Blog Exercises: Know Your Pageviews

In this Blog Exercise, it is time to learn some website jargon, specifically, what are all the web pages of your site called.

I teach web publishing with WordPress and web design courses at two colleges, and I’m stunned that students don’t know at the lack of proper names for all the parts of a site, even by those claiming to be professional web designers. I come from the school of thought that says if you wish to get help with something, you will get help faster if you know the name of what you are trying to fix.

Let’s start with naming website pageviews.

Pageviews, all one word, are the names for generated web pages on your site. Today’s web publishing tools like WordPress do not generate the traditional static HTML page, one page per web page. Using PHP, a database, and some WordPress magic (called Template Tags inside of Template Files which make up a WordPress Theme), a visitor (called a user) makes a request by clicking a link, say to a category, and, presto change-oh, a single page is generated displaying the posts within that category. This is the category pageview. Click the author byline and, if properly configured, the user will land on the author pageview, a generated web page featuring all the posts by that author.

Nice! And soooo much better than the old days when we had to hand-code every single pageview on the site.

Let’s look at the various pageviews on a typical WordPress site, which may apply to your web publishing platform as well. This is from my article, “The Basics You Must Know About a WordPress Theme” on Lorelle Teaches.

• Front Page: This is the front page of the site. Posts on the front page of the site are displayed in reverse chronology. It may be styled the same or differently from the rest of the site based upon the WordPress Theme’s specifications. Example: Lorelle on WordPress
• Single Post Pageview: This is the view of a single post on the site. It may look the same or different from the rest of the pageviews. Example: Search and Replace in WordPress MySQL Database
• Single Page Pageview: This is the view of a single Page, the pseudo-static content of WordPress. It may look the same or different from the rest of the pageviews. Example: About
• Multi-post Pageviews: The following are known as multi-post pageviews or multiple post pageviews. The pageviews feature links to multiple posts displayed in reverse chronological order. Some WordPress Themes feature the option to add descriptive text to various multi-post pageviews. The posts may be featured by post title only, post title and excerpt of the post, or the whole post dependent upon the WordPress Theme and administrator specifications.
  • Category Pageview: This is the view of the posts within a specific category. It generally features more than one page with older and newer entries navigation at the bottom of the page. If the Theme permits it, the category pageview will display the description of the category set in the Category Panel. Example: Blog Exercises
  • Tag Pageview: This is the view of the posts within a specific tag, a descriptive keyword representing the index words of the site. It generally features more than one page with older and newer entries navigation at the bottom of the page. Example: WordPress [tag] « Lorelle on WordPress
  • Author Pageview: This is the view of the posts by a specific author. It generally features more than one page with older and newer entries navigation at the bottom of the page. If there is only one author on a site, there may not be a visible link to the author within the WordPress Theme. Some Themes are designed to show an author byline with a link to the author pageviews when a second author is added to the site. If the Theme permits it, the author pageview will display the description of the author set in the Profile Panel for that author. Example: Lorelle VanFossen
  • Search Pageview: This is the view of posts generated by a search on the site. Most WordPress sites use the default search built into WordPress. Some sites integrate Google or another search engine into their site to generate search results. Example: Search Results for “WordPress”
  • Archive Pageview: This is the view of the posts by a specific date, typically by month though it can be displayed by day, week, month, or year. Example: 2006 March « Lorelle on WordPress

Your blog exercise today is to check your site for all of these different pageviews.

What is exciting about many WordPress Themes is that each pageview maybe designed differently. For example, the WordPress Twenty-Eleven Theme features the sidebar on multi-post pageviews but not on the single post pageview. Some WordPress Themes allow customizing the sidebar and other design elements based upon which pageview.

What changes as you move to and from each pageview? Are the posts on all of the multi-post pageviews displayed as full posts or excerpts? Maybe titles only on the search or archive pageviews?

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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