Learn how to create a static WordPress home page.
Typically, most websites have a home page that acts as the virtual “reception desk” of your business and greets all visitors who arrive on your site via the front door.
The front page of your site is important, because it is generally the first thing a visitor sees when they arrive on your site if they type in your domain name in their web browser, or navigate to your website from a search engine or directory listing.
The main content can also serve as a landing page to attract your visitors’ attention, let your visitors know who you are, what you do and also to help them find their way to important areas on the site.
In a static website, the home and its content are normally intrinsically part of the home file (e.g. www.mywebsite.com/index.html), so if you want visitors to see different content on your home when they arrive on your site via the main URL (i.e. www.mywebsite.com/), you would normally have to edit the content of the page itself, or log into your server and change file names around.
WordPress makes everything easier for users, especially if you don’t want to mess around with stuff like editing web code in server files.
By default, WordPress acts as a “blog” and presents a changing list of recently-published posts, with the headlines and an excerpt of the content displayed for each article published, and links pointing to separate post which contain the full article (e.g. “click here to learn more” …).
With WordPress, however, you are given the flexibility to create as many posts as you want and then specify which of these posts you want designated as the home page of your site.
Better still, you can also replace the home page of your website as often as you like, without having to edit any of its content, simply by creating a number of different posts you can point to as the site’s static page, and then selecting the post you want to show as the main post.
This feature can be very useful. For example, you may want visitors arriving on your site’s home page to:
- Watch a video presentation
- Read an important announcement on a separate post before navigating to the rest of your site
- Promote a different “book of the month” each month, or “product of the month”
- Promote seasonal information (e.g. a “Season’s Greetings” themed offer as the new year approaches)
- View different sections of your e-commerce catalogue at regularly-spaced intervals (e.g. daily or special occasions (e.g. sports events in your region)
- View information on “split-test” sales pages (create two or more sales pages with similar content to test different page elements, e.g. pages with or without a sales video, price points, different font sizes, etc., then display one version as the home page for a specific period of time and then replace with the other version for the same period of time to see which post ultimately converts better)
- Or even land on a “pre-launch” post if your site hasn’t officially launched yet!
This tutorial shows you how to easily create a static home front in WordPress.
Step-By-Step Tutorial To Create WordPress Home Page
To set any post in your site to display as the Home Post, go to your admin menu and select Settings > Reading …
In the Reading Settings screen, do the following:
- Front page displays: select “A static page …”
- Front: Click on the drop down menu and choose the post you want to set as the Home Post (you can choose any of the pages showing in the drop down menu)
Click the Save button after selecting your options to update the settings and set your new WordPress home page …
After saving, click on Visit the Site (tip: right-click and open the link in a new tab to open the home page in a new browser window without leaving your WP dashboard) …
The post you have specified in Front displays > A static page should now show as your site’s home.
You can specify a different home post for your website as many times as you want, just by repeating the above process and selecting another page …
Your newly-selected posts will become the new home page immediately …
When you select any post to become the homepage of your site, WordPress reassigns the domain root to the URL of the post.
What this means is that if you select the post with the following URL your site’s home page:
http://yourdomain.com/grandmas-favorite-chicken-recipes
The above post will automatically be given the following URL for as long as it remains the site’s home page:
http://yourdomain.com/
Notes:
If you type the “old” URL of the post you have specified as the new home page into your browser, WordPress will direct you to the home page.
Also, if you select another post as the home page, WordPress reassigns your old home page back to its original URL …
Congratulations! Now you know how to set any post as the WordPress home page.
Has this tutorial helped you? Did we leave something important out? Feel free to add your thoughts below and share this tutorial with your friends.
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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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