Content Management for beginners

Your client can simply use the Visual Editor to amend/create Posts or Pages. As for yourself, do you perhaps need to look at custom page templates or perhaps Theme Development?

Thank you for the quick reply, and I’m sure you’re right — custom page templates might be the way forward. As far as I can tell, the visual editor only allows for a single block of content, but correct me if I’ve got that wrong. Maybe you can assign classes to items within the visual editor?

Is there any way for my client to alter the content of the index page? The only way I can see to alter that is to edit the php files directly.

I will have a look at your links — I really appreciate your help

Maybe you can assign classes to items within the visual editor?

No you can’t. But depending upon what multiple blocks of content you want to display, you could use custom fields. Or you could use “hidden” (draft) child pages to populate content blocks and then pull these into a published page via multiple Loops within a custom page template.

Thanks again, I have some reading to do!

Well, I have had a look and I’m a bit lost. I still can’t see any way to edit the index page from the dashboard at all, and although I’ve created a page template as instructed, I can’t see any way to assign that to an existing page. The custom fields are way above my head but they look very much like content attached to posts, which I’m not even showing on my pages. Is the text-widget perhaps more the type of thing I need for my static pages?

Can anyone recommend a good place to learn about these things? The codex seems very brief and not very suitable for someone trying to understand the basic tools available.

Thanks

Assuming that your site’s index page is the main posts page, it’s not a WordPress Page at all. It’s a list of the most recent posts – generated on demand and controlled by the index.php template file.

I edited the home.php file that came with my theme (Starkers) and added a bunch of pictures and captions to it. The bit which was generated as a preview of posts I’ve allocated to a column on the page as part of, but not all of the index page content.

I can easily go into the home.php file with an editor and make changes, but is there any way I can hook up those elements to the dashboard to make them editable by my client? I guess at the moment I could tell her to name her images and size them a particular way, and that would allow her a way to change all the images by uploading them to her directory, but the captions and text content are “hard coded” in the HTML. There must be some way to identify each string and make it accessible from the dashboard (?)

Perhaps I’m going about this all the wrong way? maybe it was a mistake to build the page in HTML first?

Thanks again, I hope you’re not losing patience with me

You could use “hidden” (draft) child pages to populate content blocks and then pull these into a published page via multiple Loops within a custom page template.

okay, thanks, I’ll look into that one… Meanwhile I have figured out how to assign a page template to a page!

HELP—I work for a company that hired a web desinger and when she was done, she gave me password to WordPress. That is ALL she gave me. I have added two posts with pictures onto the correct page using the Catagories buttons. I saw the images once on the website but I can not see them now. I have tried everything…even bought a book but I am STUCK! Can someone walk me through this just far enough to get my webiste up and running?

@dmin@mywonbet: It is impolite to interrupt another poster’s ongoing thread with a question of your own and it causes significant problems for the forum’s volunteers. Please post your own topic.