Blogging Tips on Pages, Menus, & Social Media Links (with Screenshots & Step-By-Step Instructions)

Hi, friends. Thank you to my readers for all your support! I’ve recently passed 400 followers, and I couldn’t have done that without you. I hope I continue coming up with posts that keep your interest.

When I get new followers, I visit their websites to see if I’d like to follow their blogs. This post is born from issues I’ve noticed time and time again on different websites. Without further ado…

Pages

#1: Check Screenshot #5 to see how a page can have one title at the top but have a different title in the menu. For example, my homepage is titled “Dear Readers:” but its menu tab is called “Home.” My bio page is called “About” in the menu, but its title on the page is “About Me.”

Site pages are permanent pages, like “About” or “Contact.” The possibilities for site pages are endless and individualized to the website’s purpose. If you are a writer, perhaps you have site pages like “Books” and “Poetry;” if you are a chef, “Recipes;” if you a mental illness advocate, “Resources;” the list goes on forever.

Many themes display certain site pages automatically, so you must edit or delete them. Some websites I’ve seen recently had a default “About” page, but the blogger had not edited the page; when I click on an automatic “About” page, it reads, “This is an example of an about page. Unlike posts, pages are better suited for more timeless content that you want to be easily accessible, like your About or Contact information. Click the Edit link to make changes to this page or add another page.” Your readers want to know more about you! Fill out your “About” page.

Menus

Site pages you create don’t automatically show up on your website. In this section, I want to make you aware that A. you can create collapsible menus and B. you can have multiple menus, such as the main menu and the social media menu. I’ll post some screenshots below to help clarify everything.

#2: To make a collapsible menu, drag and drop the boxes with the page names into the arrangement you want. In this example, About, Rates, and Blog are indented under Home. Scroll down to see more screenshots about menus.

A. Screenshot #2 and its caption explain this. Let’s imagine that I’m a novelist with several books in a few different genres. Maybe I’d like to have a page for each different book with descriptions, pictures, links to buy, etc. I’d put the genres across the top and the books in each genre in collapsible menus that appear when hovering your mouse over the genre.

B. I’ve noticed that the social media icons on some websites don’t work; I click the Facebook icon expecting to arrive at their Facebook page, but because they haven’t filled in their social media accounts, I just arrive at facebook.com. Again, many themes set things up automatically, so you need to fix or delete those things. The easiest solution to this issue is taking the social media menu off your website. I personally would rather use widgets for my social media accounts. The other solution, of course, is to fill in your social media accounts and get those icons operating correctly! (Screenshot #6 & #7)

#3: This is the menu that appears when I click “Customize” next to the theme explorer. #4-7 pertain to “Menus.” Skip to #8 to see about “Widgets.”

#4: This is the next menu that appears when I click “Menus.”

#5: This is what happens when I click “Primary” under “Menus.” In the first box, the main menu options for my site are listed. Notice in the box underneath that I have this menu set as “Main Navigation.” If you want the menu tab for a page or post to say something different from its title (my homepage is titled “Dear Readers:” but the menu tab reads “Home”), change the “Navigation Label” when you add the item to a menu.

#6: This is what happens when I click “Social Media” under “Menus.” Notice that I do not have a location set for this menu, so it doesn’t appear on my site.

#7: When I set the location for this menu as “Social Menu,” the icons appear in the upper right corner. Websites with icons that don’t work have a theme where the “Social Menu” is automatically displayed. You need to either fill in the options with your social media accounts or uncheck the box next to “Social Menu.”

#8: When I click “Widgets” on the main customize menu, the options are “Sidebar” and “Footer.” When I click “Sidebar,” this menu with my sidebar widgets appears. You can see that the Facebook plug is one of my widgets, and it appears on the right side. Social media widgets use mini display boxes, while the “Social Menu” just shows the icons.

Thanks for reading! Hope it helped! I tried to be as clear as possible, but it’s hard to show all these steps. Let me know if you would watch YouTube videos where I walk through processes like these.