Wordpress – Driving Instructor Sites

Adding a new page

Dazzla — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 18:18:03 +0000

Add a new page in WordPress

You can build your competency and confidence in WordPress by setting up a new ‘hidden’ page so you can play around before working on the live page

You can just start off with a blank page, however, it can be easier to duplicate and existing page so you have some content to get you started

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Create the draft page

1. Click on ‘Pages’ and you’ll get the list of existing pages

2. Click on the ‘Duplicate this’ link. This will create a new page with status set to ‘Draft’ so it won’t be shown in the menu

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Prepare the page and start editing

1. Set the page title: This is normally the page URL too – this won’t be of any relevance if the page is only for practice but worth knowing for future.

2. Set a featured image (optional)

3. Now you can start editing the page – click on the ‘Edit with Elementor’ button to start working on the page.

View your page

Because the page is set to ‘Draft’, it doesn’t show in the site menu* so, in order to view what it looks like on your devices, you will need to go directly to the page.

The easiest way to do this is from the editing menu,

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1. Click the ‘hamburger’ menu in the top left and this will bring up a new menu

2. Click ‘View page’ to open the page. Note that this will open and replace your current window but if you hold the ‘Command’ key when you click it, it will open in a new tab.

You can then send the page URL to your other devices to see it on them too

*If the draft page is showing in the menu, 2 things have happened.

Firstly, the page has been set to ‘published’ and not ‘Draft’ and the menu is set to automatically add new pages.

This is not a major issue but you don’t want the page to be seen to does need to be sorted.

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Basics for editing your WordPress site

Dazzla — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 14:39:36 +0000

A few tips for WordPress newbies

I know from my own experience that the first forays into working with WordPress can be daunting and frustrating at times.

As someone who has always built websites and their management system from scratch, the switch was dramatic and involved a very steep learning curve.

These are just a few tips aimed at complete or near beginners using WordPress which I hope will save you some time and frustration allowing you to get on with the tasks you actually want to be doing on your site

Edit with google Chrome

I know this may come as a surprise as I work within the website industry but I make no secret of the fact that I see Google as a necessary evil and will avoid using any of their products or services wherever possible.

Working with WordPress is an instance where I’ve had to concede and I use Google Chrome whenever I’m doing any editing.

There is simply because there are some features in the editing panel that just won’t work with my default browser (Apple Safari).

Create a Practice Page

There is nothing worse than working on a page, making a change and then realising you’ve destroyed it!

To build up your confidence, it can be a good idea to create a page that you can practice with. You can do this by just creating a new page and setting it as a ‘Draft’ but we include a duplicator plugin that allows you to easily create a copy of an existing page.

What is a 'Plug-in'?

I hope a comparison that will help you understand this is to think of WordPress as your smartphone. It can work ok on it’s own, however, it can be massively enhanced with ‘apps’, which is how you can think of plug-ins.

There are literally thousands of plug-ins that can perform all kinds functions on your site from making it more secure to adding animations.

NOTE : It’s important to use these with a little care though as too many can impact your sties load speed

Check layout on different devices

All our sites include the ‘Elementor Pro’ plugin which is an editing plug-in that extends what is possible with the sites. While in editing mode, it is possible to switch to ‘Responsive’ mode so you can quickly see how your page would display on desktop / tablet / phone.

You are then able to edit specific elements so it will display better on that particular device. This can save great deal of frustration when you’ve spent ages editing a page only to find it looks awful on a mobile!

Made a Mistake?

You’ve been doing some work on your page and suddenly the format has gone haywire, or maybe you’ve just deleted a section my mistake and can’t seem to get it back.

Don’t panic! As long as you haven’t clicked the ‘Update’ button, you can simply refresh the page and it will load from the last save again (phew!!)

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Hiding a page

Dazzla — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 07:46:54 +0000

Hiding a page from your WordPress site

There are several reasons why you might want to hide a page on your and/or stop it being indexed by the search engines.

You may have a page you are just using to try things out on or a page only for people you send a link to.

Whatever the reason, here’s how you can ‘hide’ it

1. Remove it from the Menu

In the main WordPress menu, click ‘Appearance > Menus’ to open the menus page.

Select the menu where the page is showing (normally the ‘Primary’ menu)

With the correct menu selected, you will see the page in the list on the right hand side.

Click it to open it’s info (I’ve used the ‘Resources’ page for this example) and click ‘Remove’.

This just takes it out of the menu and does not delete the page.

So you can add pages in the future without it being automatically added, untick ‘Automatically add new top-level pages…’ (you can switch this back on at any time if appropriate)

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Menu’ button when done

The page will now not show in the menu

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