Can't get home page to update (CMS)

  • NiallASD

    (@niallasd)


    13 years, 7 months ago

    Hi all,

    I’m a complete beginner when it comes to WordPress and CMS so forgive my naivety!

    I have a ready-made site (home grown!) that I want to equip for CMS to let a client easily update it. I downloaded WordPress after hearing great things about it and uploaded it to the server. Then, following a tutorial I set about creating a single editable page to test out.

    I created homer.php from index.html and applied the following code in the relevant places:

    <?php  /* Template Name: Homer
*/ ?>
    <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
			<div class="entry">
				<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page »</p>'); ?>

				<?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>

			</div>
		</div>
		<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
	<?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>

    I then went uploaded homer.php to wordpress/wp-content/themes/twentyten and went to Add New Page via WordPress, gave it the name Homer, type some random text into the body and chose Homer as a template. When I chose to preview it I saw the page aa intended however, index.html does not change at all.

    I’m sure I’m missing something obvious but once I crash through this initial barrier I’m confident WordPress will become second nature to me!

    Eager awaiting your much appreciated reply (and ham-fistedly introducing myself to the world of WordPress),

    Niall

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
  • Roy

    (@gangleri)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    Settings-> reading, choose that new page as index.

    Thread Starter NiallASD

    (@niallasd)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks Roy, but I forgot to say I also went to Settings->Reading and chose Homer as a static front page with no luck.

    Unless you meant something else in which case I don’t understand.

    Roy

    (@gangleri)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    No, that’s what I meant, but what is it that you want to do?
    It seems you’re more of a coder than I am, but the way I see it, you want a page to display posts (<div class="post"), but why exactly?

    Thread Starter NiallASD

    (@niallasd)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    I’ve always designed and maintained websites in the past and all updates have been done by me. For a new project I wanted to branch out into CMS, mainly because the site will be updated regularly and I can’t invest the time to do so myself.

    I created homer.php through following the above tutorial to create a test page so I could find out how to do so.

    Pretty much, I want to let the text on a page be easily edited by a client so that they can update a site instead of having to rely on me.

    I can’t figure out how to update text on index.html by entering it into homer.php.

    As I said I’m new to this whole area.

    Thread Starter NiallASD

    (@niallasd)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    As for the whole post thing, I just copied that code from page.php as the tutorial stated.

    Roy

    (@gangleri)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    I’m still in doubt. By default, you can make pages and posts. By default a page is for static content, such as ‘about us’, ‘contact’, ‘intro’ that sort of things. Posts are blog entries (or however you use them). You can set WP to display a page or the latest X posts (you can set the number).
    Also, a WP install can have an administrator and authors, contributors and some more roles. Depending on the role these authors or contributors can make posts, edit posts, make pages, edit pages and do some other things. When your index shows the latest posts, you authors can make a post that displays there. Alternally, you can have your authors write or edit pages that you can set as index.

    Knowing that, is it still necessary to try to do what you try to do?
    Btw, before ‘going live’ you can also use a maintenance mode plugin or so to hide the website until you are done.

    Thread Starter NiallASD

    (@niallasd)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    Blogs are irrelevant to this project (at the moment) so I have no need for posts.

    I was hoping WP could allow a client to make edits to their own site in the way a more robust tools such as Joomla or Drupal can. For instance, if a few lines on the About Us page needed to be amended they could make the changes by logging onto WP and changing the text, image or whatever needed to be changed. They could do this without having to rely on a knowledge of HTML, CSS etc.

    Is this possible?

    Thanks for the plugin, it will come in handy as I shouldn’t really leave an unfinished project open to the public.

    Roy

    (@gangleri)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    Yea sure. Just make your subscribers ‘author’ and make these authors authors of pages and I suppose they can only edit their own pages with the built-in WYSIWYG editor, just like you as admin.

    Thread Starter NiallASD

    (@niallasd)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    From Settings I changed New User Default Role to Author but I still can’t edit index.html through WP.

    I don’t have subscribers, I would give the login details to the client, they would log in and from there make whatever changes they need to…

    Roy

    (@gangleri)

    13 years, 7 months ago

    From Settings I changed New User Default Role to Author but I still can’t edit index.html through WP.

    These two things have nothing to do with eachother.
    Under settings->reading you can say if a certain page is shown as index or the latest posts. An author or yourself can make posts which show up on the index if you set it to display posts or edit the page that you set as index.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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