Adding a page

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When we left off with the last portion of the tutorial, our new web site had one page, and looked something like this:

Note that the green-shaded content box and associated action options, along with the Recent Changes sidebar, would only be visible to a logged-in editor. If you're not logged in, do that now.

An About Page

Let's add a page to our site. A good choice for a first page is one describing your organization in more detail.

To add a page to the site, look in the green-shaded action options bar and find the Add Item drop-down menu. Drop down menus are indicated by the downward-pointing triangles. Click on Add Item to see the menu.

While the drop-down menu is visible, you'll see a list of content types. You add a particular kind of content by choosing the appropriate type from this list. In this case, we want to add a web page, so click on Page on the list.

For more information on the content types available, see the Adding Content How To.

The Edit Page Form

Choosing Page from the Add Item menu will take you to a form that will allow you to specify the page content. The form should look much like this:

Title & Description

The first fields on the form are for the page's title and description. Our title here is simple: "About Us." Keep titles short and to the point. Long titles will make a mess of the site's left navigation sidebar (portlet).

Note that the title field works a bit differently than when you were editing the homepage. The title field of the homepage sets the title for the entire site. A page's title only affects the individual page.

The contents of the Description field shows up in several places (like when you hold the mouse for a second above a page's title) and in search results. Make it useful, but not too long.

Body Text

The Title and Description are plain text. The Body Text of a page may be richly styled to reflect structure and emphasis. You may enter the text in several formats, but if you're using a web browser with a rich-text control (like recent versions of Firefox, Camino and Internet Explorer) the easiest way to format text is using the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. If it's available, you'll see a large green button bar.

As with the home page body text, the easiest way to style text is to enter it simply, then go back and use the style chooser to pick your headings and subheadings.

You may also copy formatted text from another browser window or word processor and paste it into the body text field. This works best with simply formatted text, and is a recipe for vexation if the pasted text has much in the way of margin or font manipulation.

Related Items

We're not going to do anything with the Related Items field at the moment, but keep it in mind. This field provides the answer to the question of How may I attach something else -- like a PDF form -- to a web page? The answer is to create a new File item, upload your PDF to it, then attach it to a page as a Related Item.

Allow Discussion ... ?

If you choose to allow discussion of a page, and if you've turned on anonymous discussion for your site, readers will be able to add comments to the page. If you allow this, remember that it is your responsibility to keep up with the comments.

Finishing Up

Your work on the page isn't complete until you press the Save button at the bottom of the form. Don't forget about it!

The Results

After you save your work, you'll be taken to the View display of your new page. Now, take a look at the site navigation sidebar on the left. There's the new page, automatically added!

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