How To: Use a Wordpress Page as my Homepage

byPjGermain

15K followers

Updated 8 years ago

Okay, I've written a brief article on the differences between Pages and Posts and the pros and cons of each:

See last portion of this older article:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/pjgermain/blog/per...

Typically, Wordpress is setup to show your latest posts on your "Default" homepage. Because, it's new activity and fresh content. This is good for search engine optimization (SEO) as the search engines love dynamic websites that are frequently and consistently updated - you know this from your WA training, right? (this is where you should be nodding, "yes, Peej.")

Okay, but there are times - perhaps temporarily or perhaps permanently that you'll want to have Wordpress use a specific page that you've built as your homepage instead. (You can link to your recent blog Posts via your navigation menu.)

While some themes are built with some cute customization to enable this quickly and you may have a WP theme (or template) that does it. There's a way that Wordpress will do it for you from the default install.

Login to your Wordpress Dashboard and click the Pages or hover over the PAGES option in the left menu.

1. Click on Add New.
2. Give the page a title – something like, “Home” or you can use keywords.
3. Create the content for your home page just as you would a blog post or any other page.
4. Click the Publish button.
5. Stay on the Pages functions.
6. Click Add New again (to add another page).
7. Title this one “Blog” or "Recent Posts" or "Tips" (or whatever you want to call the page that your recent posts appear on).
8. You don’t need to have any Page Content for this one. Leave it blank.
9. Click the Publish button.

Now, you're ready to inform your Wordpress website where to set your Homepage and your recent posts:

1. In the Settings option on the left navigation select Reading.
2. At the top of the Reading option, in the upper-right-hand corner, you'll see a "Front page displays" option similar to this:

To change your homepage from your most recent posts (your website's "landing page") simply click the second radio button "A static page" and select the newly created "Home" or "homepage" from the drop-down menu next to "Front page:"

Also, change the second drop-down menu next to "Posts page" to the newly created "Recent posts" or "Blog" or whatever you called the second blank page you created.

Lastly, click Save Change.(bottom button.)

And you're done! View your website and check it out. This can be changed anytime.

You'll also notice that on this page you can change how many of your recent blog posts are revealed to website visitors and how many are available to newly subscribed RSS members. (Syndicate feeds show the most recent option).

Below that is the Full Text or Summary option. ( I recommend summary option, this only shows a few sentences and forces the reader to visit your website to read the full article - more chances they will see your ads)

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

pj