How To Edit Pages in WordPress

Editing pages in WordPress can mean different things to different people, because there are so many different ways of making changes to WordPress pages. The key differences come down to whether you’re editing content or design and which tool you’ll use to do the job.

Edit Pages With Existing Content in WordPress

In cases where you’ve already published a page but need to make edits, follow these steps:

1. Login to WordPress Admin
2. Click Pages then find the page you want to edit
3. Hover over the page title and choose how you’d like to edit
4. block editor
5. classic editor
6. Make whatever changes you’d like
7. Click Update

Editing Page Design in WordPress

Customizer

As one of the easiest and most popular ways to change elements of your WordPress design, Customizer is a natural first step in making design edits on your site.

Getting started is done by choosing Appearance → Customize.

Active Theme

You can change which theme is active by choosing the Active Theme option in Customizer and then by selecting a different theme.

Site Identity

Within Site Identity, you can change any of the following by just making an edit and then clicking the Publish button at the top:

• Title
• Tagline
• Site Icon (Favicon)

Menus

Click into the Menus option and find any site menus to be edited. Click on any one of them to go into the menu where you can add or remove entries, change the name or label on them as well as reorder how the menu items are sequenced. Entire menus can be removed from here too – so be careful!

In addition to editing existing menus, you can create all new menus using this section. Add a menu, add items to it, then publish. It really is that straightforward.

Widgets

If you’ve built areas of pages using widgets, they’ll appear here. Just like with menus, you can click into an area then choose to add or remove widgets, as well as rename or reorder them.

Homepage Settings

The Homepage Settings section of Customizer lets you choose which page will be the homepage of the site as well as which page will be the posts page.

It’s up to you to choose whether the homepage should be static or whether it should show new posts whenever they appear on the blog. Make changes and then click Publish so they stick.

Additional CSS

Rather than editing theme files directly, you can add CSS by using the Additional CSS option in Customizer. Add whatever CSS you’d like in the box, then click Publish for it to take effect.

Note that whatever CSS you add in this manner will appear after the existing theme files, overriding the CSS which appears earlier (from existing theme files).

Depending on your theme selection and how the site is configured, you may see additional options within Customizer. These other options include things like:

• Background Image – if you’re using one, change what’s shown
• Colors – being able to change sitewide colors used
• Single Post Settings – change how posts appear (authors, related, thumbnails)

Customizer also gives you the option to display previews of the site using different devices, giving you a chance to see how things look to people on:

1. Desktop Computers
2. Mobile Phones
3. Tablets

After you’ve clicked Appearance, Customize, look at the way at the bottom of the screen. There you’ll find the icons for Desktop, Mobile and Tablet. Just click one and in the right pane you’ll find the preview for that particular device type.

Theme Editor

Before editing any theme files make sure that you’ve made a child theme using your existing main theme. If you’re not working on a child theme, you’ll find that anytime the theme is updated, you’ll lose any changes made.

Follow our separate step by step guidance on making a child theme, then proceed based on having the child theme created and activated as your current theme. This means that in future steps, editing the files, you’ll actually be editing copies of main theme files which are now a part of the child theme.

The most common child theme files to edit will include:

• style.css
• functions.php
• header.php
• footer.php
• page.php
• index.php

The Theme Editor is available by choosing Appearance, Theme Editor.

Editing child theme files in this manner enables you to make changes from within WordPress, without having to use a control panel file manager or FTP client.

Making changes is done by clicking on the file name in the right hand pane, then editing in the main panel under “Selected file content:”. You can change the PHP files or CSS, giving you the ability to structurally change pages and posts as well as changing the way they’re displayed.

After you’ve changed everything you had in mind, just click the Update File button at the bottom of the screen.

In addition to Customizer and the Theme Editor, there’s also the ability to edit the design of WordPress pages using Gutenberg Block Editor or the WordPress Classic Editor. Gutenberg is new as of WordPress 5.0 and gives users the ability to edit pages using a widget-type approach (in dealing with blocks that can be dropped in or edited within pages.

Classic Editor

Accessing the Classic Editor may require you to install the Classic Editor plugin which is available here.

Once you’ve installed and activated the Classic Editor plugin, you’ll be able to edit pages using that editor by following these steps:

• Login to WordPress
• Click Pages
• Scroll down to find the page you want to edit
• Hover over the title name
• Choose Edit (Classic Editor)

From here, it’s just a matter of making whatever changes you’d like, then clicking Update to have those changes committed to the database and becoming active.

You may have to flush the cache on any caching or optimization plugins that you’re using in order to see the changes appear live on the site.

Gutenberg (Block Editor)

Effective from WordPress 5.0 onward, the newest editor is the Gutenberg or Block Editor.

Making changes using the Block Editor is remarkably similar to the Classic Editor approach:

• Login to WordPress
• Click Pages
• Scroll down to find the page you want to edit
• Hover over the title name
• Choose Edit (Block Editor)

From here, it’s just a matter of making whatever changes you’d like, then clicking Update to have those changes committed to the database and becoming active.

You may have to flush the cache on any caching or optimization plugins that you’re using in order to see the changes appear live on the site.

WordPress Page Builders

In addition to the above methods of editing pages in WordPress, there’s also a number of different page builders that make page editing a drag and drop visual approach, incredibly easy and very straightforward.

Popular WordPress page builders include:

• Beaver Builder
• Divi
• Elementor
• Themify
• Visual Composer

Your theme may come with one of these pre-bundled, making page edits that much easier. It pays to look around, particularly if you’re not already familiar with one builder or another.

Because there are literally dozens of popular page builders, we’ll leave that discussion for another time!

Conclusion

Have a WordPress website? Check out our Managed WordPress Hosting and see if we are a good fit for you. KnownHost offers 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, all 7 days of the week best in class technical support. A dedicated team ready to help you should you need our assistance. You’re not using KnownHost for the best webhosting experience? Well, why not?