Creating a Single Page and Privacy Policy Site in WordPress

I recently got a nice email from someone who is apparently using WordPress to create his first site. And he’s keeping it simple (which is not a bad plan if you are just starting and not very comfortable with the technology).

He writes:

Hi Carolyn…

Very nice work on your guide…I am a total technophobe and this made jumpin’ in a whole lot easier.

I want to create a simple sales letter using WP…just photos and text with a privacy page…basic…

Any simple formula I can follow you would recommend?

Thanks!

Tom

Well, Tom, I’m not exactly certain what you mean by a privacy page, but I suspect you mean a privacy policy page. If not, feel free to correct me in the comments and I’ll try to do a better job answering your question.

I’m thinking your simple sales letter, is similar to an “About Us” page. This part is pretty easy. You will:
Log into the Administrative portion of your WordPress site as is explained in the Beginner’s Guide to WordPress 2.7

1. Click on Pages in the left-hand navigation.
2. Click on Add New from the Pages sub-menu.
3. Add your page content.
4. Be sure to include your most important keyword phrase in your page title. For example, if you are selling “cat toys”, your page title should be something like “Feather Flyer Cat Toy”. Keep it short because this will appear where ever your page navigation goes in your theme.
5. Add your tags
6. And click the Publish button.

Now about that Privacy Policy page…

You will follow the same basic procedures as before: Add New page, the page title will be “Privacy Policy” and you’ll add your policy text to the post entry form, add your tags and Publish.

Very simple — so long as you don’t mind having the Privacy Policy listed in the page navigation. Some folks want it listed, but a lot of times, people want to simply have it appear in some secondary navigation like in the footer like I do at the bottom of this page. How did I prevent my Privacy Policy page from appearing in my navigation at the top of the page, but appear all by itself at the bottom of the page, you ask? Good question!

This requires modifying your actual header and foot template code. If you are not comfortable making these changes, you may want to leave things alone for now. But if you are feeling a bit bold, it’s not terribly difficult.

How To Change the wp_list_pages Tag to Exclude Specific Pages

In whichever template  your page navigation list appears (usually header.php or sidebar.php), you will see a bit of code that looks something like this:

<?php wp_list_pages('depth=1&sort_column=ID&title_li='); ?>

This is the chunk of WordPress code that displays all of your Pages (not your Posts, but your Pages; and if you don’t know the difference between Pages and Posts, please download the tutorial the Beginner’s Guide to WordPress 2.7 and read that bit – it’s important!). To prevent WordPress from listing a particular Page, you need to tell WordPress what to exclude.

In your wp_list_pages tag you want to add to text &exclude=THE-ID-NUMBER-OF-PAGE-TO-EXCLUDE so that your code looks something like this:
<?php wp_list_pages('depth=1&sort_column=ID&exclude=290,299&title_li='); ?>

Where did I get the ID numbers of the 2 Pages I wanted to exclude? Another good question!

Click on Edit in your left-hand Pages navigation sub-menu of your WordPress Administration.
You will see the list of your Pages.
Hover your cursor over your Privacy Page listing. Don’t click, just hover.
At the very bottom of your browser window – and I do mean the Very Bottom – in the left-hand corner, you should see the URL to that Page. It will look like this:

http://yourdomainname/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=THE-NUMBER-OF-YOUR-POST

That number at the end, your post number, is what you want. This is the number you want to exclude.

How To List Your Privacy Policy (or Other Page) in Your Footer (or Where Ever)

You are going to be so disappointed in me… I cheated. Here’s what the code looks like:

<a href="http://carolynecooper.com/privacy-policy" name="privacy-policy" title="privacy policy" target="_self">Privacy Policy</a>

Yep. I just created a basic link to the Privacy Policy page. It’s so much easier and faster.

Well, Tom, I hoped that helped. And thank you again for stopping by.

Please do me a favor and link to the site and add it to your favorite social media.