Shella Gardezi Freelance

One of the biggest challenges I hear from business owners is that they need to contact a web developer to make modest changes like adding their holiday hours. The developer then charges them for an entire hour of work. 

Here are a few ideas for taking back control of your website. 

Use a Popular Content Management System

A content management system provides a front-end interface where you can easily add, delete and change content and make other simple edits. Some of the most popular are:

• WordPress

• Weebly

• Squarespace

• Wix

Most developers will recommend WordPress as this will give you the most flexibility. However, you should choose the free version (WordPress.org) and host it on the server of your choice. This will give you the most opportunity for customization and growth. For example, let’s say you started with an affordable $10 a month plan, but now you find that you have so much traffic and your business has grown so much that you need a more robust plan. 

You can easily migrate your site to a premium WordPress managed hosting server such as WP Engine. Not only will they make it easy to migrate but they will take care of security headaches and provide a faster loading site. This will benefit your SEO and help you retain more customers. 

Users

If your web developer has not created a user account for you, ask them to make you an Admin. You will receive a user name and password as well as the link to log in. This will usually be yourwebsite.com/WP-admin unless the developer has changed it for security purposes. (Use your domain name in place of yourwebsite.com.)

How to Change Text

In this blog post we will assume that we are using WordPress, but if you are using another content management system, log in and get familiar with the interface. 

Once you have logged in you will see a list of options alongside the left-hand side of your screen. The text you want to change is likely going to be on a post or page. Generally pages are for static pages like your about page or contact page. Posts are blog posts. (Many business owners do not even bother with blogging and just use pages.) If the content is not on a blog post, choose Pages and you will see a list of all the pages on your site. Another option is just to go to the page you want to edit and then click “Edit Page” in the top bar. This top bar is only visible when you are logged in to WordPress. 

Currently, most WordPress sites are using the block editor unless your developer has chosen to stick with the classic editor. Click on the block you want to edit and highlight the text you want to change or place your cursor where you want new text to appear. Text options similar to what you see in other text editors will appear. 

View more options by clicking the drop down menu.

What if you want to add a whole section to your page? Hover under the block above the section you want to add until you see a plus button. Click this button to add a block.  What if you want to change text but when you click on the block it is all code? This just means that the last time the developer was working on the section, they were doing it in HTML. On the top right switch back to visual editor.

Once you have made your changes, click the preview page to see how it looks. If you are happy with the changes, click “Save.” 

Changing the Footer

The footer is the portion of the text that is below the main body of the page. This section stays constant when you move from page to page. It may contain hours of operation, contact information and copyright information as well as anything else you want visitors to be able to see on every page. 

You might find this information under Customization. Click the Customization button and you will see an editor appear on the left side of the screen next to your web page. Click on Footer options to see what options are available in this editor. 

If you don’t see what you are looking for, your developer may have created a widget. Close the editor and go back to the main dashboard. Click on Widgets and and look for the section called Footer. This will have different blocks that have different content that you can edit. Often the content will be in code. If so, don’t panic. Just focus on the text between the tags. A tag is something that looks like this: <h2>. To end the tag, the coder adds a slash. </h2> This means that the code between the tags is a secondary headline. There are tags for any type of text as well as images and even spaces. 

If you don’t see what you want, you can add a widget from the list of widget types on the left. 

Full Site Editing

WordPress is truly the customizable content management system available. In Version 5.9, full site editing was added to the suite of options. In the past, your developer would have edited headers by creating a child theme and then adding code to your header file and customization to your style sheet. These pages would then need to be uploaded to your server. This could be a tedious process. 

Now, WordPress offers “full site editing” which gives you control over all aspects of your site, including the headers. The header is similar to the footer in that it stays the same on every page and blog post. It contains things like your logo and site name and your menu items. 

The theme of your site is the overall look and feel. Your developer would have chosen a theme before customising it. One of the most unique aspects of any theme is its header. The various options that you will be able to edit depend on the theme developer. Use the customization feature described earlier or, if your site allows it, use the full site editing feature. 

Use list view on the top left or edit directly in the interface, just as you would on a page. When you change the header it will update on all of your pages. 

Still confused? WordPress has been around for a long time and there are many simple tutorials to be found online. Ask Google and a solution will undoubtably come up as a video, forum post or blog post. 

Contact me to book a private website editing tutorial or with any other questions, you might have.