Editing/Creating your “About” page.
Yes – this needs to be a PAGE and not a Post. It won’t change regularly and will always be relevant.
Why is it called About?
The purpose of the About Page is to answer the question, “What gives you the right to tell me?” There are many ways to say this, and answer this question, so let’s make it a gentle request to create trust. “I have the right to tell you these things because I’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and have experience to prove it.”
There are two basic purposes to an About on your site.
- What is the site about? Describe the purpose, mission, and goals of the site. Why is it here, how will it help, what does it have to offer.
- Who is behind this site? Who is the author? Who is the owner? Contributors? Who are the people behind the curtain of this site and what gives them the expertise to share and publish this information? In other words, who do you think you are that you can tell me this?
It is becoming a standard to call this Page “About” not “About us,” “About the Company,” “About me,” and other variations. More and more people are typing in about at the end of a site address that they think is good to find out who is behind the site, and if it turns up a page-not-found, that’s not a good first introduction.
Some sites call the About “Bio.” While this works on some author and personal/professional individual sites, many are switching away from it as that highlights only the person not the purpose of the site in general. All websites serve a purpose, and people want to know what that is.
If you have an About Page called something other than About, to change the Page Title:
- Edit the Page
- Change the Page Title in the Page Title field
- Edit the Page Slug, the address of the Page under the Page Title field, to be “about”
- Update the Page.
- If you have links or menu items for that Page, these will need to be updated
What is Found on an About Page?
What you put on the About Page must support the answers to the two questions of what the site is about and who is behind it, justifying its existence. Typically this includes:
- Images of the author
- Logos and branding
- Images of products and services
- Links to related content such as other sites by the same author/company, or to related resources
Information on how to contact the author is not needed here, but a link to the Contact Page will be later. That’s a future task.
Your Task…
Your task for the About Page is to edit it and add your information.
To edit the About Page:
- From the Administration Screens, go to Pages > All Pages
- Hover your mouse over the Page titled About
- Click the Edit link
- The resulting screen is called Edit Page
- Edit the content within the Page content area
- To preview, click Update, when the page reloads, click Preview
- A new tab with the front end view of your Page will appear in the browser tab row. Click the tab to view it.
- If there are changes to be made, leave that tab open and switch back to the edit tab in your browser and make the changes. Update the page and switch back to the other tab and reload the web page to see the changes.
- When you are finished, click Update and leave the Edit Page screen