We recently shared how to set up a fixed front page for those of you who want an online presence that’s more like a website, not a blog. Here are seven more tweaks that will refine your website and move it closer to your vision.
Add a contact page
If you’re building a website for a business, consulting gigs, or professional work, offer a method for people to contact you. Take a peek at our resource on evergreen page content — which discusses contact pages — then follow these steps to add a contact form to a page.
Here’s an example of a simple, well-designed Contact page on the website of traveler and freelance writer Tricia Mitchell:
Create a custom menu with essential pages
Browse these 10 About pages we love for inspiration.
So, you’ve got a Contact page, an About page, and other important pages, like Services, FAQs, or Team pages. Now what? Make sure visitors actually see these can’t-miss pages by adding them to your menu.
You can also include other items in a menu: a category, a specific post, or even a link to an external site, like your Etsy shop.
Create a new menu, or update an existing one, in My Site → Customize → Menus. You may have one main menu or several menus in different locations, depending on your current theme — refer to your theme’s showcase page for details.
Activate a full-width page template
You may not want to display a sidebar for extras like widgets. Some themes have a Full-Width Template option, so you can configure any page to be a single column.
Not sure if a full-width template is right for you? Let’s see two different templates in action on the same theme. Group theology blog Biblical Reasoning uses the Hemingway Rewritten theme’s default template: all of their pages, including the homepage, include a right sidebar. In this area, they include widgets like a Search Widget, a short welcome note in a Text Widget, the Authors Widget, the RSS Links Widget, and more.
At Life with Json, automotive photographer Jason Hoang uses the same theme, but configures his pages with the full-width template, which creates a very different look with no sidebar:
If your theme supports a full-width template, you can activate it when creating or editing a page — look for Page Attributes on the right. Select the appropriate option (Full Width, No Sidebar) in the dropdown menu under Page Template.
Update your sidebar or footer
If you do display a sidebar or footer on your website, keep these areas tidy and update them often — you don’t ever want to promote stale information!
Explore how other authors use widgets to promote their books.
Take a peek at the website of author and Newbery medalist Kelly Barnhill. She prominently promotes her books at the top, using Image Widgets that link to her books’ Amazon pages.
The Text and Custom HTML Widgets are simple but powerful tools.
Similarly, the collaborative blog The Disorder of Things uses widgets that are relevant to its publication: it displays its many authors in a grid of circular avatar images, achieved with custom HTML in a Text Widget (the Authors Widget is an alternative if you don’t want to play around with HTML). The site highlights writing and recommended websites and resources further down the sidebar, once again using a versatile Text Widget.
Pro tip: you can control where a widget appears on your website, displaying it only on specific pages. Explore the Visibility option for more.
Update your footer credit
An easy way to distinguish your site? Change the default WordPress.com credit text in your footer (“Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com”). Go to My Sites → Customize → Site Identity, scroll down to Footer Credit, and switch the default text to A WordPress.com Website. (Some of the other options will work as well, too.)
Set up a social links menu
Another must for your new website? A menu for your social channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Many of our themes have a built-in social menu with icons that link to your social profiles — here’s an example on the Independent Publisher 2 theme, used by Raoul Pop:
You can add this menu in My Site → Customize → Menus. Refer to your theme’s support page and our video tutorial for details.
Disable features like comments and sharing buttons
If you have a business website or professional portfolio, hide comments and sharing buttons at the bottom of your pages for a clean and distraction-free experience.
Tricia Mitchell at Travels with Tricia disables commenting and sharing at the bottom of every page (and also has a minimal, professional footer with a search field, social icons, and copyright and terms of service text).
You may prefer to keep comments open on some of your pages to encourage discussions, as Emily Polis Gibson demonstrates at Barnstorming. But generally, with page comments disabled, you can funnel correspondence and questions from readers or clients through your Contact page or social channels instead (or blog posts, if you maintain a blog).
To disable comments on pages, go to My Site → Site Pages and open a page, then click on More Options at the right. Scroll down to Discussion and uncheck the boxes next to Allow comments.
To hide your sharing buttons, go to My Site → Sharing → Sharing Buttons, scroll down to Options, and uncheck the box next to Pages.
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Really informative — thank you!
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Hello Cheri. Great thoughts and ideas. This so much relates to me having just started my blog a week back and trying to develop it 🙂
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All true.
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Incredibly helpful! Thank you for sharing.
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Great advice, thank you. I especially liked the actual blog examples as I find it difficult to visualise the potential of a theme just by its description. Not that I intend to change the theme I’ve been using, nor do I have a professional website, only a hobby blog but it gave me ideas how to tweak its look a little better!
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Thank you for sharing!
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👍very helpful
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love all these blog tips!
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I’m not a fan of best practices, but interesting read, nonetheless.
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Well explained and informative
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This was such a good read — thank you for sharing this.
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This was helpful! Did changes on my site 💕!
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you can also enable comments, as you would want people to comment but in order to keep spam bots away you can enable “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”
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Absolutely! The comment moderation settings are handy for people who want commenting ability. (The tip in this post is more for people who want clean, static pages.)
For readers interested in adjusting their comment/discussion settings: https://wordpress.com/support/settings/discussion-settings/
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Thanks for the tips and the impetus to review my site to make sure it’s the best possible condition!
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We started our food blog a little over a year ago…this is still very valuable advice. Thanks, we learned a lot!
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Thanks for the tips. Will have a look at my site again.
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Well explained 👍
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I have learned so much about website building from creating my blog. Thank you so much for such great tips! ❤
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Great tips! Thank you for sharing. I will definitely have to implement some of those when the time permits!!
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Just starting off, found these very helpful! 🙂
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thanks for these helpful tips!! 🙂
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😊😊😊😊
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Thanks for sharing this.
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Love the idea of having a contact page. I will for sure use that tip.
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Found the tip about a “distraction free” web architecture by disabling comments to be very helpful. I often forget that my all dishes in the sink approach can be a bit overwhelming for others.
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This was very helpful. I am new to the world of marketing and find myself soaking up every tip and trick of the trade that I can find. Thank you for the tips.
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Extremely informative. Thanks a lot.
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I wish I had this post sooner! Super informative and very helpful. Thanks for sharing.
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Nice information! Thanks a lot! I will try it.
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Great information – I’m saving this!
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Informative! Thank you for the tips.
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Nice articles, keep it up 👍👍👍
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Great insight since I just started my blog recently and I’m thinking about creating my own domain/website soon. What’s your thoughts on Ads?
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Various forms of advertising are options for people who’d like to monetize their site. Here’s more info on general options: https://wordpress.com/support/monetize-your-site/
And here’s more info on our advertising program, WordAds, which is available to Premium and Business users as well as those on the free or Personal plan with moderate/high traffic and appropriate content: https://wordads.co/
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