “virtual” categories with redirects and pretty permalinks, I had a hard time understanding how that worked. Is this what you are trying to do? Or are you just trying to put a blog in a subdirectory?
Excellent!
I am considering using WordPress as the tool to manage a business directory. I’m not 100% sure yet if it will help or not. I have about 70% of the site built using PHP and MySQL, user profiles, business profiles etc..
Does anyone know or can point me in a direction to find out;
A) Can WordPress be used to manage a business directory with logins, profiles etc?
B) Is WordPress PHP friendly in that I can include my own script calling out to other db’s?
Thanks for any help.
Ciscokid
@ Ciscokid:
WordPress has been used in many diverse ways, including managing directories and such. WordPress is based upon PHP with its own collection of PHP and Javascript code called “template tags” which you can learn more about in the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users. You can use any PHP include or call in a WordPress blog that links to whatever database you need.
The NY Times, CNN, Fortune and People Magazine use WordPress. I can’t think of any specific directories to point you to at the moment, but yes, it’s been used for that.
Thanks for the information. I’m re-organizing my WP site to incorporate more pages. You comprehensive overview as most helpful. Perhaps someday I will be as proficient as you. Cheers!
thanks for the great article. 🙂
Never mind any of this. How do I style wp_list_pages?
The thing insists on choosing its own typeface and displaying its contents as a bulleted, unordered list.
The tag is useless to me this way. If I’m going to use it, I want the list to format in a manner consistent with my site.
Typically, there’s no useful documentation in the WP codex.
Anyone here have a solution?
@ Slob Jones:
See wp_list_categories() in the WordPress Codex which offers the specifics on the tag, then see Styling Lists with CSS, also on the Codex, for specifics for most WordPress Themes.
The useful documentation is indeed on the Codex.
Wow, this is more in depth than I wanted – Great content! Thanks
Great tutorial!
Now I have a question for you. How can you display folders in pages? For example, I have a page that will list posts from a particular category. But I have a category with multiple child categories. So, is it possible to see folders of the different child categories? I’m not sure if wp_list_categories is the answer.
First of all, folders are not visible anywhere in WordPress unless you display a URL in your post. I think you are talking about categories and displaying categories on your pseudo-static Pages – or displaying child categories within a parent category? I’ll go for the first.
There used to be a WordPress Plugin that you could use to display parent and its child categories on a WordPress Page, but I’d start with Category Templates on the WordPress Codex, as well as Pages « WordPress Codex, or try the Category Page WordPress Plugin to display categories on Pages and Posts.
Thank you for the tips, my site is just starting up and all the information is very appreciated by someone new to this.
There was mention that with WordPress it is possible to setup a blog within a blog, This may be what I’m looking to do!
joysticktales.com is my site…
The page in question is the ‘Team Blog’
I’d like to setup this page so that the team has a place to post more personal entries. I’d like the posts to still be fully handled the way regular posts are, but I don’t want them to show up on the main index page.
Any help/guidance would be much appreciated.
Thank you!
Michael
Nevermind I did it! For anyone else looking for what I was, check out the Category Visibility Plugin – create a new category and hide that from the front page, then just direct your tab to the categorys main page, and done. Works like a charm! 🙂
Brothers..i am working in wordpress i want to get subpages for the parent page of services as featured pages on home page…
i have idea of using Services page id but i want to do it on page name=Services ..
please brother thanks in advance if any one have solution about my this problum……
Sister, please use the feature on the Settings to set the Page that is to be the front Page.
You mention on this page a way to make a blog within a blog: “You can have a blog within a blog within a blog if you want with WordPress. It’s fairly complex, but it can be done. But I’m not sure what you are trying to do.”
Making a blog within a blog on WordPress.com is exactly what I want to do! Any tips on how to do this? Do I need to be using WordPress.org software, or can I accomplish a blog-within-a-blog on WordPress.com?
It is no longer complex. See Static Front Page documentation for WordPress. And honestly, this is very old fashioned so consider carefully before doing it.
Here´s one way how to remove pages or categories from search.
Very good tutorial, Lorelle, thanks for sharing, someday and I write about templates
Very Informative tutorial, very helpful tips, thanks for sharing guys, its so helpful for a newbie like me.:)
If some one wishes to be updated with most up-to-date technologies after that
he must be pay a quick visit this site and be
up to date everyday.
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