Oh no! I set up my website but it says Not Found
Published on January 28, 2014
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
Has this been your experience?
Wordpress was originally set up to be a blogging platform only. As it grew, they added resources so you can turn it into a website if you want. They didn't really change the original set up though, so when you first go into your wordpress site, the default home page (called front page) is set to be the blog.
It is going to act like a blog and will tell you it can't find any of your posts. Now, when you think you haven't actually made a post yet, that seems pretty reasonable. Yet people still think it means there is something wrong with their site.
Let's change this
You can do one of two things. You can write a post and that will appear on your front page instead of the 404 or Not Found message, or you can set a static page.
A static page means you will have a front page that works like a normal page, nothing will be updated on it until you go in to make the updates yourself.
If you decide you want a static page as the home page, then there are a couple of steps you need to take.
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Step 1. Go into the admin area and find Pages on your menu (it's near the top). Add 2 new pages. Give one the title you want for your home page, such as welcome or home. Give the other a blog name. This could be blog or articles, posts, or whatever you feel fits with the overall theme of your site.
Step 2. Once they have both been created, go back to your menu. Find Appearnace then customise and click on that.
It will open to a new page with a menu on the left.
This is where you can change the site name and the tagline (Just another wordpress theme is the current tagline).
Step 3. At the bottom of this menu will be an option called Static Front Page. Click this.
Step 4 Choose the 'A static page' option and a small menu will appear below.
Step 5.Front page: Choose the page you have decided to set up as your front/home page.
Step 6.Posts page: choose the page you have created to be the new blog page.
Step 7. Click the save button at the top of the menu.
Done.
You have now set a new front page and blog page. Now go and take a look at your websie in a new window.
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