Help a wordpress idiot

[notthatamanda]

I wrote up a big page, but it's not showing up on my site. I can find it by searching. I must have set something wrong. I'd like it to appear under "Recent Posts" and I tried changing it to a posts page, but that didn't seem to do anything.

Can I copy it into a new post page?

Thanks, Amanda

[Bill Hiatt]

While it's possible to convert pages to posts with certain plugins, it's probably better to copy the material into a new post. I think the transfer might be the reason it's not showing up as you expect.

If you mean that you reset the page to be the posts page for the blog, that would probably have the result of making all the content disappear. That kind of page draws its content from the posts on your blog (like an index) not from the page itself. (With most themes, anything written on the posts page itself won't show.

If you want it to show under recent posts, take the original material and copy it into a new post. That should solve the problem.

[Bill Hiatt]

It sounds as if you might be confusing pages and posts in some way.

Pages are the basic infrastructure of your website. For example, I have an about-me page for my bio, I have a page that displays all my books, with links to previews of each one, I have a members-only page for email list subscribers, and so on. Pages are normally visible through your menu structure, but note that you usually need to add them to your menu manually. Normally, something people may refer to over time should be a page.

Posts are for announcements (like new releases or sales), giveaways, informational articles related to your writing or something else (I sometimes do book, video, and game reviews), and so on. They may be very important when first posted (hence the reason some WordPress sites use the blog posts page as their front page), but they tend to lose importance over time.

[notthatamanda]

I was definitely confused posts and pages, thanks for straightening me out.  I had to copy the page into a post and it seems okay and it is on my website now, where it will surely be seen by no one ever.    But thank you for all the info.  I am way too much of a scared-y cat to want to deal with plug ins.  If you want the pita bread recipe I'll PM it to you.  Thanks, Amanda

[Bill Hiatt]

Alas, I'm a complete loss in the kitchen, so a pita bread recipe wouldn't be much use in my hands. 

I'm glad to hear that you've gotten the issue resolved. Like everything, WordPress has a learning curve, but you'll probably get used to it faster than you think.

[notthatamanda]

Cooking has a learning curve too.