Page creation

What page creation is

Page creation is building one new page on your existing website from copy you supply. The right template is chosen, the text is formatted, images are sized and placed, the title and description fields are filled in, the page is added to the navigation and the sitemap, and links are added from the existing pages that ought to point at it. Then it is checked on a phone and published.

It is not writing and it is not design. If the words are not written yet, that is a service page or another writing job, and the building is included in the price of it. If the page needs a template that does not exist on your site, that is web development, brought in and managed by me, and I say so on the call rather than halfway through.

When you need one

You have written a page. It is a document, or an email, or three paragraphs in a message thread. Somebody has approved it. It has been sitting there for a month because the person who knows the website is busy, or has left, or is you.

Or you have a page that exists but was put in badly: three font sizes, a stretched photograph, no title, and nothing on the site linking to it, so the only people who ever see it are the ones you email the address to.

You do not need this for a batch. If a writer has just delivered ten or twenty pieces, CMS content entry does the same work at a per-piece price and is cheaper per page. And if you only want the fields filled in on pages that already exist, metadata entry is the narrower job.

What building a page involves

• The template. The page uses the same layout as its neighbours, with matching spacing, heading styles and calls to action, so nobody can tell which pages were built by whom.
• The formatting. One H1, then headings in order beneath it, lists where the copy is a list, and no heading used as decoration because it happened to be the right size.
• The images. Resized so the page loads quickly, named sensibly rather than left as a camera file number, and given alt text that describes what the picture actually shows.
• The linking in. Links added from the existing pages that should point at the new one, with anchor text that says where the link goes, plus the links out that the copy itself calls for.
• The plumbing. The page address, the title and description fields, the category, the navigation menu where it belongs, and the sitemap the site publishes.

The linking in is the part people forget, and it is the part that decides whether the page is ever found. A page nobody links to sits on the site as an orphan. Where the linking needs deciding across a whole site rather than for one page, that is internal linking as a piece of work in its own right.

What you get

The page, live. Built, checked on a phone and a desktop, and either published or scheduled for the date you asked for, with the address sent to you.

A note of what was linked. A short list of which existing pages now point at the new one, what the link text says, and where the page sits in the menu. Two lines, but it is the record of the job people usually cannot produce afterwards.

Anything I changed. If the supplied copy had a heading that did not work as a heading, a link to a page that no longer exists, or an image too small to use, you get told, with what I did instead.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A regional accounting firm has written a page about farm succession planning. The partner who wrote it is good at the subject and has never opened the website. The document is nine hundred words, with two photographs from a client visit and a list of six questions a farming family should ask.

The page is built on the firm's service template. The six questions become a proper list rather than a run of bold lines. The photographs are cropped and described. The page is linked in from the main services page, from the agriculture sector page and from an older blog post about inheritance, each with different link text. It goes into the menu under services, and into the sitemap. The title and description fields are written from the first paragraph. Total time: most of a day. The partner writes a second page the following month because putting up the first one cost him nothing.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the page is, what system the site runs on, and whether a suitable template already exists. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per page, or per page in a batch, agreed before anything starts.
3. The inputs. The approved copy, any images at the largest size you have them, and an editor account on the site.
4. The build. Two to three working days for a single page. Built on a staging copy first where the site has one.
5. The look. You see the page before it is public and say yes, or ask for changes, which are included.
6. Publishing. Live immediately or scheduled, with the address and the linking note sent the same day.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because pages vary more than people expect. A plain page of text on an existing template is a short job. A page with a dozen images, a table, a form and links to be added across fifteen existing pages is not. The price depends on the length, the number of images, whether the template exists already, and how many pages need editing to link in. The pricing page shows the four published ways of working, and the number is fixed in writing before anything begins.

What happens next

Once a page is live, the usual next step is the one after it, and after three or four the sensible move is a standing arrangement rather than a page at a time: either CMS content entry for batches or website updates for the small corrections that follow. Some people hand the job to their own person with half a day of CMS training. If the new page overlaps two older ones, that is worth knowing before you build a fourth. This piece of work is complete on its own and nothing further is assumed.