Ghost: Make "Turn this post into a static page" more obvious

[alistra]

I initially thought this option is some kind of optimization for the article to handle big traffic, but apparently this option is for doing pages like "About me" or any other kind of everlasting pages, not posts.

This should be stated more clearly, because turning this option on makes the post disappear from the post listing on the page.

[jillesme]

I got to disagree with you here. How can 'static page' be more obvious than it already is? WordPress also uses the term static page, so people coming from a WordPress site to a Ghost will feel a bit more at home.

I don't know what other people have to say, but I'd say leave it as it is.

[PaulAdamDavis]

Because we have the phrase 'static sites' (ala Jekyll and more) I can see the possible confusion here.

[alistra]

At least some information that this will not show as post would be nice

[ErisDS]

@alistra Hi @ welcome to Ghost. I understand what you're getting at fully, but it would be very helpful if you could suggest alternative wordings that you feel are more easily understood.

As pointed out, we've used a wording which we felt our users would be familiar with. I can see how users coming from a slightly different background would see the word 'static' differently, but I'm not sure what else we could use.

[drx]

For what it's worth, it would cause me some confusion as well. There is a common way to optimize blog posts by publishing them as static pages instead of serving them dynamically, my instinct would be to assume I could do that to a blog post while keeping it in the listing.

A simple warning like "Note: this will remove the post from the home page" would do.

[alistra]

@ErisDS I think a note, like the one @drx proposed would be enough.

[ErisDS]

There is no precedence in the Ghost admin for adding notes about what functionality does, so it's not really what I'd consider a simple solution. If we added one, we'd have to add many. I can imagine solutions like adding (?)'s or tooltips, but we'd need a component designed for creating them.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying changing the wording of the label to be clearer is easier (and probably better) than adding more text.

[alistra]

I think that this is a potentially destructive operation for a misinformed user. If the user will mark their post as static without actually linking to it in the page, then the post is not reachable for a viewer without a link.

Adding a note just to potentially destructive operations, like "delete a post", "delete a blog", could be good without adding notes to all the functionalities. That's in general good UX.

That said I'm not good at doing copy, so I have no idea how to fix the wording, for it to be more informative and stay the same length and don't break the layout.

[ErisDS]

I'd like go back to the beginning here. When trying to solve a problem, the first step is to make sure the problem is clearly defined and understood.

So what's the problem? What we have so far:

Some people may misinterpret 'Turn this post into a static page' to mean an optimisation, rather than being for creating pages on your blog.

From that, we have derived that the potentially confusing part is the term 'static page', but we haven't really determined how many people is 'some people'.

I've searched our support ticket backlog, I've looked at the searches on support.ghost.org, and I've searched the forum for "static pages". From that, I can see there's a lot of confusion around how to create a link to a page, but I don't see this question coming up and the term 'static page' is used confidently throughout.

In short, I can't find any evidence to back up this proposal that a change is necessary.

[ErisDS]

Going to close this for now, if evidence presents itself we can reopen and revisit.

[lucasmartins]

A simple hover tooltip would be great. Doesn't hurt Wordpress migrations, doesn't hurt newbies.

"Use this to make those 'About Me' pages that stick around."

[aludvigsen]

@lucasmartins :+1: definitely agree, I had to google this option.

[sharpedavid]

I had no idea what this option meant. I assumed it meant "static web page" as the definition given by WIkipedia, so I was confused to find that making a page "static" meant that I could no longer find it on my site.

I find it silly that we have people here discussing that the wording is confusing but this isn't "evidence".

[charleshan]

I thought the same thing. I thought it's some kind of optimization. Maybe we can add a question mark icon that explains what it does.

[YamiOdymel]

I've got the same question today, I thought this could help me to reduce the network traffic by generating a static file.

Maybe we should rename the option like: "Make this as a page instead of a post"?

[NimaAra]

The DEV seems to be reluctant to agree the naming is _confusing_ for many people myself included. If I have to explain my UI to my users then I am definitely doing something wrong.

[congaframe]

I need to google to understand how it works .

[1c7]

Now it's 2019 July 7, this option is gone

"Turn this post into a static page" is gone

Ghost Version: 2.21.1

This option is very useful to me, Would Ghost Team consider put it back?

Sometime after I wrote a post. I don't want it to show up on my front page.
But I want people can found it on Google.

Thanks