4. Home Page

OK! Let’s start getting into adding content!

We’ve set up a sample Home page for you to get started on. It has a specific template file with a Slideshow, and an about section. We’ll walk you through adding your own photos, and your about information.

1. In the Admin area, click on Pages in the left-side menu.
2. Scroll to the Home page. Click on that and you’ll see the edit screen.
   1. This may look a little different if you’re used to WordPress because we’ve added a few extra items:
      1. Slideshow Gallery
      2. About Section Title
      3. About Text
      4. About Photo
3. The Slideshow is where you’ll add the photos you want people to see on your main page. These obviously should be the best of the best.
   1. First, you’ll want to prepare your photos. The recommended specs are:
      1. 3000 pixels wide (for slideshows the photos you use should have the same proportions, or the slideshow will move up and down with different ratios).
      2. If you have JPEGMini, export your photos at a quality of 90% (9 if using Photoshop). Then run them through JPEGMini.
      3. If you don’t have JPEGMini, export at 80% (8 if using Photoshop).
   2. Now you’re ready to upload your images into the slideshow.
   3. To delete the existing sample photos, hover over each, and you’ll see a X appear in the upper corner. Click that to delete the image.
   4. To upload your images, there is a blue button labeled “Add to Gallery” at the bottom of the Slideshow frame. click that.
   5. You’ll see the option to use existing photos from the Media Library, or to upload new ones. Click Upload Files, and here you can click the button to navigate to them. Or you can drag and drop your images.
   6. Click Select in the lower right, and your photos are now set up in the Slideshow!
4. The next section is the About Section Title. This is a good spot to add your location so potential clients knw right away where you’re located.
   1. All you have to do is add your business name and area, in this field (ex: Bruce Wayne Photography – Serving Gotham and Hudson County). Don’t worry about getting too specific here with the different types of photography you do (wedding, portraiture, maternity, etc). This is a general welcoming page, and we’ll use the Services pages to focus our SEO efforts on. We’ll get to that in the next Lesson.
5. The next section is About Text this only needs to be a small paragraph to hook people into who you are, a little info about you and your company. There’s a whole About page where you can elaborate further.
6. About Photo is next. There’s a couple ways you can go about this.
   1. Use a strong headshot, one that you’re looking into the lens, making a strong connection with the viewer.
   2. Use a photo of you that shows you engaged in a passion (like photography, duh!), or other interests you have.
7. The final item to set is the Yoast SEO settings towards the bottom of the page. We use the Yoast SEO plugin here at Flaunt Sites, and we’ve gone through the process of making sure all the technical things are setup behind the scenes. But there are a couple things you’ll need to add on each Page and Blog Post you do on the site. Don’t worry though, it’s easy, and we’ll walk through the process right now (we’ll do this when we set up Services and Blog Posts too – so don’t worry if you forget).
   1. Scroll down to the Yoast SEO section.
   2. The only thing we need to edit here is the Snippet Preview. This is what Google shows to people when doing searches. It shows the page Title, URL and Description. We will edit these to get the best SEO keywords for this PAGE (Notice I said PAGE. Google returns single pages, not entire sites. So we’ll be focused on using one keyword per page).
   3. Click on the Edit Snippet button and a new section pops out.
   4. SEO Title corresponds to the Title Tag that displays in the browser tab, and is a very important signal to Google about the contents of the page. In this instance, you can reuse the About Section Title. It will likely be a good general title that includes your city/area. The SEO Title should be between 50 and 60 characters long. Long enough for the Orange bar to turn Green.
   5. For Slug, you won’t have to change anything on the Home page.
   6. Meta Description is a general description of your business. (Ex: Bruce Wayne Photography focuses on Weddings and Portrait photography. We’re located in Gotham at Wayne Manor. Let us photograph you with lots of bats!) Again, add enough text to turn the Orange bar, Green (somewhere around 140-15o characters is good).
   7. The next step is to add a unique photos for sharing on Facebook and Twitter. By default Facebook and Twitter will just grab any photo. But you can tell them which one to use when someone shares your URL. Since this page is the one you’ll share more than others, you may want to set up a unique photo with your logo and name to make it stand out.
   8. Click the Share icon in the Yoast SEO section.
      1. The first is Facebook. If you’re happy with using the same Title and Description, just scroll down to the Facebook Image field and upload your unique photo here.
      2. Repeat the same with the Twitter section (accessed by the Twitter bird tab).
8. OK, you’re ready to Update the page!
9. You can now view the page.
10. You can also test your photos on Facebook & Twitter.