Changing a page title is just a matter of editing the Page Title at the top of the editing screen for the page. Changing the page URL can be done in the right sidebar; it is labelled ‘Link’. But, there are two issues to consider:

• Coordinate with PastPerfect. It is museum policy that the title of a collection item in American Centuries should be identical to the title of that item in PastPerfect. So, before changing a collection item title in American Centuries you must contact Ray Radigan (for objects) or Jeanne Solensky (for library items) to have them change the item’s title in PastPerfect.
• Fix bad links. Any links to your changed item on other pages will still contain the old title or URL. You will need to find every page on the site that has a link to the old page URL or contains the old page title so you can fix them. This can be done using the site search box.

Change the page title or page URL. Here is the complete process. It is important to follow these steps in order.

• If the title you want to change belongs to a collection item, contact Ray (for objects) or Jeanne Solensky (for library items) to have them change the item’s title in PastPerfect. once that is done, you’re ready to start in WordPress.
• If you haven’t already, log in to WordPress with your editing account.
• On the public site (not the editing backend) navigate to the page whose title you want to change.
• Copy the old (unchanged) page title and paste it somewhere to save it for later. (In a spreadsheet? with a text editor? write it down? Any place you can find it again later, except never in a Word document!) Then copy the page’s URL from your browser’s address bar and paste it with the old title you just saved.
• Choose ‘Edit page’ from the black menu bar along the top of of your browser window. This will take you to the editing screen for your page. Change the old title to your new title and /or change the Link in the right sidebar to your new URL. Save your changes by clicking the big red ‘Save’ button in the top right. Then click on the View Page link that appears in the bottom left of the editing screen. This will take you to the public website so you can view your page with your new title and/or new URL.

Find bad links. Next, you need to find all of the pages that contain links to your page. You can use the Search function on the public website to find these pages.

• Remember, at the beginning of this process, when you saved the old URL of your page? Copy that URL, click on the magnifying glass icon in the top left of your page, and paste the URL into the search box that appears. Press Enter to search.
• All of the pages that have links to your page will appear in the search results. Some of those pages have a link in their page content—the main body of the page. Others have a link because they have your page assigned as a Related page, as part of a Topic Set, or as the Featured item in an Exhibit.

Fix bad links. Now, you need to edit each page in the search results to fix the links that point to your page, and save the changes. For each search result:

• Right-click on the search result’s title and from the dropdown choose to open that search result in a new tab or window. (Exactly how this works depends on your browser.) Go to that tab or window if your browser doesn’t open it automatically.
• Read through the page to find any links to your original page.
• If your page appears as a Related page, as part of a Topic Set, or as the Featured item in an Exhibit or Activity, you do not need to edit the links (WordPress will update them for you) but you do need to edit the page (from the Edit Page link in the black bar along the top edge) and immediately save it by clicking on the red Save button. When WordPress has finished saving, click on the View Page link (in bottom left or in top black tool bar) to return to the public website.
• If your page appears as one or more links in the text of the page, you will need to edit the page and update each link manually before saving the page.
  • Edit the page (from the Edit Page link in the black bar along the top edge).
  • Find a link that you need to fix.
  • Highlight the whole link text by triple-clicking on it, then press Delete or Backspace to remove the entire link.
  • Now you can insert the correct new link using the WordPress Link tool.
    • Hover your cursor at the place where you want the link to appear and click to put your cursor into the text.
    • Click on the link tool in the popup editing toolbar (it looks like a stylized chain link, to the right of the Bold and Italic tools). A search box will popup that says, “Search or type URL”.
    • Start typing the new title of your page. Keep typing until your page appears in the list below the search box; when it appears, click on it and WordPress will insert the correct new link.
  • Sometimes a page will include more than one link to your original page. Repeat the process above to correct each link.
• Save the page by clicking on the big red Save button in the top right sidebar. Then click on the View Page link (in bottom left or in top black tool bar). This will take you to the public website so you can view this search results page with your corrected link(s).
• Close the tab or window to go back to your search result, and repeat this whole process to fix any links on the next search result.

Once you have fixed all links to your changed page in each of the search results, you are done.