Pages for Your Blog
Posted by on May 5, 2007
Blogs only have one running posts page that automatically updates when new posts are made. Pages sit outside posts and their structure and are meant to be used for static content. They lack timestamps and any additions you make to them must be done manually. You cannot assign categories to pages and they are not search-able via your web-based search form.
Full information is found in this post:
Working With WordPress Pages
I like this disclaimer:
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so true about the contact page!
Since blogs are “web logs” they are slavishly chronological. Normally, this is good. Lately I’ve found that I like the blogging software for writing a series of reference articles. I compose my thoughts in ecto and publish to WordPress.com. This is much easier than creating html pages for my web site. There is nothing chronological about this material, and the collection is only beginning to offer value now that there is a body of work there. I don’t expect that there will ever be a readership waiting breathlessly for my next article. Instead, the material is supplied as a toolbox for someone looking for a solution to a problem.
This really wouldn’t be usable if I could not provide the reader with a Table of Contents. The Pages feature allows for this. The only pokey part of the process is generating the html for that page.
Maybe if other folks started adding Contents to their sites that special page could be automated.
@disembedded
Thanks for posting this disclaimer. Any blogger reading this post may now choose to use it.
@Robert
I’m wondering if a site index page wouldn’t be useful in your case http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/05/11/how-do-i-make-a-site-index/
@Jan
I feel the same way you do. In fact my rule of thumb is that if the blogger does not have and About page (or equivalent) and does not have a Contact page (or equivalent) I do not bother to leave a comment at all.
I agree.
Timethief, thanks for the reference for making a site index. I think that the Contents is more what my readers would expect, and since neither system can be automated, I’ll probably just continue hand-coding.
What I’d really prefer is to have a way of editing Pages (in this case my Contents page) easily using ecto. I see that this came up for discussion in the ecto forum. Adriaan, the author of ecto would probably make that possible, but it seems that WordPress does not treat Pages as blog entries, and that feature is not available for editing by his program. Since the use of Pages seems to be popular, maybe the nice folks at WordPress could make the feature truly bloggable.
I think you should post this in the ideas forum Robert so other bloggers can respond. Also note that the process for requesting a specific feature are to be sent to staff by way of feedback or email to support at this domain dot com along with your reasons for requesting the feature.
Timethief, your advice is always good, and so you may watch the story unfold at in the wordpress forum with the topic: Create & Edit Pages with ecto,
and…
that thread includes a link to the ecto forum where I am awaiting a reply by the author.
I hope you haven’t forgotten to send in a feedback to staff stating your reasons for asking for this change.
Sending feedback to staff did not seem necessary. If you check the link in reply #8 above, WordPress moderator drmike explains that for some time Pages has been available offline using XMLRPC API. drmike even provides a link to that API which is turns out to be a wonderful geek’s sandbox of code.
So, if there is to be any further action on this, it will be up to the folks who create the offline editors, such as ecto. This link to the ecto forum is where I’ve posted the situation and will await the pleasure of the author of ecto.
If Adriaan, at ecto, is not interested, maybe the new owner of MarsEdit will see this as a way of adding a great feature to that software.
BTW, if anyone else thinks this feature is valuable, be sure to tell the blog-editors. Thanks.
I’m behind in my reading as I’ve been working on another project so I’m sure glad drmike was able to respond to this and so quickly too. I have no idea if my readers use ecto or BlogDesk and whether or not the ability to post pages is an issue with them or not so it’s good that you shared this information. Please keep us posted.
I like that you use the image for the email link, it’s a nice elegant alternative to having to insert all sorts of extra characters in to protect the inbox.
Is the contact form you have on the Contact page somehow external to WP (with the anti-spam arithmetic question, etc.), or is it the contact form that theme dependent?
I found that my spam decreased when I bega to use an email image. For interest sake here are links to some free email address image generators:
http://services.nexodyne.com/email/
Here is the link to an email address generator that doesn’t have to be Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. thus it can be useful for those with their own websites.
generator – http://pribadi.or.id/email/
blog article – http://pribadi.or.id/diary/2005/05/12/newmod-email-image-generator/
Regarding the Contact Page I have it’s part of this MistyLook theme which is one of the reasons I’m using the theme. I like the page templates in this theme and I like the way archives are presented as well as the profile.
Just click on by username in any blogpost and you’ll see what I mean by profile.
Can I throw in the exception to the rule here?
I have set up a couple of blogs where the users have more than one page with chronologically ordered posts on them.
Okay, there’s a couple of provisos here:
1. It can’t be done at wp.com as it involves hacking the themes around.
2. It took me ages to figure out how to do it.
3. If you can handle the fluff in it, all the information for doing this is in the WordPress Codex at http://www.wordpress.org.
Thanks for the info collin and “no” it’s unlikely that I will ever again utilize the codex. IMO it’s not fluffy – it’s dense and strange.