How to Add an HTML Page in Your WordPress Website

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world with over 75 million websites using it as their platform. One of the reasons behind its popularity is its ability to be customized and extended to any extent by its users and developers. One of the things that makes WordPress so powerful is its flexibility in allowing anyone – even complete beginners – to build their own unique website without having to learn extensive coding knowledge.

However, this power comes with a price. Since WordPress is a general purpose CMS, it lacks a certain level of functionality that more advanced content management systems (CMS) like Joomla! and Drupal have. One of the biggest barriers for beginners is the fact that WordPress is not known for its user-friendliness. To get the most out of WordPress, you’ll have to learn some basics – like how to add an HTML page to your website – which can be a challenging process for beginners.

Adding An HTML Page To Your Website — The Basics

There are several ways to add an HTML page to your WordPress website. You can either use the WordPress dashboard, use a third party tool like Wix, or use a WordPress plugin. Each of these methods have their perks and quirks, so it’s important to find what works best for your situation.

The Basics

The basics of adding an HTML page to your WordPress website are fairly simple. You’ll have to register for a free WordPress account if you don’t have one already, then launch the dashboard by clicking on the WordPress icon in your browser’s toolbar. You should now be on the WordPress dashboard. If you’re not located in the US, you may need to click on the hamburger menu icon () to access the dashboard. Once you’re on the dashboard, you’ll see the icons at the top – including the WordPress logo, Menu, Power, and Contents bars. To add an HTML page, you can click on the Menu icon () in the bottom right corner of the dashboard, and then click on Install plugins to install the WordPress plugin Advanced Custom Fields.

Once you’ve installed the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, you’ll see a screen like this:

Since we’re working in WordPress, let’s go ahead and log in to see what the dashboard looks like. If you haven’t already, register for a free WordPress account and then click on the Login button ().

As you can see, the dashboard is fairly self-explanatory. The Menu icon () allows you to add new pages, post types, and custom menus to your website. The Power icon () gives you the capability to restrict the number of users who can access your site, as well as the ability to disable users’ accounts. Finally, the Contents icon () allows you to view your website’s content in a flattened list form – kind of like a recipe card list. This is a great way to view your site’s content because it allows you to easily scan through blog posts and understand what is being offered without having to click through each individual blog article to see its contents.

Installation

Once you’ve installed the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, you’ll see a screen like this:

As you can see, the ACF plugin gives you the ability to create rich-content fields (RTF) within your WordPress posts and pages. These fields can contain anything from text to video, audio, and still images. They can even be combined into a single field for additional flexibility. You’ll also see the CKEditor (which stands for Content Kept Easily Dedicated) – a free, open source WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for HTML and XHTML forms. The default setup of the ACF plugin includes CKEditor, so if you don’t have experience using WYSIWYG editors, this is the perfect opportunity to try them out. To get started, simply navigate to your blog’s post (s) and click on the Publish button (), and then click on the ACF icon () in the top right corner of the screen. You’ll see a screen like this:

As you can see, ACF gives you the ability to create drop-down menus, images, and videos within your posts and pages. It also gives you the option of creating tabs on your blog’s home page, as well as the ability to create navigation menus for your posts and pages. You can even create checkboxes and radio buttons using the ACF plugin. Since this is a free plugin, there is absolutely no reason not to give it a try. It’s very user-friendly and simple to use. It also has a great support forum if you do run into any problems.

Usage

Once you’ve added an HTML page to your WordPress website using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, you can access it by clicking on the Template icon () in the Menu icon (). This will take you to the Template manager, where you can see all of your site’s available templates. To add an HTML page using one of these templates, navigate to your blog’s (s) post (s) and click on the Publish button (), and then click on the Template icon (). You can then click on Download to download the template to your computer. To apply the template, you’ll have to login to your blog and then click on the Use button ().

As you can see, WordPress offers several different options for how you want to display your website’s content. You can choose from a variety of layouts, colors, and styles. Once you’ve applied the template, you’ll see your blog looking just like the default Dashboard layout. If you don’t like the way your blog looks now, you can navigate to the Appearance menu (hamburger menu icon ⇒) and select Theme Design to change the theme of your site. If you’re still on the Template screen, click on Design (top left) to change the layout of your blog. You can also create and apply custom CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to change the looks of your site without using a template. You can use CSS to create a completely customized look for your blog or change the colors, fonts, and spacing of the text within your blog’s pages. This is also where you can find themes for your blog, as well as the ability to customize your blog’s header, footer, and sidebars. 

Output

At this point, you’ve added an HTML page to your WordPress website. However, you haven’t yet configured it to output anything. For that, you’ll have to use a third party tool like WP-CLI. To do this, you can either use the WordPress dashboard, or you can download WP-CLI from the official WordPress repository and then launch it from within your terminal/command line. Once you’ve launched WP-CLI, you’ll see a screen like this: