Welcome to the second step in our free professional learning series on class and student blogging!

The tasks can be completed at your own pace and in any order!

The aim of this step is to:

  1. Help you understand how pages are used on class blogs
  2. Set up an About page, Guidelines page, and Contact page on your class blog.

Introduction to pages

Pages on blogs are normally used for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently.

The main things to remember are:

  1. Pages are best suited for information you rarely update such as your About, Contact, and Blogging Guidelines pages.
  2. Situations where you want students to discuss a question or topic are better suited to publish as a post and not a page.
  3. Assignment and homework information is normally best published as posts and not on a page.
  4. Too many pages can make information harder to manage and find.

If you look closely at a page you will see it is normally made up of:

  1. Page title – This tells the reader what the page is about. A page title will often be fairly short as they won’t display properly on your blog otherwise.
  2. Your page content – This is information you want to share on the page. Like with posts, the content could be a mixture of text, links, images, videos etc.
  3. Comments – Most themes support comments at the bottom of the page.  This allows your readers to add a comment to your page.  Comments are disabled on pages by default and can be enabled.

Anatomy of a page

Watch the following video to learn more about the difference between pages and posts.

Here’s a quick visual summary of the differences. We also have a post on The Edublogger that explains the differences between posts and pages further.

Posts vs Pages

Why you need an About page

You never know how someone might find your blog — Google search, Twitter, Facebook, or a link from somewhere else.

One of the first things a new visitor looks for is your ‘About’ page.

The reasons for having an About page on a class blog include:

  1. To provide information for your students, parents, and families about the purpose of your class blog and how to use it.
  2. To help your class connect with other classes in other locations and countries.

Here are some ideas on the type of information you might include on your About page:

For students and parents To connect with other classes
  • What is a blog?
  • Reasons why you use a class blog
  • About the teacher(s)
  • How to connect with the blog such as subscribe to the blog, comment on posts, guidelines for writing appropriate comments
  • Teacher(s) contact details
  • Country, state, and/or town your class is located
  • Grade level, subject, and age of students
  • The types of connections your class is interested in such as becoming blogging buddies, engaging in global projects
  • Type and size of school
  • Class or teacher contact details

Examples of About pages on Class blogs

Check out the following examples to see how About pages are used on Class blogs:

  1. Mr. Baldock’s Class (Grade 3)
  2. Present with Ms. B’s Bloggers (Grade 4) – About us, About our blog, What is a blog? and About Ms. B
  3. Mrs. McKelvey’s Bloggin’ Frogs (Grade 4)
  4. Huzzah (Grade 6/7)
  5. Ms. Eichner’s 7th Grade Social Studies

Create your About page

Sample PageAll newly created blogs come with a ‘Sample page‘ created.

All you need to do is edit the ‘Sample page’ to change it into your About page

Here’s how you create your About page:

1.  Go to Pages > All Pages.

All pages

2.  Hover your mouse over the Sample Page title to bring up the action menus.

3.  Now click on Edit.

Click Edit

4.  Change the title of your page from Sample Page to About page.

5.  Edit the permalink to change it to about.

It should now look like this!

Edit title

6.  Now just add your about information and when finished click Update.

Add your information

Visual editor overview

The area where you write your pages and posts is by default in Visual Editing mode which uses WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option for formatting.

It works similar to any word processing software.

Simply write your post, highlight any text you want to format, and then click the appropriate button on the toolbar to add formatting such as bold, italics, or a numbered list.

The Toolbar Toggle icon is used to view the advanced formatting options in the second row including heading styles, underlining, font color, custom characters, undo, redo.

You switch between Visual Editing mode and HTML editing mode by clicking on the Visual or Text tab.  Text or HTML editing mode is not something beginner bloggers need to worry about.

Visual Editor

Below is a quick video tutorial on the visual editor:

Why have blogging guidelines?

There are two key reasons why guidelines are an essential part of your blog:

  1. Internet safety
  2. Ensuring high standards of writing

These apply to students, parents, and all of your blog visitors.

Blogging is an ideal way to teach about internet safety in an authentic and ongoing way.  But just because students are blogging and using online tools, doesn’t mean they are automatically learning about appropriate online behaviors.  This needs to be modeled, taught, and reinforced.

Read more about using blogging to teach about digital citizenship.

When coming up with your blog guidelines, you will need to consider

  • The types of identifying information that is appropriate in posts and/or comments. Consider what your rules will be about the use of last names, images, and personal information.
  • What you should and shouldn’t write in posts and comments.

Some guidelines may be specific to your school and your school policies. Be sure to check your school’s policies and make sure they are included — especially when it comes to using student names and photos on a public blog.

Creating your blogging rules and guidelines is something you can do yourself or as a whole class activity. Getting students to be part of a collaborative discussion on guidelines gives students more ownership and a deeper understanding.

Examples of blogging guidelines

Check out the blogging and comments guidelines on the following class blogs for ideas.

Remember: copying and pasting someone else’s work is not okay.  If you adapt your blogging guidelines from someone else’s you should mention that and link to their site.

  1. Huzzah is a grade 6/7 class from Canada
  2. Kathleen Morris’ created these guidelines for her primary Arts classes 
  3. Dominic Salvucci has set up blogging guidelines for his high school seniors
  4. SCHS Open Studio is a year 9-12 Ceramics Class in Florida
  5. Miss Sporn’s Class is a group of year 2 students from South Australia
  6. The Avery Bunch is a technology class in Massachusetts
  7. Kim Cofino created these guidelines for classes when teaching in Bangkok
  8. Mrs. McNally’s Mumblings is a high school English class

Create your blogging guideline page

Once you’ve decided what you want to include in your rules and guidelines it is now just a case of publishing them on your blog as follows:

1.  Go to Pages > Add New.

Add New

2.  Now just give your page a title, add your content and click Publish.

Add new page

Making contact easy

Those that visit your blog might also have a need to contact you.  This makes it easier for parents to contact you and for other classes to connect with you.

Many teachers choose to create an entirely separate “Contact” page to go with the “About” page.

Here are some tips to consider:

  • It’s best not to put your email address on your blog. A contact form (using a contact or form plugin) is better as it protects your email address from spammers.
  • If you do want to provide your email, use text and something like support (at) edublogs (dot) org or an image of your email address to make it hard for spammers to pull your email address.  Here’s an email icon generator you can use.
  • Personal phone numbers are probably not something you want to share either — but sharing a school phone number might be appropriate for some people.

Other things to share might include Facebook, Twitter, or other social media profile information.  Some of these are also shared by adding widgets to your class blog.  We’ll show you how this is done later in this series.

Create your contact page with a contact form

Once you’ve decided what you want to include on your contact page, and if you want to use a contact form, it is just a case of creating a contact page and activating the Formidable Pro plugin.

  • Note: To add a contact form you would need a pro subscription. as the Formidable Pro plugin is available for pro blogs only. 
  • Here’s an example of what the Formidable Pro plugin contact form looks like on Unlocking the Universe.

Here’s how to create a contact page using the Formidable Pro plugin

Note: The Formidable Pro plugin is available for pro blogs only. 

1.  Go to Plugins > All

All Plugins

2.  Activate the Formidable Pro plugin.

3.  Go to Formidable > Forms.

Forms

4.  Click on Add New

Click on Add New

5.  Select Contact Us and then Create.

Select Contact US

6.  Hover your mouse over the Captcha field, now click  Trash to delete it.

Delete captcha

7.  Now just edit the contact form to customize it to your needs.

  • The * next to a field means this is required information to submit the form.
  • Clicking on the * changes it to not required
  • Clicking on the Title allows you to edit the name.

Form

7.  You can update the email address by clicking on Settings > Emails.

Change email

8.  Once you’ve made all changes click Update.

9.  Now go back to Formidable > Forms and grab your Contact Us shortcode.

Copy shortcode

10.  Go to Pages > Add New.

Add New

11.  Add a page title, your content, the Contact Us shortcode and click Publish.

Add the shortcode

Back to Top

Other types of pages

There are lots of different types of pages you can add to class blogs.

The main things to remember are:

  1. Pages are best suited for information you rarely update such as your About, Contact, and Blogging Guidelines pages.
  2. Situations where you want students to discuss a question or topic are better suited to publish as a post and not a page.
  3. Assignment and homework information is normally best published as posts and not on a page.
  4. Too many pages can make information harder to manage and find.

We’ll show you how to use posts in Step 3 of our class and student blogging series.

Examples of other types of pages

Setting up page links

Some themes automatically add a link to pages in their top navigation while on other themes you need to add a pages widget or set up a custom menu to add the page links.

Personally, I prefer to set up my top navigation using a custom menu as links in the top navigation are easier for readers and it allows you to customize the links considerably more.

Custom menu example

You’ll find step by step instructions for setting up custom menus here.

Frequently Asked Pages Questions

These are some of questions around pages that we’re commonly asked.

1.  How do you enable comments on pages?

Most Edublogs themes support comments on pages and by default comments are disabled on pages.

You can enable comments on pages using Quick Edit as follows:

1. Go to Pages > All Pages

All pages

2. Locate the post or page you want to enable comments on

3. Hover over its title to bring up its action menu and then click on Quick Edit.

Click on Quick Edit

4. Select ‘Allow Comments’ and then click on Update.

Allow Comments

2.  Why won’t comments display on pages?

Most of our themes support comments on pages however there are a few themes that don’t.

If the theme you are using doesn’t support comments on pages, and you would like this feature, then you will need to use an alternative theme.

3.  What does the Nothing Found message on my front page mean?

By default, the front page of your blog is set to display your latest posts.

If you delete the default “Hello World’ post before you publish a new post then your front page will display ‘Nothing Found’, ’404 – Not Found Error’ or something similar depending on the theme you are using.

This message is displayed because there is nothing to display on your front page.

Not found message

You’ll find step by step instructions on how to fix a Not Found message here.

3.  Is it possible to publish posts to different pages on my blog?

We’re often asked if it is possible to add posts to other pages, rather than just the front page of the blog.  This is commonly asked by educators who want to use one blog for multiple classes or subjects – check out Mr. Cartlidge’s Science Blog to see how it works.

And yes you can!  But it does involve slightly advanced blogging skills.  You’ll find step by step instructions for sending posts to different pages here.

Your task

Blogging is about sharing, collaborating, and learning from each other. Here’s your chance to ask a question, comment, and get involved!

Complete the following tasks:

  1. Create an About Page, How to Comment page, Blogging Guidelines page, or Contact page and then leave a link to your new page so we can have a look at how you went.  Remember to refer to the examples we’ve provided for ideas!
  2. Read through the most recent comments in reply to this post and leave a response to another person’s comment.

Remember to leave a link to your blog in your comment so we can have a look at your new blog!

650 thoughts on “Step 2: Set Up Pages

    1. Hello, Mrs. Stults! Oh, how I miss 8th grade science, it was one of my favorite classes, in middle school. I also love that you are having your students engage in blogging for 20% of their semester. I hope all goes well and best of luck to you and your students. I loved your blog and its set up by the way.

    1. Mrs. Lacy, I love the idea of an online art gallery! How wonderful to share student artwork virtually in the age of a pandemic!

    1. I found your pages and like your set up! Easy to understand and navigate. Thank you for the example!

  1. Hi! Just to clarify, the “Contact Form” plugin option described on this page in the instructions is not free? The instructions only specify that the Formidable Pro plugin comes with a Pro subscription.

    1. Hi there, thanks for pointing this out! We only have the Formidable Pro plugin available for pro subscriptions, I have amended the tutorial to correctly reflect this. Thanks again!

    1. Hi there! Thanks for commenting, we have also received your support mail regarding a contact page plugin. This feature is only available with a Pro subscription of Edublogs. Thanks!

    2. That is very unfortunate that we are unable to complete this with a free account. Especially when you’re completing this for your undergraduate course.

    1. ah interesting! How did you manage, that the name of your blog doesn´t contain the word edublog?

      1. Thank you for commenting and for using Edublogs! We do allow custom domain mapping with Edublogs Pro making mydomain.com possible.

  2. Hello Bloggers,
    I posted a page with my Blogging Guidelines. I was hesitant to post because as I go through the course I’m changing my mind about how I want to do things. I guess this truly is a work in process. So I’m posting my guidelines…but not sure if I will be leaving them as is or changing them.
    https://vblasberg.edublogs.org/blogging-guidelines/

    1. Hi Valerie, thank you for sharing your post on blogging guidelines, I think those are very valid points you made.

    2. The great thing is that you can always change and edit your guidelines as this evolves and you see how it actually works.

  3. Hello All, my blog page has an about me, Blog Guidelines, and Contact page. Please click the link below to navigate through my blog and find all the essential tools.

    Link-http://kennedyclassadventures.edublogs.org/about/
    Link-http://kennedyclassadventures.edublogs.org/blogging-guidelines/
    Link-http://kennedyclassadventures.edublogs.org/contact-me/

    1. Good Job Morgan, I’m glad you are doing well with your blog and have a great about me section and comment section.

      Way to go!

    2. I really enjoy both your about me page and contact page! Keep up the great work, can’t wait to see more!!

  4. Thanks for the really clear instructions. Here’s my ‘About’ page. I am hoping to connect with other classes of similar students. I think the ages of my students vs their writing ability may be a challenge, but I’m excited about making it work.
    http://jemimat.edublogs.org/about/

    1. Hi,
      I like your blog because I have never been to a school that has a hospitality class. Also, I love your BitMoji!

    1. Well done, Cynthia!

      That will be really helpful for your community.

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager

    1. Hi Mrs. Batten,

      That’s great to see you’ve added your blogging rubric to the page. Unfortunately, it’s too small to see. Maybe you can click on the image and edit it so it’s larger? You can also click on the image and press edit and then ‘link to’ media file.

      Hope that helps!

      Kathleen
      Edublogs Community Manager

    1. Hi Mrs Dewar,

      I checked out your classroom blog and it looks great. Really love how you have all the students blog links down the side as a blog roll. Perhaps you might like to add some kind of picture to your about page to enhance it? Just a suggestion. I still have a lot of work to do on my classroom blog but for now, i just added a bitmoji. More images to come soon on my about page too. Good luck with your class blog project!

  5. OK, so I’m getting the hang of this! I just learned how to put a post as a sub category under a page in my menu so I’m really pumped! Here is my blog: http://mimillercvsu.edublogs.org/. I’ve created 4 pages – one for each of my 4 main classes. I’ll add my alternative class next. Each has my course syllabus with links to proficiency stuff for our district. I even added a post under one page. There’s a welcome page, as well!

  6. I worked on my About Me page on my blog. Here is the link to the page: http://laurasnowed.edublogs.org/about/

    I sure have a long way to go, as I am not completely pleased with my format, and working my overall theme. I am excited for this journey, although I am launching this pretty secretly…for now 🙂

    1. I love your blog idea, Laura. I’m also a Special Ed teacher and I’ll be contacting you on your blog to see if there are any opportunities to connect your students with mine.

    2. Hi laurasnowed,
      I think you did a really nice job on your “About Me” page. What I’m most curious about is the name of your blog! Care to share the background story?

    1. I took a look at your blog, and its looking good! I am proud of you for taking up this challenge and furthering your learning! I look forward to checking in with your page throughout the school year!

  7. I had planned to create two class blogs because I will be teaching two different ELA classes, but now that I learned about how to post to different pages (like the science blog), I can do just one blog…this is going to save me so much time!

    1. YES!!! The question I still have is: can I link student blogs to pages rather than the entire blog? (for better organization and management). Let me know if you figure that out!

  8. The about page for students could be tricky. I don’t want them to overshare but yet I want the blog to be their voice. It will be a delicate balance for sure.

    1. I really like your blog! I like how you included a picture of Mount Everest (I believe). I also liked how you incorporated inspirational quotes in your blog as well. Nicely done!

    2. WOW! You did a really good job! I LOVE it. You helped me scale back, I was going to write it for the parents, the students, visitors, BUT after seeing yours- I like that it is to the students. It’s personable and shows that you get to know your students.

    1. Good luck setting up your pages. They can certainly be handy for class materials and resources!

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager
      @kathleen_morris

  9. I set up several pages as I went along — an about page for the class and an about page for me, and a contact page. I am working on the blogging guidelines page, but want to think more about what I want to tell my students before I add that page. There have been a lot of good examples of that, especially https://mcnallymumblings.edublogs.org/student-blog-guidelines/ — I liked how that page was done.
    The links to my pages are: http://tigerspride.edublogs.org/about-ms-c/
    http://tigerspride.edublogs.org/about-tigers-pride/
    http://tigerspride.edublogs.org/contact-us/

    1. Hi there,

      I just wanted to check if you know that your blog is password protected so others won’t be able to view it. Totally fine if this is your intention but sometimes people password protect their blog without realising. Let’s know if you need any help.
      Thanks!

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager
      @kathleen_morris

    1. I love the way you made your About page so clear. I read a lot of About pages and sometimes I have to guess what the country or age group is. Or who the teacher is. So, thank you!

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager
      @kathleen_morris

    2. I really like your about page. It is informative and upbeat … it sounds like a fun class. You have also done a lot — I was looking at your menu of pages on the right, there is a lot going on.
      Thank you for sharing your pages.

    3. I really like your pages, they are clear and fun to read. I image your students have a lot of fun in class.
      Mrs. Crowningshield

  10. So I was browsing through http://kcross34.edublogs.org and found their hour-of-code resources section. I was thinking about creating a page for students to compile and publish different websites with information resources on their topics! I have created an About us page so the students can upload a photo and a short self description. Still trying to figure out some stuff about customizing the page.
    https://teed3018.edublogs.org

    1. That’s a good idea! Another idea you might want to look at is Wakelet. It’s a popular way to curate content and you can embed a Wakelet collection into a blog post or page. You can find out more about it here.

      By the way, I love your student author posters! How did they make them?

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager
      @kathleen_morris

  11. I now have a “interesting links” page and a page about digital-citizenship. I didn’t know that pages are static. I’m thinking that when my students publish their works, they need to do that in their feed so that others can comment on them. Since we’re doing that this Thursday, that was very helpful info. What about if they used a page as a rough-draft? I think that might be helpful. I’m already doing it for the 22ShortStories contest.

    1. Hi there,
      I haven’t heard of people using pages for rough drafts but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. It might work well! If you do it that way, you might want to turn comments on on pages. By default, comments are not allowed on pages as most people prefer it that way (that was a change with WordPress a few years back I believe).
      If you want to turn comments on pages, you’ll find the instructions here.
      Good luck!

    1. Thank you for sharing your contact page. Did you have to use code to make the contact form work like that? It is an interesting look and fits with the rest of your site.
      It looks like you are getting a lot out of your blog already. Your page design is clear and clean and I see there are a lot of assignment posts.

  12. Omg..I can’t believe I have my blog looking awesome with two pages and some posts set up to use for my students
    . Thank you edublogs

    1. I find structure of your about page really good but was bit unmotivated to read paragraph type text.. 😊😊.. but I guess that’s me. Not a fan of big texts special in biographies

    2. I like your about page …. it is making me rethink using two about pages on my class site. I could have combined the About Us and About Me pages into one. I may make that change.
      Thank you for sharing.

  13. Here are the pages I created:
    About
    http://ainhoacsdma.edublogs.org/acerca-de-este-blog/
    Contact
    http://ainhoacsdma.edublogs.org/contacto/

    And two more pages with practical information about the course for my students

    http://ainhoacsdma.edublogs.org/como-utilizar-el-edublog/
    http://ainhoacsdma.edublogs.org/modelo-profesional/

    It was very usefull to check this blog
    Mrs. McKelvey’s Bloggin’ Frogs (Grade 4)

    And all the information about the blogging guidelines
    Thank you for this course, I am learning a lot

    1. Your blog is looking great and I’m sure the pages will be really helpful for your students. Keep it up!

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager
      @kathleen_morris

    1. THis is looking great! I love the way you make it clear in the tagline and on the sidebar that the pupils run the blog. Sometimes I look at blogs and it seems like it might be student run but it’s hard to tell how it works. I bet your students will get lots of ideas from the St Charles Borromeo blog. I just love their work!

      Kathleen Morris
      Edublogs Community Manager
      @kathleen_morris

    2. I like you pages and your comment “beginning to grow arms and legs at last.” That is exactly what I am feeling about my blog, though I just got started. It is amazing to see it take shape, not just as a presence, but as a learning tool. I am excited about being on this adventure.

    1. Great theme choice for your blog and I like the way you’re going to work on the guidelines with your students. Hope it goes well!

  14. My class blog is set up and in use as well as some student blogs that are under construction. It is challenging to put together an About page that sets the tone yet doesn’t involve oversharing. Looking at other blogs is helping to shape my attitude towards blogging. https://mrsdsroadrunners.edublogs.org/2019/01/04/your-future/

    There are so many things to consider it slows down progress sometimes.
    Here’s to moving forward!
    Trish

    1. I feel the same way! However, I think the more we do this… and throughout the year… all our pages will eventually come together!

    2. I totally agree, I plan to discuss this with my children. The blog is looking good though, I like the idea of looking at different goals and challenges.

    3. I am interested in this as I will be setting up student blogs attached to the class blog…so interested in how you eventually set the right tone without oversharing? I agree that this page is an amazing resources with examples! Thank you again!

Leave a Reply to marlisspr Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *