All righty, so one of the things that Idiscuss pretty frequently if you can, if
you come to these is the idea that we'vegot our two separate editors, right?
You've got what you write in your postsand your pages. This is your content.
This is where your ideas live, yourvideos, your images, your media,
anything that comes from you, for themost part lives in these dashboards
here. With the new site editor, though,this is where your theme is structured.
So how things appear your colors wherethey appear on the screen, rather than
what you've written. So one thing thatwe ran into last time that I really
wanted to address, because we're goingto be looking at pages and making
effective pages is what to do when youryour theme, your block theme, like my
theme. If you click into it, you'llnotice that there is content in this
site editor. Right. So this is just thesample content here. And I really like
what they've done here. It's part of thereason why I picked this because I do
think that this is a very effectivehomepage. But for those of you who are
super new to the space didn't attendlast week, I think it's really important
for you to know that whenever you areworking in appearance and editor, this
is your site editor, you have prettyhigh probability of losing anything that
you write here. So if I decide tochange, just help us protect our animals
to let's say, I'm starting a business,Sarah's bird visiting service. And I
ended up changing themes. Anything thatyou write here will disappear if you
switch themes. So this is something thatI'm seeing, often with some of the new
block themes is that they've designed itin a way that encourages you to write in
your site editor. So one thing that Ithink is really important for everybody
to know, is what to do when you're like,wow, I really love this theme. This is a
blog theme. It's really cool. But itwants me to write directly in this
editor here. So we're going to start bycreating a homepage today. Um, has
anyone else seen this? Like when you goto your themes? Have you seen this in
the past? Yes, no. Does your theme Haveyou writing more of your content here?
Or does it have you writing word orcontent in the posts? Or pages? Is it
just like a me thing? Or is this a newthing to just curious? Have you seen
this before? Yay, or nay? Because Laurahas not seen that? That's okay. She's
using 2023. Okay, cool. So some peopleare saying, hey, no, I've never seen
this, or Yeah, I have. But I think it'ssomething to really be aware of. And one
thing that's interesting about the 2023theme is that there's a couple of lines
in it. I'll actually show you there's alittle bit of this in that theme as
well. So let me switch to that reallyquick. So this is a block theme. And if
I go to my editor here, you'll noticethat if I scroll down, I don't think
scroll. It's got some content here, likeget you know, do you have any book
recommendations in here, or this mindblown a blog about philosophy, like this
is something that would disappear when Iswitch themes, right. So you know, if I
write a heading here, and it's just aheading, you'll notice that is the
heading block here, you can tell thatbecause of the h1 and guys know. Sorry
about that my neighbors are outside,you'll notice that when I switch my
theme back, what I just wrote, is goingto completely disappear. So we're gonna
talk about that just really quick,because I think it's really important.
So if I head back to my appearance, letme switch to a different block theme
activate, I head to that site editor.That is completely gone. So that's what
I really want to impress upon you iswhen you are writing in this editor,
it's really important to just use thisfor structure as much as possible. So
what do we do about this, rather thanwriting in the site editor says bird
visiting servers, you'll notice thatthat didn't transfer to my other theme.
How do I write this in a way that mycontent sticks. So an effective homepage
is one that will transfer from theme totheme. And some of these themes prevent
that. So what we're going to do, andyou're welcome to do this along with me,
if you would like. But we're going touse our pages editor here and we're
gonna start by creating a place to movethe content that we just saw. So I'm
going to head to pages and I'm going toadd two new pages. And the first one is
going to be my homepage. This is where Iam going to write my glorious homepage
content, thoughts, ideas, images, media,anything from my head or computer
generally it goes Here, I'm writing alittle bit of this so that you can see
how this is going to transfer. So thispage doesn't look like anything special.
This is it so far, that's okay, that'sexpected. Now I am going to write a
second page, just because I want to havea page for my blogs to live as well.
It's just kind of one of the things Idon't like to leave things blank. So
just gonna write blog publish, this isgoing to give a space for any blog
entries to live, you do not have to dothis if you do not want to blog, but
that's okay. So our first step iscompletely done, we've added the blank
homepage, we've added the blog page, weare now going to head down here to our
settings. And we're going to head to ourreading settings. And this will allow us
to change our homepage to display whatwe want it to. So I want to switch this
from, hey, my latest blog post becausethis is this is geared towards four page
websites, right. And I want to make it astatic page. So a page that doesn't
change with new blog posts for the mostpart. So those two pages that I created,
I'm going to set the homepage here. AndI'm going to set my post page to be my
blog here. And this is about to set usup for success. So we've done that, make
sure that you scroll down to the bottomand save those changes. That is step two
in creating a strong homepage that cantransfer from theme to theme. Now part
of the reason that I picked the themethat I picked is because I really liked
the way that it was designed, right likeI want what is on those homepage is to
actually up here on this homepage. Sothe first thing I want you to notice is
that when I click on this homepage, nowI've set it as my homepage. Anything
that I wrote here is not appearing,right. It's showing what is in the site
editor. So that's not good. Because if Iclick on a page now remember this is our
page editor, not our site editor. Wheredid my ideas go? Why is this not on my
homepage, we want you to like it's thiscontent is what transfers. So what we're
going to do now is we're going to headback to our editor, we're going to go to
appearance, and editor. And I'm going toclick into this homepage template, right
because this is what is now showing onthis page. So I'm going to open up my
ListView here because this is going toallow me to grab the main content from
this beautiful home page because Ireally liked this right? Like I think
that this this is a very eye catchingphoto, I love this cover block. I really
liked the way this is laid out with theleft and the right. Like I want this to
become something that I do, I don't wantto have to completely build this from
scratch, right? It's why I picked thistheme. So I'm going to use this ListView
here. And when if you're brand new tothis, you'll notice that we've got a
header, a group and a footer. And thesetwo things, your header and your footer,
these are template parts, right. Sothese are the very top and bottom of
your theme. And we've we've addressedthese in previous sessions. So you
definitely want to find those. If you'relike, Well, what are those like, that
was covered at a later point, you canalso see the beautiful links that
Catherine is dropping in there as well.But what I want isn't the top and isn't
the bottom, it's the main content ofthis page. So what I'm going to do here
is I'm going to select this group, I'mgoing to press these three dots to the
right. And I am going to copy this. Andthen I'm going to do something a little
scary, I'm going to remove it entirely.So this isn't very pretty yet, that's
okay, we're going to come back to thisin just a second, we're going to move to
step three, which is going to be to takewhat I just copied and move it from this
site editor here, which does nottransfer. And we're going to move it to
our pages editor here. So I'm going totake this, and I've got my homepage
here, here's my current page, I'm goingto go back and edit it. And now I am
just going to Ctrl V underneath it. Andnow you can see all of those blocks that
I chose this theme for now appear onthis page. So you've got my content up
here. Hello, this is my gloriouswriting. This is the content that
transfers between themes. I'm just gonnakeep hitting that point home. I'm gonna
click update. Now if I view this page,we've got one last second and look at it
and be like, Wow, that is
there's not a lot there. What's going onhere, right? Like I just edited this
page. If I click on edit this page, thiscontent is here. How do I get it to show
up on my homepage the way that it wasbefore for the reason that I picked this
thing. So what I'm going to do now isI'm going to head back to my site
editor. So when I head to appearance,and editor, this brings us to my
beautiful block theme. I'm going toClick into this front page here. I'm
gonna open up my ListView. One moretime. So right now this is this is
WordPress is saying, hey, I want you toshow me whatever is in my header
template part, which is way up here. Andit's also showing whatever's in my
footer. What I want WordPress to do inthis block theme is pull the content
from my pages editor and throw it onthis page. And I definitely want that in
between the header and the footer. Sothis theme is a little weird, its header
has like an interesting transparency.There's something weird going on here.
But what I'm going to do is I'm going touse these three dots. And I'm gonna say,
hey, I want to insert something afterthis. And this means that I'm not
editing this header template part, I'mnot editing this footer template part,
template parts, if you make a change tothem here or in the template section,
they ripple across the entire website.So now what I want to do, I'm gonna use
my inserter here. And I'm going toswitch over from patterns to blocks. And
I'm going to look for the post contentblock. So this is a theme block, that
will pull whatever post I havedesignated into this editor. So theme
blocks, if you're brand new, arebasically ways that you retrieve the
information that you wrote before. Sowhatever your your navigation is, your
whatever your site logo was set as ifyour post has a featured image, if you
wanted to pull an excerpt from yourposts and pages dashboard, this is how
you draw that into your website. So now,you can see some of us, some of my
content has been pulled in here, I cannow save this. And now if I view my
website, here we go, I'm visiting myhomepage, you'll notice, hey, there was
my content, here's something interestingis going on at the top that I'm probably
going to have to play with. Buteverything that I selected from this
theme is now on this page. So if Iswitch themes, now, this content is
going to switch with me. So I'll showyou that really quick just to really
like nail this point home just becausethere's it's so important. I think it's
such a best practice that I think is akind of a newer one. So let me let me
switch themes to the 2023 theme here,just to you can see this. And if I go
back to that page, and I view myhomepage here, it's displayed
differently, but all of that content isstill there. So I think tip number one
is just to make sure that you arewriting your content in the right in the
right place, especially for yourhomepage, just because you do want
anything that you write anything thatcomes through your head, you don't want
that to get lost in the theme switch. Soare there any questions about that so
far? Like I just I that is so important.We definitely got stuck on it last time.
But I it is a way that you can utilizethis in a way that serves you and moves
things. Let's see, Catherine has beendropping wonderful links. I give
additional information on this. And Ithink you'd like to add Katherine, are
you good?
Think that was pretty clear. Hopefullyit was clear to everyone. I don't see
any questions. Sweet.
Okay. So I just really wanted to startwith that just because it was very
confusing to me in front of everybodylast time. So step number one, put your
content in the right place. So now let'slet's get interactive here. When you're
starting to think about effective pages,so this the goal of this is to have four
pages, your homepage, your about page,your contact page, maybe a services
page. First off, what is your websitetopic? And what is the goal of your
website? So trying to think about I tryto use real examples for these. Like I
have a friend who I do her website andshe owns a cleaning service. So the goal
of her what like that. So her websitetopic is her cleaning service like all
about that right? And the goal is tobring in new cleaning customers. That's
what she told me she wanted when I setup her website. A lot of business
websites are going to are going to beabout that. Right. So they're either to
bring in new customers or they are togive information to repeat customers.
But what is your website about answeringthe chat box and what's the goal of your
website? We'll start there
getting clients to your website. Yes.Getting clients. That's a goal. Well,
it's topic though. I know there's aanother training team member who is
building In a training website for likehow to build websites with mobile, so I
think their goal is to shareinformation. Other other topics, other
goals? Don't think websites? Yeah, it'sa great topic. bringing in more
volunteers bringing in bookpresentations, yes. If I were making one
for the training team, our goal would beto probably like aggregate, bring in new
training team contributors, and theothers.
Required today, that's okay. That'sokay. So I want you to really keep your
website goal in mind. And I want you tothink about how you build what we call
an English class, ethos, pathos, andlogos. And these are appeals to your
credibility, appeals to emotion andappeals to logic, right. So when you
think about your credibility, what like,what are those, and it's a really good
idea to generate some examples of that.So like, for example, my my friend who
has the cleaning business, she has, youknow, been in the business for 10 years
like that, that builds that ethos, whatelse has she done? She brings in, like
she mentioned, like the backgroundchecks that she does for each of her
users. Testimonials, reviews, yes,testimonials, and reviews are amazing
credibility for that. Let's see.Interesting or being of interest to
readers. Yep. Okay. I love that.
Just try to think. Okay, so let's,
let's move on to emotion, Laura'sstarting to do that. So we also want to
talk about building emotion. Soemotional appeals in your writing. So
it's interesting. So Laura, we're goingto talk about that in just a minute
about like, where do these go on on eachof your pages? So how do you connect to
people emotionally for your topic? Soblogging, just general blogs could do
that. I'm trying to think where you'dsee that like on a liquidating page?
Gosh, I feel like I should inretrospect, I should have had a graphic
organizer for this. For the people couldlike actually write out like, what was
what what is it for them? But like, ifI'm thinking about making a cleaning
website for somebody, right, whatsomething that might be appealing to
someone's emotions is Hey, like, pictureyour house, dirty, disgusting. Like,
maybe there's dog hair everywhere, whichis a problem that I have in mind. And
then like that evokes a feeling of kindof disgust, right? Like, it's a little
bit of an anecdotal story. But then I'mlike it. Now imagine it like sparkling
clean head to toe like no dog hairanywhere, like everything is put away,
there's a place for everything andeverything in his place, which one makes
you feel better? images showing a housebefore and after a cleaning. Yes, images
can be very, very powerful for paythose. Love it. So these are all of the
different things. And the last one islogos is logic, which is a logical
appeal to things we really want to do.As you want to build effect pages, you
want to use your credibility, youremotions, your logic here to really tell
the story of your user. And I'm going tofix this up. And just a quick second. I
meant to put animations on this. jumpingahead of myself, y'all. I paragraph. All
right, let's try that again. Oh, mygoodness. See, it didn't do it that time
for me. Maybe that time, maybe thattime. So when you're building your pages
for the first time, I'm going to refreshthis page. So you can see that I built
my homepage, I have a sample page thatI'm going to trash because I don't need
it. But as your you're starting to thinkabout your pages, I want you to think
about the story of your user. So we'vegot a homepage we have an about page
Whoo. I'm about then, what did I say aservices and contact page. So for each
of these, you really want to think aboutthe mix of your logic your credibility,
your Your emotional appeals. But morethan that you want the story want to
kind of write a story of your user. Soif we just have a four page website, the
first question that I have for you toreally deeply consider is, what do you
want people to do on your homepage? Andhow do you want them to feel? So I want
you to think about your user journey. Sowhat do you want to read or to think and
feel on this front page? Trying to thinkI was really hoping we'd have more like
concrete examples that we could share.So we could talk about that.
Just have my one example, though. I feellike like I should have approached today
differently. That's okay.
Laura has given some really goodexamples of things like that. But does
anyone have an idea? Like what is yourhomepage supposed to do? Specifically
for your audience. So Anne says use hersa blog for a memoir, editor. Okay, blog
for a memoir editor. So this one forads. It's not a four page business
website. It is an actual blog. So on ablog page, let's talk about like blogs
versus business pages. What should yourblog page do? I'm sorry, let me back up.
I always get flustered, and we don'thave as many people typing. So I
apologize. Okay, so it's a businesswebsite as well. So your homepage needs
to do a couple of things, right? Itneeds to what Laura said, build a first
impression. Yes. It should also do aquick overview of all the pages in your
website. And it should also probablybuild your credibility as a
developmental editor, right? So you wantto think about like, what topics could
you bring in? for that? What builds thatcredibility?
And John says, yeah, so if you're, ifyou're starting a website, that's not
necessarily fully business, it's alsopartially blog, you also want to have it
be a little bit entertaining. So that'swhen those those appeals to emotion, the
common pain points of memoir editors,yes. Oh, my gosh, I love those pain
points. So and that's a really goodexample of something that isn't an
appeal to someone's emotions, right. Soon your homepage, go over here and click
Edit. I'm going to demonstrate this justa little bit. I'm gonna get rid of this
information at the very top. But you'llnotice that there are actually some pain
points in this example here. Right. Sofor this sample website, it talks about
poaching cases versus rescued animalsversus volunteers. Right. So these are
some pain points. And I really likedthat this really liked this one, because
it did a lot of things as well. Butthese poaching cases, these rescued
animals, like it's very, very clear,like you don't have to go in depth. Like
I don't have to have a commercial withlike lots of sad, sad animals, I don't
have to have a picture of somebody likea poached animal here to evoke the
feeling of wanting to rescue of wantingto volunteer. So it looks like the
purpose of this one is to bring inprobably even more volunteers. So yeah.
Okay, so you guys are coming up with alot of really great things. So pain
points, testimonials, credentials. Yes.So this could this is a very personal
thing. So let's actually analyze thisone, this homepage. And let's, let's
talk about the mix here of everything.So I'm going to just preview this rather
than. So the first thing that I noticehere is this really big picture of this
parrot. make your photos look brilliantweaving feathers. One thing that I
really like that is very effective toright off the bat is this call to
action. Hey, using this theme, make yourphotos look really you've got this call
to action button right here. So onething that you can do to create an
effective homepage is to use this coverblock here and put in a call to action.
I wonder actually. So I'm going to usethis wordpress.org pattern directory
here and wonder if they actually haveexamples of calls to actions here as
well. They do. Okay. So we'll come backto this and just Second, but it starts
with that. So whatever the goal of mywebsite is, the very first thing that I
probably want to do, if I'm using thistheme in particular is put whatever I
want people to do on my homepage. Putthat here. So you'll see this a lot,
you'll see donate buttons, you'll seecontact me buttons, you'll see things
like that. That's usually front andcenter of what people want to do. So
when people do this, the first questionthey usually have is why Why should I do
that? And that's when they startscrolling. And here's where we start to
mix. Our credibility, our appeals toemotion and appeals to logic. So here,
they started with poaching cases rescuedanimals, those that's definitely a an
emotional appeal. Now we have artnumbers, right? So I really like this
one, because it says the simple fourcolumn block here. And when you see
numbers, the first thing I think of islogic, but this is also logic that
builds the credibility, right? So forthis example, it says, Hey, we've got
768 photographs, we've done seven or 47projects, we've won 124 awards, and
we've used 13 lenses here. So this isusing logic to build that credibility.
So you can see the blend happening here.Um, and then it looks like this last one
here. This is supposed to be featuredposts, I think this actually is I'm
going to take a look at this. I thinkthat these are just placeholders here.
It looks like they want to use a queryloop. But what does this do for you,
when you look at these featured posts?Is this building credibility? Does this
giving you an emotional reaction? Ordoes it doesn't speak to the logic here?
I'm just curious. When you look at this,what do you think? It's more logic? It's
more emotion, this build credibility?What about what are your impressions?
Well says that it builds credibility.Yes. So one thing that is really
important to know is that writing postsrelatively frequently, or at least
consistently, that does build yourcredibility, it shows that you are
active, it shows that you are engaged.It also shows that you are an authority
on the subject as well, which buildsthat credibility. Yes, there's that
authority. So I think the key takeawayfrom your homepage is that you really do
want to have a really nice balancebetween the logic between the
credibility building and between thewhat am I trying to say? That's the last
one and the emotion, the emotional thingbehind it? So yeah, that's kind of the
the key takeaway that I want for thisfirst page. Um, and I think that if you
were to build user journey for yourself,you would probably want to consider what
you want to reach or to think and feel,on your homepage, your services page,
your about page and your contact pagefor each of these things. You really
want to guide that journey. So no, goback. Go back. So for these, what is the
balance between your credibility, yourlogic and your emotion? Where do you
think that credibility should be highestwhich page? Give it a guess? And why?
Just curious
where should your credibility behighest?
Which of these pages Victoria sayshomepage? Maybe? John says homepage and
about Jean says front page. Oh,interesting. These answers are
surprisingly Tell me more. I think thatthe front page, you really only get one
chance to make a first impression. Sowhen you're working on your homepage,
that was probably the one that you wantto spend the most time with. But I've
also definitely seen some homepages thathave just been absolutely stuffed with
credentials like I'm so great. I've wonthis award and that award and I've done
this and that and here's here are all ofmy user testimonials. Is that helpful or
is that off putting? I'm just curious,what are your impressions?
My thought if you're typing, that'sfine, but my thought was Maybe it should
be on the about page, right? Becauselike, I think I feel like on the
homepage, and this is just an opinion.And I'm curious to hear what yours are
too. So keep typing if you're typing.But for me, I feel like the home page is
almost a little bit of a teaser. Right?So it's Hey, like, here are the most
important things that you need to know,find out more. So when you're designing
your homepage, rather than being like, Ihave been volunteering forever. And I
have won all these awards and done it, Ilike to like hint at that. Because when
I'm on my homepage, I don't want someoneto just bounce off right away, I want
them to discover more. So your homepagecan be strong enough that immediately
someone would, you know, jump to yourcontact page. But more likely, I want to
direct them to my about page. So thatwas my thought, but y'all are making
some really good points. So Jean saying,Hey, if you don't seem to be credible
from the front page, people will go nofurther. So it's really, really
important to probably spend the mosttime on that front page and says that
she loves testimonials, but she'swilling to look for them on their own
page as well. So so so and for your yourjourney, people for whom you are writing
a website where testimonials areimportant. So should they have their own
little section? For could we just useit. So if I were to work on this, on my
homepage, you all are saying, hey, Iwant some testimonials here, I might put
some rather than featured post, I mightchange this to testimonials here and be
like, hey, here are my top threetestimonials. And then maybe add a
button down here that says Hey, see whatelse people are saying? And actually be
brought to that as well. Interesting.Let's see. And Laura says, but what can
you do for the client needs to be aboutthe customer, not the company? Oh, I
love that. Laura, that's such a greatpoint. So as you're designing your
homepage, not only does it need to be awow page, but it needs to be like your
focus really needs to be on thecustomer. And on the reader. What do
they need? What do they expect? Whatwill draw them in? Because I think that
the primary purpose of your homepage isfor them to actually go somewhere else,
go to your services page, go to yourcontact page. And you can direct their
experience that way. So Mel is broughtup a great point, the details on your
credentials clearly belong on the aboutpage. So it's almost like maybe on your
homepage, you have a couple of these.You talk in broad strokes, right? So
it's, it's the teaser. But the detailslike if this were a real website, the
details about the poaching cases and therescued animals and the volunteers, that
information that's in the that readmore. So one thing that I really liked
here is to use the button block here todrop people in specifically to read
more. And that would probably be in ourabout page. Which I haven't obviously
created here yet. But I really likedthat idea what a great thought. So
generals go here, details go on theabout so that people can dig deeper if
they want. Um and we had, let's see. Ilike it. So admin is saying that the
homepage is more about the client, andwhat they want need. The about pages
more about me, the company, the person,the writer behind this website, that's a
really good way to frame that. Okay. Sowe have a question, which is really good
question. Let's talk about what is thedifference between a front page and the
home page.
Katherine has answered that
question home is not technicallyhomepage home is a WordPress specific
template term homepage is the front pageof a website. So let's go back to our
site editor. So to get there, we head toour dashboard, head to appearance, and
then editor. And if you have a website,I encourage you to open this up and head
to your templates because you might findsome really interesting things here. So
for example, this page has both a frontpage and a home page. And one of these
supersedes the other. So you can seethis here, um, your front pages, the
number one website like is the numberone template that takes precedence over
all other templates. If this front pageexists, this is the first thing that
people are going to see on your website.Where is your homepage Ah, this is
interesting. So I would have expected ifI were to build the same, this would
have a front page. And then a homepage.But this one, we have our front pages,
the front page, and the home pages isapparently my blog page. So when I went
and I set this in my reading settings,so we did this earlier under Settings
and reading. When I set my post page tobe blog, apparently the home page via
WordPress is what displays those blogposts. Got some really great
conversation going on here. Okay. And soyeah, so WordPress develops this way
over. I guess it was what Its 20thbirthday the other day was that on
Sunday? Yeah, so this has evolved over20 years and naming things is really
hard to keep it consistent over 20years. So that's some of what you're
seeing here. So when I mean, once upon atime when I first started making
websites, when I would hard code HTML,and my template was like the homepage
used to be indexed. And apparently thathas evolved over time so that your front
page is your static front page. And yourhomepage is the one that displays blogs.
Not only that, Can I chime in with onemore? Yes, absolutely. Because the site
editor now makes it possible to putwhatever you want inside any of these
templates. It's even more confusing,because you can put a query loop on any
of these templates to display blogposts. Whereas before the site editor
with classic themes, you are locked intodisplaying what your theme was designed
to display. So yeah, it is the hottopic. Whereas is, and like, and I just
want to say, you know, you're so spot onthis. This is what we call a legacy
thing as Sarah saying it's a it's ahistorical artifact that makes no sense
when you look at the definitions ofthese templates. today. It's like, why,
why is it called home? If it's not thehomepage? It makes no sense. So you
know, if anybody finds this confusing,you're not alone. And there's reasons
why it's confusing. But at least theselittle blurbs were added here in the
template editor, you want to just clickon one again, just just so we can see,
these little descriptions of eachtemplate were added more recently, so
that if you forget what one of thesethings does, you know, you can read
this, even though even sometimes justreading it is still confusing. But at
least the definitions are here, if youwant to remind yourself what they need
to do. Okay, and, and rant
on, I think that's such an interestingpoint that you're making, too. So for
example, if we look at my front page,right, now, I'm going to click into it.
I'm going to open up my list, becauselike, you can see here, this is saying,
Hey, this is bringing in the postcontent, the way that this theme was
designed, and it's got some overlap onit for whatever reason. So I can have my
post content here. But I also could dosomething like, say, Hey, I wanted to
put just a couple of blog posts on thispage as well. So we had the section that
was kind of placeholders, it wasn'tactually blog posts, but I can select,
as Catherine was saying a query loophere and say, Hey, I just want to put, I
don't know, I want to put a couple ofblog posts at the very bottom of this.
So anytime I write a new blog post, itautomatically appears below this post
content. So I'm gonna save this, andwe're gonna go view it to see what it
actually looks like on the front end,just because this is so interesting. So
you can see that this is what's comingin from my page editor, right, so I just
left the site editor, the page editoritself has all of this stuff. These
aren't actually featured posts. And Iknow this, because I'm using my list
view here. And you can see all of thesedifferent columns. These are just
images, and paragraphs. So these don'tupdate. But what I could do is I wrote a
new blog post, I could feature these anduse this and then just create a link to
that hello world blog post or whateverother blog post I have. So that these
are the featured ones, they're not goingto update with everyone. You'll notice
there's nothing at the bottom here. ButI go back to my website. And I go to the
very bottom URL, and I just want to onlygo to my homepage. I should have a query
loop here. Why is it not showing? What?Oh, fascinating. I think I might have
found something that is, oh, you knowwhat it is? I didn't set the right
thing. So one thing that I that I'velearned through trial and error on one
of these is that you can just set aquery loop in your templates like this.
There is an option here that I need toselect here. I don't Why that is that
color. But over here in my settings, Ihave to make sure I have Clary loops
selected. I have to disable this inheritquery from template and then it will
show up. I, someone could tell me why ifthey happen to know. But we're gonna go
and now we're going to view this page,we're going to scroll to the bottom,
there it is, there's my query loop withthe text that is apparently only showing
up on highlighting, I would have to playwith my global styles there. But now if
I write a new blog post, hello birdiesof the world, publish publish, I can now
head to my homepage. And you will seethat, hey, all my content on this front
page has stayed the same. But now hellobirds of the world has updated there as
well. So that's what Catherine wassaying about how like you can put
anything anywhere now. And that justdidn't used to be the case. There are
almost as many ways to do things withWordPress as there are stars in the sky.
So figuring out what works for you isjust the most important thing that I can
tell you the way that I design websitesmay not be the way that you design
websites, and that's okay. Okay, yes.So, back to our topic with our front
page here. I like the idea of teasing Ilike, like not teasing, but like kind of
previews for everything else on thewebsite, right. And this even has kind
of the previews here with these featuredposts. So I can make each of these link
to a blog post. So these two I haven'tdone yet, but this one I have, so I can
make sure that this post is always atthe top here. That's one way that you
could do that. I feel like your servicespages is kind of, I don't know, when you
look at a website for the first time.Where do you normally go first? So
obviously, you land on the homepagefirst. I feel like usually before I hit
services, I go to the About page, butmaybe that's not true for you. When you
visit a website, are you more likely tolearn more about the company or look at
what they offer first?
Just curious. Maybe I'm weird, but Iusually go to the contact page to see
where they're located. Especially ifit's a, you know, an in person service,
an in person business, so many peoplehide their location. And it's very
frustrating. It's also does no good fortheir own SEO. But that's, that's
another topic. But I might be the onlyweirdo that goes to the contact page and
a lot of
these places. I guess that's true. Ithink about it really? Do you know what,
Victoria? You're right. It does dependlike I'm thinking about when I went to I
don't know that the bird rescues where Igot all my parents. I probably looked at
which birds were available before Ilooked at like who they were just to
kind of see like, are there things? Ordo they have what I offer? And then are
they actually like a reputable company?So hmm, depends on what I need. If I
need to get something repaired, I go toServices first, can they fix what's
broken in my house? Interesting. So Ifeel like the Services page probably
needs because on your homepage, andyou're about page, that's where you're
building a lot of your credibility. Soyour homepage should do that enough. So
that someone like and can say, Okay, Itrust you enough. Could you maybe fix my
stuff? I feel like services is more ofthat logic, right? Services. Equals How
do you logically fix my problem? Whereasblog stuff? I don't know, there are a
lot of I guess it depends on the blog.Yeah, I did a graphic organizer for this
one. I think just because it's soindividualized, there is no one way to
really think about that. But I thinkthat the key here is when you're on each
page, if someone went from home toservices, what would we want them to do
next. So I highly recommend using BlockPatterns to do this. So I'm going to
edit this page, the site because this iswhere we put our content, you might
start off your services page with atestimonial, right? And because this
isn't like the primary purpose, um, youmight look for something that is a
little bit smaller than some of theseenormous ones, right? So like something
like this, this itty bitty littletestimonial here. Looks like those are
from Twitter, but you could probablychange that. But you might start I just
copied that and I'm just pasting it inthere. This builds just a little bit of
credibility here. And that might be youknow, a different a different
testimonial per service perhaps whatelse could Do you use what fields logic
here? You got lots of different options.See, like, if I were to look for
services is there Oh, there's 166patterns found for services. So this
patterns directory is really lovely. Soa lot of things people want to know like
what your services are at a glance,right. So you'll see a lot of things
that are made with these differentcolumns here. That you can, you can go
through there you go, just like that.And now you can just start editing. So I
highly recommend doing that and thinkingabout, hey, how am I building my logic?
How am I doing things? How am I weavingthese together? But yeah, so that's,
that's basically the whole point, buildyour each page, build it with logic,
credibility, and emotion, make sure it'sbalanced, make sure that you know what's
important for each of your individualuse cases. Yeah, so we had some user
questions here, we were gonna do somebreakout rooms, I just don't think
there's time for that today. Soinnovations on this one, either tonight,
let's add an animation. There we go.Just really quickly. Um, so one person
was asking, like, how do your links andnavigation like how do they enhance your
website. So button blocks and coverblocks are really, really helpful to do
things with. So when you are buildingeach page, I think that very well placed
buttons are really important. So this,Hey, get started here. This read more
button like these are very, verycarefully placed, there are calls to do
that all up and down this homepage. Soinviting people not only to like, you
can find things up here and you canreorder them. But not only do you want
buttons up here, you also want to placethose buttons throughout your content,
right? So make your photos lookbrilliant. Get started, this might take
me to my services page. This down herethis read more hey, this is this would
go to my about page, you want to addthose throughout here. And then. And
Victoria, let's talk about your carouselin just a quick moment. Someone also
asked, Hey, do you tend to build fromscratch with patterns, I usually
recommend patterns just because it takesa lot of time. So that Block Patterns
directory, that's part of why we wantedto bring that up today is it's a lot
easier to pick something, copy it, pasteit and then make it yours. I'm actually
gonna skip to the end for this. Should Iuse a header or setter? Because Victoria
said, Hey, I really like is there acarousel? Is there a slider? Someone
asked should I use a header or a slider?Generally speaking, for accessibility
purposes, it's generally better to use aheader image that is generally
unchanging. Just because it's a loteasier to navigate, it doesn't change it
gives people with cognitivedisabilities, something very solid to
look at. If you do decide to have thingslike if this image slid to another one
and or slid to another one after that,as long as it didn't constantly update
on its own, it would probably beconsidered okay. Not amazing for
accessibility. But as long as thebuttons are clear, and people can
actually take their time to look atthis. That is something to know about
that. So yeah. Um, another person asked,Hey, how long should each page be? You
have to really consider your audience,right. So if you have a sciency website,
and the purpose of your website is todiscuss, like very in depth things, your
articles could be really long. If yourprimary target audience are, I don't
know, parents of very young children,you know that their attention is
probably I've got like 30 seconds tolook at a website before their attention
is elsewhere. So you really have toconsider your audience and all things.
Yeah, so there was that? And thensomebody also asked, how do you design
for mobile versus desktop, which isquite an advanced topic, but Katherine
planned with me today. There is a toolthat has been created several months
ago. That allows you to create dynamiccontent that allows you to see which
blocks are visible and where. So theremay be more versions or different ones,
but this is one that can help you designon mobile as well. So I think it is
really important to remember that theway that your website looks. Go to a
better example. The way that yourwebsite looks on a tablet is very
different than how it may look on it. Acell phone apparently. Yeah, so you can
kind of see how this stacks on top ofeach other, or just shrinks. So playing
with your screen size for things. Youcan definitely do that you also have
your view button, or did that go I lostit. There it is where you can see the
different sizing so that plugin can helpyou see, hey, what's going on where and
add spacers or remove them. So if youask that question, that is the resource
for you. There. Okay, cool. Any finalquestions or thoughts or takeaways that
you have Katherine or otherwise fromtoday? This was a lot today. But I think
it's really good discussion. Thank youall so much for stepping up and really
bringing your your thoughtful insight.We are all better for it.
I would say my key takeaways are? Sure,logic, credibility, emotional appeals.
On pages for readers about is forcompany or writers. final takeaway.
really consider your audience in allthings. So those are my three takeaways.
And I think with that, we will wrap uptoday. Thank you so much for your time.
All right. Have a lovely one. Thank youall so much for joining us today. All
right. Okay, Bill, you just answered thequestion I had in my head of whether or
not I should post this and I will. Allright. See you all later. Cheers.