WordPress Beginner Tutorial - The Skeleton method will simplify how you build your website

good morning i hope you're well so today i'm going to teach you all about the skeleton method this is if you are a beginner at wordpress or you have a wordpress website and you're completely stuck with it i've been teaching wordpress courses throughout the uk for the last 10 years now and i've actually taught about 5 000 people face to face i also teach the guardian wordpress masterclass which i'll put a screenshot of here and here and a link to below the number one thing that i found that helps wordpress beginners is the skeleton method because what it teaches is the separation from your content from your design which is a key principle in wordpress and once you understand this key principle and how to use it in wordpress everything else becomes so simple it's called the skeleton method because we build the skeleton first before we start overlaying the skin which is the theme and we build the skeleton first by just three very simple steps which i'm going to talk you through now right here are the three steps of the skeleton method step one create your pages so we're just going to go off and create the pages we want in our menu we're not even going to put content in them we're just going to put a page title and publish them then there's step two which we're going to create the menu along the top and i'll talk you through how to do that then step three we're going to set the home page and we're going to set the blog page if you want a blog page if you don't then we won't add it our skeleton is made up of bones and the good news is there are only two types of bones in wordpress there are posts bones and there are pages posts are generally used for newsy type of content so you might well use posts in a blog but they're great for content that changes often pages you would probably more associate with more static type of pages more traditional website pages so classic page titles might be about us contact us meet the team so it's content that doesn't change so often right here is my brand new website all i've done is install wordpress and one of the big confusions that i see a lot with this screen is that wordpress actually starts life as a blog when it was first invented it was mainly used as a blogging tool now most people use a build proper website and that's what i'm going to teach you today but essentially all it does is start as a blog and all it does is put your posts on the front page now remember posts are your newsy stuff so if i create a new post now and then go back to the front page can you see how it just puts that post on the front page so wordpress starts as a blog but i'm going to show you how to change that right now it's time to build the skeleton in those three simple steps publish the pages set the menu set the home page in the blog page we're going to start with step one which is publishing the pages and all we're going to do is publish five brand new pages we're not even going to put any content in them all i'm going to do is put the page title and publish them here we go [Music] [Music] [Applause] the two major structural problems are the first problem is the order of your menus along the top here they're in a funny order they are actually alphabetical so all wordpress does to start with is it takes your pages any pages that you published and it puts them in alphabetical order along the top there which is clearly the wrong order the second big problem is that our home page isn't our home page so actually one of the pages i created was a page called home which is this one here at the moment that's not the first page anyone sees when they visit our website it's still showing our hello world post because it's still set up to be a blog so let's go and fix those two things we're going to start by fixing up the menus so it's time to fix the menu order along the top here super easy to do all you have to do is go to your dashboard go to appearance then go to menus three steps here as well actually first we need to create a menu by giving it a name this is just for your reference nobody else will see what you put in here so i'm going to call my main menu just give it a name and then you click the blue create menu in the bottom right that's step one step two you add the pages you want to show up in that menu into the menu you'll see over on the left here is a list of all the pages that you've actually published so what you can do here is just tick the ones you want to include in your menu once you've got them ticked you just click add to menu underneath once you click add to menu they will fly across the right hand side of the screen and appear under your menu that you just created now once they're across here top to bottom equals left to right on your website top to bottom equals left to right so currently if i left them in the order that they're showing here the homepage menu would be on the far right and the meet the team menu item would be on the far left which is in the wrong order so to change the order you just drag them up and down they are drag and droppable which is really really lovely you can also do drop down menus like this you literally just nudge a menu to the right and that will now become a drop down menu you can also do drop drop down menus like this so you can do any kind of hierarchy you like in your menus i'm going to keep them all on the same level today that's step two then get them in the right order step three which is vital is this option hat down here which is display location this is where you decide where to show this menu in your theme now this theme only has two locations the primary and the secondary the primary is the one i want today so just tick that hit save menu let's go and look at the website and now can you see the menus in exactly the order that i just laid out but we still have this issue to fix because it's still showing your post on your front page it's still a blog so that's the third and final step to get the skeleton built third and final step is to set the home page and set the post page or the blog page super easy to do again let's go dashboard and this is found down at the bottom here so just go to settings and then reading this is where the magic happens you'll see at the top here let me make this bigger for you that it's still set for your home page to display your latest post which is why our hello world post is showing on our home page we actually want to change this to a static page underneath this option here now from this drop down we can actually choose one of our pages to be the home page of our website you could choose any of your pages i'm going to choose our page called home you will see there's another option under here that says post page what post page allows us to do is set a page of our website to automatically show all our posts now in our case we're going to select our page called blog if you don't want a post page or you don't want a blog just don't select anything here so make those two changes set the home page set the post page and the skeleton now should be finished let's go and check it out let's go look at the home page so here we go here's our home page it is now our home page and if we click on our blog can you see how the hello world post is automatically dropping into that blog page and any subsequent post that we publish will automatically drop into that blog page in chronological order so just by following those three fundamental steps we built the skeleton of our website and those steps were once more build your pages so just go off and build your pages you don't even have to put content in them just make sure you publish them step two go to your dashboard go to appearance and menus and set up your menu then step three go to settings and reading and set your home page and set your blog page set your post page and once you've done that the skeleton is finished and what's great about the skeleton method is that once you've built the skeleton you can change your theme and the skeleton remains intact so to prove this let me switch themes so you can see this i'm just going to switch to a few very different themes to show you the principle in action so let's go to this one here called matala and here we go the skeleton is still intact so it looks completely different because it's been skinned differently but our bones are still in place so the menu is still in the right order styled very differently our homepage is still our homepage and our blog is still bringing in our posts let's go and check out another one so this one's quite interesting because it has the menu in a different location you see how the menus over here on the left so completely different layout which is the theme but the skeleton remains and our blog is still working our menus are still in the right order but the theme puts them in an entirely different place so there we go i hope you found that useful if you know any wordpress beginners or anyone that stuck with wordpress please send it to them if you can hit the like button now that would be fantastic because it really really helps spread the word of the channel also every time you do hit the like button our cats get a little treat [Applause] [Applause] so thanks again if you want to see more videos like this then hit the subscribe button thanks for watching and i'll see you soon

Channel: Jamie Marsland

Views: 930

Keywords: wordpress, complete beginner course wordpress, wordpress tutorial, wordpress blog, blog wordpress, create menu wordpress, set home page wordpress, create menu in wordpress, set up blog wordpress, wordpress blog tutorial for beginners

Id: HOe8HQLqX00

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021