When you create a new page for your website it will have the same design and layout as your existing pages. Here are the steps:

Create content > Page

Enter title

This title will appear at the top of the page on your website. You may use the same title for the menu, but this is a separate step. (Note: This title will automatically be displayed in the browser: if you wish to vary the words appearing in your browser, see Search Engine Optimisation.)

Content or Body

You can type the content directly into this box or paste it from a word document.

Most of the tool bar options for the WYSIWYG editor will be familiar to you, but please take special note of the Paste from Word button:

Microsoft Word inserts a lot of extra information that can cause your page to look a little different from how you planned, or cause problems when editing, so use this button when you paste to remove Word's formatting. Copy the text from Word as usual, then click the 'Paste from Word' button. If your browser requires more steps it will give you directions.

Menu settings

Don't confuse the Navigation Menu with your site's Main Menu. The Navigation Menu covers all the administration of your site and your site's main menu (what appears to your site visitor) is a sub-item of this. For new content to appear to the visitor it must be sitting somewhere under your Main Menu. If you don't specify this, the new content will be stored under the Navigation Menu, so you'll have to go looking to find it! The steps you must take are to enter the:

• Title: If you don't your page will still exist, but you may have trouble finding it because it has no reference to your site's main menu. Note: This means the title is entered twice: in the second and fourth steps.
• Parent item: This is the menu item your new page sits beneath. Again, if this is missing or incorrect your page may display on your site incorrectly, or not at all.

The Drupal weighting system

Drupal uses a numbering or 'weighting' system to define how your pages or other menu items sit in relation to each other. Drupal weighting is based on the idea that lighter items should 'float to the top' of a menu. So an item with weight of 1 will position itself above a menu item of the same level which has a weight of 2. And an item with a weight of -3 will position itself above an item with a weight of -2. The actual numbers assigned doesn't matter; it is their relative positions which are important. If items at any level are given the same weight, eg if you leave the weight at zero, then they are presented in alphabetical order.

The ‘My Best Friend' item above has been set up as a sub-item of the ‘Main Menu' parent item. It has been given a weight of ten. If you wanted the following items to appear in this order in your menu block, then you might weight them as shown:

Welcome (4)

About me (6)

My Family (8)

My Best Friend (10)

always choosing the same parent item from the drop-down list, in this case 'Main Menu'.

If you want to check the weighting assigned to each menu item, you can check the weighting for each via:

Administer > Site building > Menus

Once you have these major menu items set, sub-menu items fit beneath them, again using a weighting system. So if the 'About me' page above had the following sub-items

My interests (1)

My job (2)

My history (3)

The numbering starts again as indicated, because you will select 'About me' as the parent item instead of 'Main menu' this time.

URL Path settings (optional but recommended)

By default your URL path, which appears in your browser's address bar, will be a system of numbers, symbols and words. Using a search engine friendly URL will assist in search engine optimisation (SEO) as well as being easier for visitors to remember. Work out the best description for the page you're creating and enter it in this box. You cannot use spaces: the convention is to use a hyphen in place of a space.

Our SEO packages have tools that automatically create optimised search engine friendly URLs for you.

Other fields

These steps are not essential. The order in which these items appear may vary from site to site:

File attachments: You can browse and upload a file to appear as an attachment on this page, in a standardised format. If this option does not appear and you require it, please contact us.

Authoring information: You only need to use 'Authoring information' if you want to attribute the page to someone else, because whoever is logged in will automatically be attributed as the author. Likewise the time and date will automatically be entered as the current time.

Log message: Use this if you want to leave a message for yourself or a colleague in reference to this item. It will only be seen by those editing the content.

Comment settings: If your site has been set up to allow visitors to post comments, you need to ensure that the option checked reflects what you want to allow in this case:

'Disabled' means comments are not allowed on this page

'Read only' means that previous comments can be read but no more added

'Read/Write' means previous comments can be read and new ones added. A moderation process may be involved in this.

Publishing options

'Published' has to be checked if you want this page to display on your website once it is saved.

'Create a new revision' This option is generally not used. Talk to us if you think you might need this.

Preview and Save

You can 'Preview' the page, but you must click 'Submit' to save it.