Think of WordPress as a refrigerator door waiting to be covered in magnets. You’re going to cover it in several magnets such as but not limited to:
- header.php (logo and navigation menu would go here)
- index.php (main content area)
- footer (copyright, social media links, etc.)
- a style magnet (style.css)
That refrigerator door (WordPress) is going to keep all of these together in close proximity.
Unlike building a website without a content management system, you don’t have to worry about repeating yourself when you make a change to a specific page. Everything is dynamic, and linked together so when you change something in the footer, it will change it on every page you’ve made saving you tons of time.
Now most people know WordPress just as a blogging tool, which it is and does very well, but it can also create websites that don’t incldue a blog. Instead of using blog posts to generate content, you can use pages — another post type WordPress offers. A page is just like a blank html file so there are no divs being created like you seem to think.
Keep playing around with it and you’ll soon see what I mean. There is an options panel on the dashboard that lets you set the homepage to a static page instead of your blog roll.
Hope that helps clear things up a bit, but like I said, mess around with it. If you have any more questions let me know.
Thank you for your answers. I am getting the gist of the structure, and I understand the static front page idea, and creating individual pages for each page in the site. Where do posts come in to all this? Are they a part of a CMS structure? If i would normally create a framework of divs for say a main content with two columns and three boxes underneath with other info to click to other pages, how would I structure that in my static front page?
Sorry for the ignorance, I just can’t seem to get over this hump.
very grateful to your replies,
goldie
Where do posts come in to all this? Are they a part of a CMS structure?
On the dashboard you’re given multiple ways to go about sharing and posting content. I italicized posting because WordPress uses that word in a few ways. A blog post is a post, but so is a page. You can even create your own post type if you need to. Ex: a testimonials post type. Blog posts use their own template (usually index.php is where the blog roll is stored) and are called through a while loop.
If i would normally create a framework of divs for say a main content with two columns and three boxes underneath with other info to click to other pages, how would I structure that in my static front page?
Page templates. When you create a new page, you can select which page template you want to use from a drop-down menu. There is but one, and that is the default page template. You have to create your own page templates to structure the layout with divs.
Common page templates are ‘One column with sidebar’, ‘Full-Width’, ‘2 column layout’, etc.
