A customer mentions that the phone number on your About page is the old one. You log in, go to Pages, open About, and the number is not there. Or it is there, but the page opens in a screen you have never seen before, full of drag handles and purple panels. Or the editor opens fine, you change the text, press the button, and the live site still shows the old version.
Learning how to edit a page in WordPress is mostly about answering two questions before you type anything: which editor built this page, and does the text you want actually live in the page? Both are covered below, followed by the edit itself and how to check or undo it.
Step one: find the page
There are two quick ways in.
- From the dashboard. Go to Pages → All Pages. Type part of the title into the search box at the top right if the list is long. Hover over the page’s title and click Edit.
- From the live site. While logged in, visit the page you want to change. The black toolbar at the top of the screen has an Edit Page link, which opens that exact page in its editor. If you do not see the toolbar, it may be switched off in your user profile.
The list of pages carries labels that help. “Front Page” next to a title means it is set as your home page, and “Posts Page” means it is the page that lists your blog posts. Both are chosen under Settings → Reading. “Draft”, “Private” or “Scheduled” mean the page is not public in its current form. If there are two pages with very similar names, the label and the date column usually tell you which one is live.
If the thing you want to change is an article rather than a permanent page, look under Posts instead. Our explainer on pages and posts covers why there are two lists.
Step two: work out which editor built it
WordPress sites can be edited in several different ways, and one site sometimes mixes them. The page itself usually gives it away.
- The block editor. White canvas, a blue + button at the top left, and a sidebar with Page and Block tabs. This is WordPress’s own editor and the one most of this post covers.
- A page builder. The page list shows a label such as “Elementor” beside the title, or the editor opens with a large button such as “Edit with Elementor”. Divi, Beaver Builder, WPBakery and others behave in similar ways. In this case the content is stored in the builder’s format, and you edit it in the builder, not in the block editor.
- The Classic Editor. A single big writing area, two tabs marked Visual and Text above it, and a row of formatting buttons, much like a basic word processor. Some sites keep this through a plugin.
- A theme template. In block themes, the home page in particular is sometimes built as a template in the Site Editor rather than as an ordinary page. If Settings → Reading shows your home page as “Your latest posts”, or the page you open is nearly empty while the live page is full, the content is probably in a template.
Mixing editors is where damage happens. Opening a builder page in the block editor and saving it can leave a mess of code, and some builders warn you about this. If a page was built with a builder, keep editing it with that builder.
How to edit a page in WordPress with the block editor
Once you know the page uses blocks, the edit itself is short.
- Open the page and click directly on the text you want to change. A small toolbar appears above it, which means that block is selected.
- Type your change. Bold, italic and links are on the block toolbar. A new paragraph begins when you hit Enter.
- To replace an image, select it and use Replace on its toolbar, then upload a new file or pick one from the Media Library.
- To change a button’s label, click into the button and type. To change where it goes, use the link icon on its toolbar.
- If you cannot find the block on a long page, open List View from the top toolbar. It shows every block in order, and clicking one selects it.
- Click Save, the blue button at the top right, to make the change live (older versions label it Update). Use Preview first if the change is large.
If the editor’s layout is still unfamiliar, our block editor guide explains the toolbar, the sidebar and List View properly.
A word on layout changes: you can safely edit words, images and links on almost any page. Changing the structure, such as removing a Group block or dragging columns around, is where pages start to look broken on phones. Make one change at a time and preview it on a narrow screen.
Editing a page built with Elementor or another builder
Click the builder’s edit button. The page opens in a live preview with the builder’s panel down one side. Click the text on the preview to edit it, or click a section to change its settings. Builders have their own save or update button, usually at the bottom of the panel, and their own history for undoing changes.
Each builder is different enough to need its own walkthrough. For the most common one, see our post on editing an Elementor page.
When the text is not in the page at all
This is the most common reason for “I opened the page and the thing is not there”. A lot of what appears on a page is shared across the whole site and stored somewhere else.
- Header and footer. The logo, the menu, the phone number in the top bar and the address in the footer almost always belong to the theme. In a block theme, edit them in Appearance → Editor; the header and footer are template parts, listed under Patterns. In a classic theme, look in Appearance → Customize, Appearance → Widgets or the theme’s own options page.
- Menus. Classic themes use Appearance → Menus. Block themes use the Navigation block inside the header.
- Sidebars. Usually widgets, managed under Appearance → Widgets in classic themes.
- Synced patterns. A block that appears in List View under a pattern name, in a different colour from the rest, is shared. Editing it changes every page that uses it, which may or may not be what you want.
- Plugin output. Forms, review widgets, booking calendars and sliders are often placed as a shortcode or a single block. The page holds only the placeholder. The words inside come from the plugin’s own settings.
- The template. Some layouts, including where the title appears and whether there is a sidebar, come from the page template. Our post on page templates covers choosing and changing them.
For a fuller map of where headers, footers and menus live in each kind of theme, see the header and footer guide. Other everyday jobs, from menus to backups, are listed in our WordPress help guide.
Checking the change, and undoing it if needed
After saving, open the page in a private browser window. That shows you what a visitor sees, without your logged-in view. If the old version is still there, the usual cause is a cache: a caching plugin, your host’s cache or a CDN is serving a stored copy. Clearing the cache in the plugin or hosting panel normally fixes it, and our post on changes that do not show up goes through the other causes.
If you saved something you regret, do not try to rebuild it from memory. Open the page, find Revisions in the page settings, and compare the current version with the one before. You can restore the earlier version in one click.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no Edit Page link at the top of my live site?
The admin toolbar only shows while you are logged in, and each user can turn it off under their profile with the option to show the toolbar when viewing the site. A caching setup can also serve a logged-out copy of the page. Log in again, check your profile, or go to Pages in the dashboard instead.
What happens if two people edit the same page at the same time?
WordPress locks a page while someone is editing it. A second person who opens it sees a message saying another user is currently working on it, with the choice to go back or take over. Taking over can lose the other person’s unsaved work, so agree who edits first.
Can I edit a page from my phone?
Yes. You can log in to the dashboard in a mobile browser, and the block editor works there, though selecting the right block is fiddly on a small screen. For anything beyond a quick text change, a computer is easier.
The page I edited shows a different layout on mobile. Did I break it?
Probably not. Many blocks rearrange themselves on narrow screens, such as columns stacking one above another. If something looks wrong only on a phone, compare it with the revision before your edit to see whether the layout was already like that.
Sometimes the text really does seem to live nowhere, or the page was built with a tool nobody on your team has used. Tracking that kind of thing down is a normal request for our WordPress support service.
Next in this series: How to Add a New Page in WordPress, Step by Step
