How to make different 'web pages' and href them

Not sure if I’m reading you correctly, are you just trying to add new Pages? (Pages > Add New from the WordPress Admin Dashboard).

This is the first time I’m working with WordPress so I’m not quite sure of the terminology they use, normally if you make a website you refer to the different ‘spaces’ the links will bring you to as pages (webpages) for example if a link says about you will create a html doc called about.html and put it inside your folder etc. but when I tried to create what they refer to as a ‘page’ in WordPress, it seemed like this was just a new post.

I’m making a website for someone and want it to have the look and feel of a normal website (not a blog). If you look on my url https://test.michellehedberg.net you will see the links on the menu bar above the image, I want when you click on them that you will come to a new ‘space’ i.e. webpage that might look completely different to any of the other pages (except of course the menu bar and the logo (which I will obviously replace).

I’m not sure to go about this, based on my experience using html I guess I will rename the header.php page about.php, contact.php etc but maybe this is completely wrong – the whole structure of wordpress seems very different to when you make a website using html and basically just put everything inside the same folder. The header.php page is linked to a hooks.php page a function.php page and loads more, also I have created a child theme of the theme header which links to certain ‘pages’/documents in the delicate folder but also has its own ‘pages in my delicate child folder. So I don’t really understand how to create my new ‘webpages’ and I don’t know where to put them (inside which folder) and how to link(a href) them to eachother…

As you know when making a child theme you mostly seem to overwrite the original files by putting ‘stuff’ in your style sheet so I don’t understand will I modify the original header.php file (which I am kind of treating like an index.html file but yet it isn’t) or… what do I do?

As you can see I’m totally confused and would be eternally grateful if someone could help me. I’ve seen websites created in wordpress so it obviously can be done BUT HOW???

Thank you for your time

Michelle

WordPress is much simpler than that, I think you’re looking at it from completely the wrong angle. I would start from the start and work through the Documentation. Go into it almost forgetting what you know about making pages, etc, because it’s not quite like that in WordPress.

To add a page you go to Pages, and Add New from the Dashboard. To add it to the menu you go to your Dashboard again and click on Menu under Appearance.

Sorry but I really don’t understand the instructions on how to go about this at all, I have no idea what to fill it in, It’s asking me to fill in the href url but I have no idea what to write and then it’s asking me to fill in a ‘label’, I don’t know what this is either…

Also I have finally managed to design a menu that I like with the correct padding, font, look etc and I have managed to place it exactly where I want it on the page. I assume if I create a menu by using the dashboard, it will go back to looking the way the menu initially looked in the Delicate theme and I don’t want that at all, I went to great lengths to change that – is there no way at all that I could use the menu that I have already created?

Once again thank you so much for your time

Michelle

Hi again,

Just to explain, I created a horizontal menu following these instructions

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Creating_Horizontal_Menus

But the problem of

1. How to create new pages
2. Where to save them
and
3. How to a href them

remains

I can’t seem to find any information about this anywhere…

Hi again,

I have now managed to add my pages and figured out the url for them, for example the link to my ‘biography’ page is

https://test.michellehedberg.net/?page_id=32

and if I put this in my code my links on my menu bar works so this is great.

The problem now is that I can’t find the actual ‘physical’ file when I go to my server. I want to open the page files in my text editor and make changes to the different pages (for example simple things like disable the link for ‘biography’ in the menubar when you are on that page. Do you have any idea how to access the actual file, where it might be saved?

Thanks

Michelle

The ‘page’ is not static, it is dynamic. It is created when called by WordPress.

You can create any static page you want (even basic hmtl), just wrap it in PHP.

You can also review the generated source code.

admin_michelle, WordPress stores text contets of page/post in your mysql database and image/attachments in file server/ftp. So, it cannot be edited using HTML editor. When you access the site, your post title, body content are called from database and image called from server. So, don’t get confuse about html and php.

Dear SwansonPhotos and Samfusion,

Thank you so much for getting back to me. As you have gathered I don’t really understand how WordPress works and I am indeed very confused about the difference between html and php.

How do you ‘just wrap something in PHP’?

My problem is that I want to de-activate the links for the page that you are on in my menu bar at the top,

see my url

https://test.michellehedberg.net

for example if you are on the ‘Biography’ page that link should be de-activated and I want to make a visual change (perhaps make the area round the word ‘biography’ grey) so that you know that you are on that page (basic menu stuff – all menus follow this pattern.

I know the url for where the page is

https://test.michellehedberg.net/?page_id=32

But I don’t know what the actual file is called and where it is situated, The menu that I have created is coded on the header.php file in the original Delicate folder (linking to the style sheet in my Delicate Child theme) it appears now that all my pages are displaying this menu but it must be possible to make changes for how the menu is displayed on the individual pages (otherwise what would be the point of making it in the first place?)

Is it possible to write some code to make the menu behave differently on each individual page and if yes what is this code and where do you write this code (on the header.php file in the original Delicate folder, on the style sheet in my Delicate Child them folder or on the actual page files themselves, wherever they are)?

I would be immensely grateful for some help on this as I am completely stuck now and can’t move on.

Thank you so much for your time and advice

Michelle

admin_michelle,

What you are asking is for site design. We can assist with www.ads-software.com questions, but you will need to hire someone who knows both WordPress and your theme (which seems fairly limited) to do your site design. Most of what you want done can be done. That said, you would also want someone familiar with the site’s default language, which I am not.

Thank you very much for getting back to me Swanson.

All I am trying to do is to de-activated the links with the name of the page that you are on (just like the way any menu would work – when you are on the ‘about’ page for example the word about in the top menu wouldn’t be a link anymore and it might be styled slightly differently to indicate that you are on that page)

As you might see if you go to my url

https://test.michellehedberg.net/

I have styled the links with a hover effect and I know how to style the links using css but yes the menu would have to have different links on each page. I’m a bit confused over why WordPress shows you how to make horizontal menu bars (this is the link I used)

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Creating_Horizontal_Menus

and shows you how to insert it into your header.php page and then just ‘leaves you there’ without further explanation on how you will actually get it to work when it turns out to be so nightmarishly complicated. If you create this type of top navigation menu bar, of course you expect (and need it to) behave like a ‘normal’ menu bar – they all follow these principals, when you are on each specific page/link, that link is de-activated and it is styled slightly differently from the other links to show that you are on that/link page now.

I really don’t know what to do now, I can’t believe it’s this difficult to make a simple basic menu in wordpress…

I really appreciate your help, have you any advice for what I can do about this problem at this stage or who to ask? I would hate having to give up when I have come this far…

Michelle

Michelle, I will not speak directly for the folks who run www.ads-software.com, but consider this: WordPress incorporates other technologies such as jQuery, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, and CSS to mention some. The place to get support for WordPress is here…the place to get support for these accompanying technologies is within there forums, and, the place to get support for a theme is with the theme developer.

And, yes, creating a menu can be difficult for many…but it is fairly straight forward..it is just a list of links after all, and simply uses the elements ul, li, styled with a:link a:active a:hover and a:visited or the mouse over events…simply reviewing the source code of websites that use basic menus will point you to how it is all pulled together.

What WordPress does by default is make creating menus simple and automatic…Using the default theme, it could not be simpler. If you want more than that such as style etc., you use a custom theme or write the code yourself or a combination of both (as on my site).

Good luck.

Hi again Swanson,

Thanks for clarifying these things for me. However I don’t seem to be able to explain my problem correctly. I don’t need any help on how to create, style or code a ‘normal’ (meaning using html and css style sheets) menu, my problem is that I don’t know in which ‘document/file/place’ to put this code using the wordpress structure. This is why I assume the ‘problem’ to be of a wordpress nature and therefore it felt appropriate to ask advice on the wordpress forum rather than any of the other forums as they might not be familiar with how the wordpress structure works.

All I want is for the different pages to display the top horizontal navigation menu with the links for each page deactivated and styled to indicate that you are on that page when you are on that page.

I know how to do this using html and css but I don’t know where and how to do it within the wordpress structure.

Michelle

You can re-style the current page’s menu entry using pure CSS. Try using Firefox with the Firebug add-on for this kind of work.
https://getfirebug.com/

Thanks Esmi,

But where exactly do I style the current page’s menu (in which document/file/place)? And how do I ensure that these changes don’t appear on all the pages, just the current one?

Michelle