How to Create a Web Page in WordPress for a Beasley Media Group Station Website
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00:00This video will introduce you to pages and posts within WordPress. We will look at the
00:11differences between the two, discuss instances in which you may choose one over the other,
00:16and finally we will create an example of each. Let's get started. First, let's use WRIF.com
00:25as our example to identify some pages and posts. If I scroll down to the Rock New section,
00:31all of these articles would be considered posts. They display in reverse chronological order based
00:37on the time that they were published. As new articles are added, these articles move down
00:42the list to keep the new content fresh. This makes posts ideal for content that will be updated
00:47frequently, whether it be hourly, daily, or even down to the minute. Pages, on the other hand,
00:55are better suited for content on your website that will remain unchanged for long periods of time.
01:00Common examples would be a help page or a page like the Contact Us page on WRIF.com.
01:05One key benefit to posts is that it allows us to group our content by tag, category, or show. If I
01:20scroll down to the bottom of this post, we can see that it belongs to the category Rock News. If I click
01:25on this link, it'll take us to all the posts that belong to the category Rock News. This is how we get
01:32our content to appear on the homepage under the Rock News ribbon. You can also select shows such as Dave
01:40and Chuck the Freak. If I was to select Dave and Chuck the Freak as the show for an article, it would appear
01:45in this ribbon. In summary, posts are best suited for short, timely content. They can be organized by
01:55category, tag, or show, and can be consumed by an RSS feed for external websites such as an email client.
02:02Pages are best suited for static content that will remain the same for an extended period of time.
02:09This could be a page like your Help page, your Contact Us page, or an Advertise With Us page.
02:18Now that we have a better understanding of posts and pages, let's create our first post.
02:23I've pre-selected an example for us to recreate. Note in this post we have a post title,
02:29a feature image, a paragraph of copy, and finally a YouTube video that is embedded at the bottom of the post.
02:40To get started, visit your WordPress dashboard. Locate posts on the left-hand side and then in the sub-menu, click Add New.
02:50With your new post open, let's add a title.
03:05With our new title entered, let's click Save.
03:24You will notice that it generated a new permalink based on the title. This is the link on the website
03:29where your post will be found. If you make a change to your title and would like that to reflect in the permalink,
03:35click Edit. You can then make your change and click OK. Don't forget to save again.
03:44Next, let's add a paragraph of text to our post. Below the title bar you will notice the Rich Text
03:49Editor. This section represents the main area of content within your post. Here we can add text,
03:54images, and other media. There's also a variety of formatting options available for our text that
03:59allow us to customize it and emphasize certain areas. For this example, I will be pasting text
04:05that I've already copied. It is important to note that if you're going to copy and paste text from
04:09another source, whether it be a Word document, email, or a website, it is important to first click
04:14paste as text. This will clear any unnecessary coding or formatting. In this example, I'm going to leave
04:26the text as is, but if I wanted to format it, say perhaps center it, I can do that up here. Or if I'd
04:34like to bold something, I can do that up here. Or we can change paragraph to a heading format and have an
04:40h2 format for this line of copy here. I'm going to change that back to paragraph. Then once again, hit save.
04:56Next, I'm going to preview this page so we can see the changes that we've made so far.
05:00You will notice that we have a page title and then we have our paragraph of text here.
05:06Compared to the example, we are still missing our feature image.
05:10And the embedded YouTube video below.
05:14Our post now has a title and a paragraph of text. The next thing to add is the video. In this tab,
05:20I have a YouTube video open which I would like to embed. To do that, I will copy the URL in the
05:25address bar here. Next, I will return to the dashboard and paste it in my rich text editor below the
05:31paragraph of text that we entered previously. As you can see, it will convert the address into an
05:37embedded YouTube video player. While this example uses YouTube, it will also work on other popular
05:42platforms such as Vimeo. With our video embedded, we will now add a featured image to our post. To do
05:49this, I will scroll down to the bottom right-hand corner of this page. This area is labeled featured
05:54image. If I click the link set featured image, it will open the media library. The media library
06:00contains all of the images that have been previously uploaded to the website. If you would like to
06:05look for a particular image, you can use this search box here. For this example, I'm going to
06:10upload my own. So I'm going to click the upload files tab and then I'm going to click select files.
06:17Once uploaded, my image will appear here in the media library.
06:20On the right-hand side, you will see several text boxes which allow you to add additional information
06:26about your image. While most of these may seem obvious, there are some very important ones that
06:30you should pay attention to. For example, alt text is a description that is important for search engine
06:35optimization as well as accessibility for your visually impaired visitors. For this image, I'm going to add
06:41Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden. This will allow visitors to know what the image is, even if they
06:53can't see it. For the title, I'm going to use the same thing. And for the caption, we will use the same
07:01thing on this one. At the bottom, attribution is the credit to the photographer. So for this one, I'm going
07:08to type in Maria Ives. And then I'm going to click set featured image. As you can see, it set the image
07:16for our page or post here. And I will scroll back up and click save. Now let's preview our post and see
07:28how it compares to the original. To do this, we can click preview in the top right-hand corner next to
07:33save draft. As you can see, our post looks pretty good. We have a title, we have our featured image,
07:42the opening paragraph of text, and then the embedded YouTube video below. When we compare it to the
07:47original, it looks fairly similar. One thing that you may notice is that this post is associated with
07:55the show Midnight Metal on WRIF.com. If we'd like to associate a show with our other posts, it's fairly
08:02easy to do and I can show you how. If you scroll down to the right-hand side where it says shows,
08:09there's a list of every show that is on your website. If I scroll through this list, I can find
08:15Midnight Metal and check that box. If I scroll back up and click save,
08:25then click preview.
08:32It'll now have Midnight Metal as the show that this post is associated with.
08:40Similar to that, we could add a category or a tag to help organize this post on the website.
08:46For example, if we'd like to add this to the Rock News ribbon on the homepage,
08:49I can scroll through this list and find Rock News.
08:58And there it is and I can check that and then that'll now be part of the Rock News on the website.
09:06For tags, since this is a post about Iron Maiden,
09:09Iron Maiden would be a good example of a tag for this post.
09:12So I can search Iron Maiden and as you can see, it pops up as a suggestion. I'll click it,
09:18I will click add. And then we now have Iron Maiden as a tag on this post.
09:25So to review, the show that we have associated is Midnight Metal.
09:30We have Iron Maiden for a tag and for the category, I put it in Rock News.
09:35Next, let's scroll to the section labeled Yoast SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
09:43And Yoast SEO is a tool that will help us improve our content and ensure that it is discovered by
09:48search engines. Within this section, you see SEO analysis. Here, you'll find a list of problems
09:56that it has found with our content and a suggestion on how to fix it. The goal here is to have each of
10:01these red dots become green, meaning that we have fixed each of these problems. If we look at the
10:07top two, we can see that it suggests that we have an outbound link and an internal link. Outbound links
10:12would be a link to an external website such as Google.com or CNN.com. Internal links would be a link
10:21to the same website that we're on. So for example, here we're on Rift.com, so it would be a link to
10:27another post or page on Rift.com. I'm going to scroll up and do that real quickly. For the internal link,
10:34what I'm going to do is I'm going to highlight Iron Maiden. And in this tab, I have a link to
10:40the tag Iron Maiden on the Rift website. So here you can see all the posts that have been tagged with
10:45Iron Maiden. So if somebody clicks on Iron Maiden within this post, they'll see every post on the
10:51Rift website that is tagged Iron Maiden. So I'm going to have that highlighted there. I'm going to click
10:56Insert Link. I'm going to paste it, and I'm going to click Apply, which is this blue button here.
11:03Next on the list was adding an outbound link. An outbound link, like I said before, is a link that's
11:09external to this website. It's not on Rift.com in this example here. So we see here it is discussing
11:18the studio that created this video below, and it's called Blink Inc. So I have that website open in a
11:24tab. I'm going to highlight that here. I'm going to go to that tab. I'm going to copy that link.
11:29I'm going to return to this tab. I have that highlighted. I'm going to click Insert Link.
11:34I will paste that link there, and click Apply. Now, as we discussed before, since it's a link that's
11:41going to a website other than Rift.com, I'm going to click Edit. I'm going to click Link Options,
11:47and I'm going to click Open Link in New Tab. What that'll do is it'll open a new tab so that they
11:54don't leave our website. I'm going to scroll down, and as you can see, those two items have now turned
12:03green. So we could just kind of work through this list here and make these other changes,
12:08changes, and these will also turn green. One thing that's important to do is to add a focus keyphrase.
12:17For this, this article is about Iron Maiden releasing a new song. So a focus keyphrase is something that you
12:25would expect or hope that a viewer is going to be searching for within the search engine to find your
12:30content. So for this, what I would expect them to search for is, um, new Iron Maiden song. So I'm
12:38going to type that in here.
12:43And then if you scroll down, you can see that it says keyphrases in title, but does not contain
12:49exact match. So if I scroll up, you can see it says Iron Maiden releases first new song in six years.
12:56So how we can, how could we improve this? We could say new Iron Maiden song.
13:04And we could say first in six years.
13:13If I scroll back down, you can see that these are all turning green now.
13:19Um, and then one of the other items here is meta description. So it's kind of hidden, but if I scroll
13:28up within the snippet preview area, if I click edit snippet, you can scroll down, you can see meta
13:35description. Now the meta description is the, it's a small paragraph of text that'll display within the
13:41search engine next to the result. So if you, if you've searched before in a search engine for a topic
13:46and it's pulled up a list of results, usually you see a paragraph of text next to it, that kind of
13:52gives you an idea of what the post is about. And that's what this meta description is here.
13:56So for that, you can probably, most of the time, you can probably copy one of your first paragraphs
14:01and just adjust it a little bit and use that. So I'm going to go down, I've copied the first paragraph
14:06and I've pasted it in here. And as you can see, it says, Iron Maiden is back with the writing on the
14:11wall. Their first new song in six years and it comes with a stunning animated video. I think that's
14:17okay. We're going to go ahead and use that. You can see this green bar here. That's to tell you whether
14:22or not the length of your meta description is too short or too long. It's green. So I think we're good
14:27here. Scroll back down. So one of the remaining items here is key phrase density. So if you remember,
14:36we added the key phrase new Iron Maiden song right here, what this is saying is that it found it one
14:43time and it recommends at least twice within your post. So I'm going to scroll up and I'll show you
14:49where it is picking it up. You can see in this first sentence here, we have Iron Maiden and then we have
14:55new song right here next to in six years. So that's considering that right there as a key phrase.
15:03So if we scroll down a little bit, we can look for another spot to add it.
15:15We'll just say, what do you think?
15:21What do you think of this new Iron Maiden song? Let us know.
15:27Let us know on Facebook.
15:36So if I scroll back down, let's see if that's good. That's good. So now you can see all of these
15:41are green except for text length. And it says we need some additional words within our post.
15:48For this example, I'm not going to do that. But if you're writing a post and you saw that,
15:52you could just add some more text. So just kind of focus on that length of 300 words. That's a good
16:00good length for the post. I'm going to click save.
16:03And as you can see,
16:21we've corrected all of these issues. We have all green except for the one which we talked about.
16:25But so this is what your goal is here when you're creating a post.
16:29Try to get green for your SEO analysis.
16:35Other suggestions here. It makes some suggestions on your writing.
16:40So if you'd like to improve the writing of your post, you can read this and correct these issues here.
16:46Then there's also a social tab, which allows you to customize the title and description
16:51and image that appears on Facebook when the post is shared.
16:54So that's our post. We're going to review some other things on another post, but I think that's it for this one.
17:04Now let's look at a new example and discuss some of the options available to us on the right hand
17:08side of the page here. Within the published section, this is where you control when your post
17:13will go live, when it will end, and who can see it. So currently it is on draft, which is the mode that
17:19you'll use when you're working on a post. When we publish it, I'll go to published.
17:25You scroll down here, there's publish on, which is the date that we wanted to publish on. Currently
17:30it's on April 28th. Let's change this to September 1st.
17:37Year 2021. And then we use a 24-hour format, time format up here. So right now it's on 0000,
17:44which is midnight. Click OK. For the expiration, we go to expires on. So if you know that this post
17:52will only be relevant for, let's say a month, we could do October 1st, 2021. We'll do again,
17:5924-hour format. So it's 23.59 for 11.59 PM. Click OK. So then this will, when you hit schedule down here,
18:10this post will go live on September 1st, 2021 at midnight. It'll expire on October 1st, 2021
18:17at 11.59 PM. You're going to change those. You can go back and change them. You can remove them.
18:24I'm going to leave them as is for this example. Below that, there's a checkbox for breaking news alert.
18:31If this post was about something like maybe a celebrity death or an extreme weather announcement,
18:36you could check this and it would put a ribbon at the top of your website with the post title.
18:42So it was highly visible. If you would like to enable a public preview, you can check this box
18:49and it generates a preview link. This preview link, I think, is usually available for 48 hours.
18:55So you could copy that link and send it to someone so they could preview the post before it goes live.
19:00It's important to note that if you click preview here and use that link, it's only visible to people
19:05who've signed into your WordPress. So if you want to send it to someone who has not signed into
19:09WordPress, you must use this link here. There are a few options here for your feature image layout.
19:17Almost all the time, you'll just want to leave it on inline. But for instance, if you wanted to hide
19:21your feature image, you could click none and it would hide it. All right, so that all looks good.
19:28So if I wanted to schedule this, I could click schedule here and it would schedule.
19:33This is also where you could copy this post to a new drafting. So if you're working on a similar
19:38post, you could copy it. You could trash it if you're done with it. Scrolling down a little further,
19:43we see our categories option, which we've discussed earlier in the video. This is where you can apply
19:47categories or remove categories that you feel are relevant or not relevant.
19:51So for this one, we have food and 105 when the bounce selected. Scrolling down a little further
20:01is the formats. This is a standard post, so I'll leave that. But if you had a gallery, you could
20:06change it to gallery. If this is a video post or an mp3 post, you could use video or audio.
20:14Scrolling down a little further is our tags. So like categories, like we discussed, this is a way for
20:19us to organize our content. Tags are just more of a quick descriptive tag of what's in the post.
20:27So for this one, we could use beer and football. Click add. Yeah, it'll add those two tags to this post.
20:39Collections is you could create this post and add it to a larger collection of posts that is used
20:46company-wide. Most of the time, you probably won't need this. You can just ignore that for now.
20:52Scrolling down further shows. If you want to associate this post with a show that is on your
20:57station, let's say an afternoon talent or morning show you want to associate it with that, you could
21:04do that. We have Jay Steele, who is our afternoon drive. If I click that, then this post will appear on his page.
21:11Here we have sensitive content toggle. If this post was something for mature audiences and we don't
21:22want it to display with advertising, we can check that on. It's pretty important that we do that. So
21:28if you have a post that you think could be controversial, I would go ahead and just check that to be safe.
21:35I'm going to uncheck that since this post is not that kind of post. Below that, keep off homepage.
21:44If you check this box, it'll keep the post off of the homepage. So even if it is in a category
21:50like music news or something, they would hide that post. Sometimes you don't want to post on the
21:55homepage because you just don't need it on there. It's not that kind of post. So you would check that.
21:59Scrolling down a little further, you can see our feature image, which we've already discussed.
22:06Even further down on the bottom is sponsorship settings. So for this example, this is a post
22:12about football and beer. So if we want to say this was sponsored by Bud Light, we could have the label
22:18here which is sponsored by the sponsor name. We'll do Bud Light. Fix that.
22:29And then sponsor URL would be the link that you want the sponsor name to link to. So for this one,
22:34I'm going to use BudLight.com. So here we go for sponsorship settings. We have sponsored by Bud Light
22:53and it links to BudLight.com. Now that we've created a post, let's look at what it takes to create a page.
23:00The good thing is that we can take most of the skills we've just learned in creating our post and
23:04transfer that to creating a page. There are some key differences though, which I'll point out, but other
23:09than that, it should look pretty familiar. To get started on the left hand side, let's go to pages.
23:15In the sub menu that pops out, click add new to create your new page.
23:21Once this loads, you will see that we have, just like our post, we have a section for a title.
23:26We have the rich text editor here, which represents the main copy and main body of your page.
23:30On the right hand side, if I go right here, you can see that we have a section to upload our featured image,
23:37just like our post. We have an area for sponsorship settings.
23:43We scroll up to the top, you can see that just like a post, we can schedule it or we can publish it
23:48immediately. We can also set the expiration date.
23:51Then if I scroll down here, you can see just like our post, we have settings for Yoast SEO,
23:59so that we can optimize our page.
24:05You can change the author of the page.
24:12With this new page open, let's create a contact us page. With the title, I'll simply add contact us.
24:17Below in the rich text editor, let's add some contact details.
24:23First, I'm going to type phone number. Then I'll paste our phone number. We'll do address.
24:31And then once again, I will type in the address.
24:33I'm going to go up here. I'm going to highlight phone number. I'm going to change paragraph to
24:48heading two. I'm going to do the same with the address.
24:55And as we learned in our previous example, we can add hyperlinks if we want to by using
24:59the insert link here. So let's add, let's add an email address.
25:10You contact at 1051thebounce.com.
25:21So I'm going to highlight the email address here.
25:23I'm going to click insert, edit link. As you can see, it recognized it as an email address.
25:29So it already created the email link here. I'll click enter to apply.
25:35I'm going to scroll down, give it a featured image. I've already uploaded one here to the media library.
25:40I'll select that.
25:43And there you go. You can see that as a feature image, we have some basic
25:47copy here within the body of the page. We click save draft.
25:57Now with posts, what we did was we scheduled it for the future.
26:01And we set a date here. And then I showed you that we would click schedule to schedule it.
26:06This page, instead of scheduling, let's publish it immediately.
26:09Let's say we're happy with this here. We're ready for it to be on the website.
26:13I can go over here, click publish.
26:17And it has now published that page. And you can see right here, this is the web address
26:25that it would be at. If I click on it, it'll open it up.
26:29So here you can see the page that we just created. It's a basic contact us page. We have the title
26:34here that we added, the feature image that we selected from the media library. Here's the content
26:39that we typed onto the page. Phone number address and email address. The email address here is linked.
26:45So if you click that, it will email contact at 1051thebounce.com.
26:51As you scroll down, you can see one key difference between pages and posts, as we discussed, is that
26:55there's no categories or tags at the bottom. That means that it's not going to automatically be
27:00pulling into any kind of feed or ribbon on the homepage. It's not going to be grouped with other
27:06pages of a similar tag or category. Just to remind you, here is an example on the homepage of Music
27:13News. All of these posts have the category Music News, so that's how they appear here.
27:19With pages, they're not going to automatically pull into anything. So it's just something to keep
27:23in mind. That's why they're better suited for things like an about page or a contact us page.
27:28Things that don't need to be updated very often and things that don't need to be pushed out
27:33on a regular basis. These are things that will be on your website for an extended period of time.
27:41That concludes this video. I hope that it was helpful. I hope that you now have a better
27:45understanding of posts and pages within your WordPress websites, and happy creating. Thank you.