Pages

Pages are the screens of your website. Home, Contact, Services: each one is a page, and each one has a row here.

Go to Content, then Pages.

The list of your pages

Every row is one page on your website.

1. The title. Click it to open the page and edit it.

2. The view icon. Opens that page on your live site in a new tab.

3. The red trash icon. Sends the page to the Trash. Read the warning below first.

The Status column tells you what the public can see. Published means the page is live. Saving and publishing explains the rest.

Warning

Your website is built around the pages in this list. It needs them.

Take away the Home page, by using Unpublish Page or the red trash icon, and your front page stops showing your business. Visitors get a short setup message instead. The same goes for Contact, and for every other page in the list.

Leave these pages in place. To change a page, edit it. Do not remove it.

Inside a page

Click a title and the page opens. There are two boxes: Title at the top, and Content under it.

The Content box holds two kinds of thing: blocks, and plain text.

1. Title. The name of the page. It shows at the top of the browser tab.

2. The buttons. Bold, headings, links and more. They work on text you have selected.

3. A block. A ready made section, shown as a gray card with its name on it. A block builds a whole strip of your page: a big headline, your list of services, your photos. You do not type that layout yourself. You fill in a short form and the block does the rest.

4. Plain text. Words you type yourself, exactly as you type them.

Most pages are mostly blocks. Blocks you may see include:

• Basic Hero. The big headline and buttons at the top of a page.
• Story. A few paragraphs about you, next to a photo.
• Services. Cards for your services, taken from Content, Services.
• Testimonials. Customer quotes, taken from Content, Testimonials.
• Gallery. A grid of photos, taken from your albums.
• FAQ. Questions and answers that open and close.
• Pricing. A price card for each of your plans.
• Map. A map of where you are.

Some blocks pull their words from somewhere else in the panel. The Services block is one. To change a service, you edit it under Content, then Services, and every page that shows it updates.

Changing the words in a block

1. Click the block once. A blue line appears around it.
2. Click the pencil icon on the right of the card.
3. A form opens, holding the block’s words in boxes. Change what you need.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Publish to send the change to your website.

Adding a block

A new block lands wherever the cursor is, so put the cursor there first. To add one at the end of the page, click at the end of the last line and press Enter to open an empty line.

Type a slash, then a word. The list shrinks to what matches.

1. Type / on the empty line. A menu opens. It only opens on an empty line, so press Enter first if you are at the end of a sentence.
2. Type a word from the block name, such as story.
3. Click the block in the menu.

A form opens with the block’s fields.

Every block has its own form. This one is Story.

1. Headline. The heading for this part of the page.

2. Select media. Opens your photo library. Media walks through picking a photo.

3. Insert. Adds the block to the page. The form closes and the gray card appears.

Then click Publish.

Leave a field empty if you do not need it. The block simply leaves that bit out.

Moving a block

Click the block once. Six small dots appear to the left of the card. Hold the mouse button down on those dots, drag the card up or down, and let go.

The other blocks move out of the way. Click Publish when the order is right.

Removing a block

Warning

Removing a block takes that whole part of the page away, with all the words in it. Once you publish, visitors stop seeing it.

If you only want it gone for now, it is safer to copy the words into a note first.

Click the block once, then click the red trash icon on the right of the card. Click Publish to make the change live.

Putting two things side by side

Everything on a page runs full width by default, one thing under the next. Sometimes you want two things next to each other instead: a few paragraphs beside a photo, two short lists, your opening hours next to a map.

That takes three pieces, added in this order: Columns start, Column break, Columns end. Whatever you put between them ends up in the columns.

All three are in the menu together. Type /col and they come up.

1. Columns start. Opens the columns. What you add after it goes in the left one.

2. Column break. Ends the left column and starts the right one.

3. Columns end. Closes the columns. What comes after it runs full width again.

Here is the order you type them in:

1. Put the cursor on an empty line and type /col.
2. Click Columns start. Pick your settings, click Insert.
3. Type the words for the left column, or add a block for it.
4. Type /col again and click Column break.
5. Type the words for the right column.
6. Type /col once more and click Columns end.
7. Click Publish.

Your column settings

Both boxes already have a setting chosen. You can click Insert right away.

1. Split. How the width is shared. Even gives both columns the same width. Wider left gives the left one twice as much as the right. Wider right does the opposite.

2. Vertical alignment. Where the columns sit when one is shorter than the other. Top lines them up at the top. Centered floats the shorter one to the middle.

3. Insert. Adds it to the page.

Two more settings live on the other two pieces:

• Draw a line between the columns, on Column break, runs a thin dividing line down the middle.
• Extra space below, on Columns end, adds a gap under the whole thing before whatever comes next.

What it looks like while you are editing

In the editor it is a list. On your website it is two columns.

1. Columns start. A gray card, like any other block.

2. The left column. Your words, sitting between the first two cards.

3. Column break. The card that splits the two.

4. The right column. Your words, sitting between the break and the end.

5. Columns end. The card that closes the group.

Five things in a row, one under another. The editor does not show them side by side.

That is normal, and it is the one thing about columns worth getting used to. To see the real thing, click Publish, then click Live View. It opens the page on your website in a new tab.

The same page on the website.

On a phone

Two columns need width, and a phone has none to spare. So on a narrow screen they stack: the left column first, then the right one, each full width. The dividing line disappears. A tablet and a small laptop window do the same.

Nothing to set up, and nothing to fix. But it is worth knowing while you write. Anything that only makes sense read side by side, a before and after for instance, should say so in the words, because anyone on a phone will read it stacked.

If the columns look wrong

Important

Everything below is in the columns. You left out Columns end. Without it, the second column runs to the bottom of the page. Add Columns end where you want the columns to stop, and publish.

Nothing shows up at all. The three pieces are there, but empty. Empty columns are skipped, so the whole group disappears. Put your words or a block between the cards, then publish.

A gray card sits there doing nothing. A Column break or Columns end on its own, with no Columns start above it, is ignored. It shows in the editor and changes nothing on your website. Click it and use the red trash icon to tidy it away.

Headings, bold, and links

These work on plain text, not on blocks.

Select your words first, then click a button.

1. Bold. Select the words, click B.

2. Headings. Click on the line you want to be a heading, click H, then pick Heading 2. Use Heading 2 for the main parts of a page, and Heading 3 for smaller parts inside them.

3. Insert Image. Opens your photo library, and drops the photo you pick into the text. Media covers the picker.

4. Insert Link. Turns selected words into a link. See below.

To add a link:

1. Select the words you want people to click.
2. Click the link button.
3. Type the address in the box.
4. Click Apply.

For a page on your own website, type the part after your web address, starting with a slash: /contact, or /services. For anywhere else, type the whole address, starting with https://.

To take a link off, select the linked words, click the link button, leave the box empty, and click Apply.

Tip

Links are easy to get slightly wrong. After you publish, click Live View and click the link yourself. Ten seconds now saves a customer landing on nothing.

What Google shows

Scroll down the panel on the right to SEO. These fields do not change your page. They change how it looks in a search result.

Two boxes worth filling in, and one switch to leave alone.

1. SEO Title. The blue line people click in Google. Leave it empty and your page title is used, with your business name after it. Fill it in when you want different wording. Keep it short, around eight words.

2. Meta Description. The gray sentence under that blue line. Say what is on the page and why someone should click. The counter under the box stops at 160 characters, so write for that.

3. Hide from search engines. Leave this switch off. It exists for a page you want kept out of Google, which is almost never what a small business wants. If you think you need it, ask us first.

Adding a new page

Contact support

Your website has a set list of pages. Each one was built into the design and into your menu when we made the site.

Add New on this screen makes a new entry, but no new page appears on your website. Nothing breaks. It simply sits in the list doing nothing.

Email us instead and say what the page is for. We build the page, add it to your menu, and tell you when it is ready.

Email support@lookoutridgeit.com. Getting support says what to put in the message.

The menu across the top of your website is edited under Manage, then Menus.