Hi. I am tasked with creating a very simple wordpress page. Simple, but specific. Putting up an example page with some theme won’t do it. This is my first time working with WP, and I am confused by what I perceive to be some oddities of this system. All video tutorials or blog posts pretty much do the same thing, and nobody goes into these intangibles.
There is this Gutenberg page builder, but still WP also insists that I use some theme. Why? I could and want to create my page from scratch with this tool, so why the theme? And if I do use the theme and end up repurposing a nav bar into what I need it to be, sooner or later I am going to create some weird Frankensteinian creation that’s neither here nor there. Is this how people use themes? What am I missing?
Whenever I create a new page, it boldly asks for a title to that page. But I don’t want a title page, and I don’t care about SEO. Is it not odd that a software which can supposedly build almost any website treats any new site as a blog post? What am I missing?
I ended up creating a navbar with a logo, and consequently that navbar and logo were very hard to get rid of again. Like some sort of parasite, they invaded every part of my page and appeared in places I did not expect to find them. It is easy to assume that WP saved this navbar as some object to be used repeatedly, but then I could not find a menu where all such items would be listed. I don’t get the design philosophy behind this piece of software.
I am not a stranger to code, just to WordPress. A lot of assumptions seem to be made about how someone would use it, and I feel like an alien resembling a cuttlefish that is now supposed to drive a Ford made for humans. The resources that I do find – and I might be bad at finding them – all seem to be aimed at people who need to be told what button to push in order to install a plugin. But my confusion goes much deeper, so if anyone has some pointers or resources to share to help me get into the mindset, that would be appreciated.
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Look at the Elementor Hello theme with the Elementor page builder. Maybe what you need.
Everything you mentioned comes from the Theme system that WordPress is based on.
Basically, a Theme will define your templates, your styles and most of your website’s features. Your site has to have a Theme, either a custom one or a third-party one.
[You can use the official WordPress’ Codex to learn more about Themes.](https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development)
Using a third-party Theme is the “default” route advised by WordPress’ logic (hence the pre-installed official Themes on your Worpdress). You can also find and install Themes (some are free, some are premium) that find your esthetic needs so you don’t have to style it yourself. Using a third-party Theme would lead you to more tweaking than coding because, even if WordPress’ creators and community give guidelines on Themes development, each Theme could come with its own logic.
Meaning that, like it happened to you, when you start with a fresh and unknown Theme, you’ll have to wander around the settings to find where every options is located (most Themes come with a documentation to help you). Everything should me made so you won’t have to code to use and customize (lightly) the premade templates.
You still can create your own [page template](https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/template-files-section/page-template-files/) where you define everything but you’ll eventually have to override the [Theme’s stylesheet](https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/basics/main-stylesheet-style-css/) to make it fit your needs.
You can learn the difference between an Article and a Page here :
[https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/create-pages/](https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/create-pages/)
You may read here and there the word Post for blog Articles, I don’t really like this naming because the Post is the default object of WordPress’ content and both Articles and Pages are a specific type of Post that are available by default on a fresh installation but you can [create your own Custom Post Type](https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/post-types/registering-custom-post-types/) for specific needs.
It will allow you to use [the WP_Query class](https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_query/) to query the posts needed on your different templates and use this query inside [The Loop](https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/basics/the-loop/). You probably won’t need to go this far into WordPress development but it can explain things on “why is it made this way”.
Check out WP101 they offer some beginner-friendly WordPress courses.
Hi.
Think of Gutenberg like of an engine. It gives you those blocks and fields in the backend but you need to make them look nice on the frontend by using a theme. This allows you to keep the content and swap the theme at any point in the future keeping your data intact (if you do it right).
Each page or post needs title to generate a slug for it so it could be referenced and visited. You don’t need to use it, if you want you can disable the title entirely and generate the slug yourself.
How have you created it? Usually page header and navigation are part of the template in your theme files. There you can dictate where it should show based on the page template for example.
If you know how to code and want to have a full control over your WordPress page start here: https://underscores.me
For documentation and WP related questions use https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
WordPress does take a while to learn & understand …
the youtube videos that say you can build a site in 10 minutes are misleading …
while it’s possible to do a new installation in minutes … a noob still won’t know/understand how to work with the editor/customizer/settings, etc. to any real extent.
You’ve said it all from your first four words. You need to understand how WordPress works, the different ways sites can be built, structure, layout, explore how different themes work, it will give you a general idea of WordPress ecosystem. Also be aware of the pros and cons on the different ways to build a site, custom build, page builders, classic themes, block based themes, FSE themes
I feel your pain, but I’ve used WordPress a few times and just started up a new site. If you’re at WordPress kindergarten I’m probably at grade 3.
Here’s my take:
It’s a giant pain.
You’re right it’s blog focused and tries to push you that way.
Core WordPress with the default theme is one thing.
Add elementor or Gutenberg or the oceanwp theme and you’ve bolted features on top of core WordPress, and some large percentage of those bolt on features will replicate core WordPress features. It’s a software Rube Goldberg machine.
Those new features will either work on the same original settings badly or replace them without hiding the core way of doing things. You end up down twisty paths trying to change a font color and it works or doesn’t, but if you don’t take careful notes you’ll never find that setting again, because you found the setting but it’s the old way that no longer works but you can’t tell.
WordPress can make great looking sites and themes help, but as the admin, may the odds be ever in your favour..
Using the Elementor pagebuilder and the Hello theme (no constraints it’s an empty shell) has worked great for me. Elementor basic is free. But their help doesn’t go very far (am being polite). I found the key to using Elementor is their page navigator, it displays a hierarchy of the components in the page you’re working on. If you need help, search YouTube and avoid Elementor’s marketing vids.
K.I.S.S principle applies here.
You are not qualified.
Hire a professional.