WordPress, which started as a blogging software – and is still a very good one – has developed in so many different ways. Now it has become very practical to use WordPress for your standard website and indeed this is what rosemariegant.com is based on of course. However changing the set up so that you come into the site on a regular front page that stays the same, rather than seeing the latest blog post could be tricky. With the latest WordPress and a couple of tricks, however, it has become relatively easy.
The first thing to do is create the front page you wish to use for your site. This will be your ‘static’ page i.e. it won’t display any recent posts on the site but still remains easy to change by editing it through the dashboard. Most people call this page their ‘Home’ page, so ‘Home’ would be a good title for it.
Once you have created the page, go to Settings/Reading from your WordPress Dashboard and next to “Front page displays” select ‘a static page’ and choose your page from the dropdown list.
Now if you look at your site you will probably see two ‘home’ page links but one of those will go to your static page and, depending on how your template was written, you logo at the top will go to that static home page too.
But where are the blog posts?
So we have our front page, but now the blog posts have disappeared! Well, not so. They are still in your database just not displaying at the moment.
Create another *page* (not a post) and call it “Blog” or whatever it is you want to call it. You need to type something in the body of the page but it doesn’t matter too much what it is as you won’t see it. Just put “the page to hold blog posts” for example.
Save the page.
Go back to Settings/Reading and set the Front page displays/posts page to the blog page you have just created.
So now you have your static home page for the site and your blog posts displaying. However there is still that annoying second Home link which can be confusing. To get rid of this simply go to your pages and make your new home page a sub-page of another page on your site. You can do this by using the Quick Edit button and then choosing a ‘parent’ page from the box on the right. Make sure you save it.
Hey presto – a static home page, a blog page and no spurious pages linking to odd places!
If you would like to follow a video of this technique, there is a very good one over at WordPress Tutorials – Business Blogging 101.
November 2010 update: since the wonderful WordPress 3 with its flexible menu system, fiddling about with pages as outlined above is no longer necessary. If you’ve come to this page because you are still running an older version of WordPress, I do urge you to upgrade. It will be well worth it.