There is also an option that says “Set Featured Image,” which attaches a thumbnail image. This is practically useless for pages but can be useful for posts in some cases. It must be mentioned though that this feature doesn't work well with some themes, including the default Twenty Ten theme, thus requiring you to edit some CSS to make it work. If you are having trouble getting it to work with your theme, click here  http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Thumbnails 

to visit the WordPress support page on it.

Contact

This is the page where you provide your contact information. It's completely up to you how much info you provide, but you should at least have a contact form, as mentioned previously. Don't forget to make sure your Captcha plugin is activated so you don't get flooded by spambots. Once the page is set up to your liking, preview and publish it.

Privacy Policy

Having a privacy policy is just standard procedure for most sites, and it would be wise to incorporate one into your site as well. Creating a privacy policy page used to be as simple as installing a plugin, but there are no longer any functional privacy policy plugins, to my knowledge. Instead what you can do is search Google for privacy policy templates to use instead.

 For a generic template that works with just about every website click here http://www.inixmedia.com/2010/03/free-privacy-policy-sample-template-for-a-new-website/. Just be sure to edit certain parts of it to suit your particular site.

 To create a more customized privacy policy you can go to www.freeprivacypolicy.com. This site will allow you to create a highly customized privacy policy for free, but you're going to have to go through some stuff to get it.

 You will have to input your email address once you create the policy, then you will be shown some upsells. These are unnecessary, and I don't encourage you to buy these unless you really need them for some reason. You will then be emailed a username and password as well as a link allowing you to access your privacy policy. It will be in both text and HTML, so you can enter it either way when you create this page.

  Overall, www.freeprivacypolicy.com is a great way to get a very customized privacy policy for free as long as you're willing to put up with the fact that they're going to put you on their mailing list and try to sell you a bunch of stuff.

Sneeze Pages

A sneeze page is simply a page that has links to multiple posts on it. It could be titled something like “Hottest Articles,” “Breaking News,” or “Most Popular Blog Posts.” The purpose of a sneeze page is to drive visitors deeper into your site, because most won't bother clicking on your Archives section in the sidebar if you use one.

 Also, while sneeze pages are great, you can also incorporate sneeze page elements into other sections of your blog. For example, you could create a “sneeze widget” that features some of your most popular posts in the sidebar. You can also configure your excerpts on the main page to feature two or three links in addition to the thumbnail and description, turning them into mini sneeze pages in a way.

 The thing to remember about a sneeze page is that you want to give it a really catchy, interesting title. No one is going to click on a sneeze page or widget if you label it something like “Older Posts.” Make the title interesting like the examples given earlier. 

Other Pages

Depending on what type of site you're creating, you may want to add other pages as well. If your site is based on selling a service, you can add a page to describe different aspects of it. If you're selling products, you can have a different page for each product category. The possibilities are endless, and ultimately it's up to you to decide what pages you need to create.

 Two types of pages that you may need to consider are a Terms of Service page and a Terms of Use page. These are useful if you're running a business (such as a membership website) directly from your website and visitors need to be aware of certain things.

Parent and Child Pages

If you're creating a website in which you're going to have multiple pages listed under the same category, you can assign them to a parent page. In a way this functions somewhat similarly to how you would assign posts to a post category.

 A good example of this would be if you want to group your Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and other legal pages together in your navigation bar. What you would do is create the page that you want to be the parent page first, then as you create your other pages, you would select the option to assign them to your first page as a child page. You can find this feature by scrolling down and looking on the right side of the screen in the page creation page.

  One thing to keep in mind is that the parent/child page system is not to be used to replace the categories/posts system. This is because you want your categories to appear in the sidebar for SEO. The parent/child page system should really only be used to save space on the navigation bar.

Hidden Pages

Sometimes you may want to have pages on your website that are hidden. A good example of this is a download page where people who purchase your products go to make their downloads. You obviously don't want this on the navigation bar, or people will be downloading your products for free.

 There are two ways to create hidden pages. The first is relatively simple and involves using FTP to upload the page to your add-on or root domain folder, depending on which one you're using. The only drawback to this is that you have to use HTML to create the page in the first place. If you're going to do this, I would recommend using an HTML editor such as nvu. You can get nvu for free by clicking herehttp://net2.com/nvu/download.html.

 There is also a bit of code you will need to add in order to make sure that these pages aren't indexed by search engines like Google. The code is

 name="robots" />

 This typically goes right below thetag.

 Also make sure that you give the HTML file a unique, hard-to-guess name like “Special-Offer-Download83925783275” or something like that so people won't be able to figure out how to get to it easily.

 Another thing you must be aware of when doing this is that in addition to the HTML file, you must also upload any CSS style sheets and images associated with the HTML. These all go in the domain name folder with the HTML file.

 In any event, if you use FTP the file path will be “root/ → public_html → domain name folder” for add-on domains and “root/ → public_html” for the root domain.

 If you want to hide pages you create in WordPress the easy way, simply search and install the PC Hide Pages

 http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pc-hide-pages/
plugin from the WordPress Plugins section. This will not only make selected pages hidden but also hide them from search engine spiders. This will ensure that they aren't indexed and can't be accessed through Google and other search engines.

 Another option if you want to keep pages off of your navigation bar but still public is the plugin Exclude Pages. You can click here  

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-pages/
to get this one.

Creating a Static Home Page

The main page of your website can come in one of two different varieties: Static and Latest Posts. By default your home page will show your latest blog posts, and if you decide to go with this format make sure that you are using the “Insert More Tag” button to show only an excerpt on the home page. You're also going to want to limit how many posts are shown by clicking Reading under the Settings tab in the main WordPress menu.

 To create a static home page simply click on Reading in the Settings tab and take a look at the page that opens. The first thing on the page is two bubbles. The first is “Your latest posts” and the second is “A static page.” Select the second one to make your home page a static page.

 Now what you have to do is go down to the drop-down menu below and select which page you want to be your static home page. The page that you select will then be listed as “Home” in the navigation menu on your website. You also need to select what page your posts will be displayed on.

 Whether or not you have a static home page is completely up to you. However, if you're creating a blog it is usually best to keep your latest posts as the home page.

NOTE"  This chapter contains images to explain how to do the above but this preview can't show them.