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How to give static pages on site same look and feel as WP pages

by deertrail
19 replies
I want to setup a website similar to Rich Schefren's Starting Online Business | Make Money Online | Internet Marketing that is a mix of static and dynamic pages. I want the blog to be in its own directory at /blog/, but for the static pages like home, about, and so on to have the same look and feel -- the same WP theme. Like Rich has it at his site.

Is it just a matter of uploading WP to /blog/ and then having all my static pages use the same CSS as the blog so that the static pages have the same headers, footers, etc.?
#rich #schefren #setup #website
  • Profile picture of the author Colin Theriot
    Wordpress has the ability to create either pages, or posts. Pages are for "timeless" content like About, contact, or static home pages. Most themes allow you to create a static homepage simply by creating a page and in the Settings, setting that page to be the home page instead of your most recent posts.
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    • Profile picture of the author deertrail
      Originally Posted by Colin Theriot View Post

      Wordpress has the ability to create either pages, or posts. Pages are for "timeless" content like About, contact, or static home pages. Most themes allow you to create a static homepage simply by creating a page and in the Settings, setting that page to be the home page instead of your most recent posts.
      Ah, that's good to know.

      And if I wanted my blog in its own directory, like /blog/, and I wanted static pages on the root domain to look just like the pages within /blog/, is it best to achieve this by scraping the source code from the blog pages, or by setting up two instances of WP: one in /blog/ and one in root? For static pages, I will need more than one: home, about, products page, etc.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Lenaghan
        Originally Posted by deertrail View Post

        And if I wanted my blog in its own directory, like /blog/, and I wanted static pages on the root domain to look just like the pages within /blog/, is it best to achieve this by scraping the source code from the blog pages, or by setting up two instances of WP: one in /blog/ and one in root? For static pages, I will need more than one: home, about, products page, etc.
        That's what I do - scrape the source code from a blog page and just edit in the content for the static page manually. I don't like installing two instances of Wordpress because it just adds overhead to the site since they will both be making database calls, running the PHP code, etc.

        It depends on how many static pages there are, but if there aren't too many I just find this easier than dealing with pages and posts, especially if they're in two different directories.

        Plus, I sometimes like having some of the pages outside of the Wordpress structure so if I don't want them showing up in feeds or on the sitemap, I can be sure I won't screw something up and not exclude them properly.

        John
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      • Profile picture of the author Colin Theriot
        Originally Posted by deertrail View Post

        Ah, that's good to know.

        And if I wanted my blog in its own directory, like /blog/, and I wanted static pages on the root domain to look just like the pages within /blog/, is it best to achieve this by scraping the source code from the blog pages, or by setting up two instances of WP: one in /blog/ and one in root? For static pages, I will need more than one: home, about, products page, etc.
        Then you would simple create the WP site as normal, create the static pages you wanted, and then make sure all your blog posts are set to category "blog" and then make your permalinks be /%category%/%postname%/

        All your static pages would appear in the root and your blog posts would appear under /blog.
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  • Profile picture of the author ajchaffers
    if you want the pages that are part of your blog to go to /blog you can add /blog/ in the settings / permalink section then all the blog posts will start with /blog. works great.
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    • Profile picture of the author BigDaddys101
      I would normally:
      Originally Posted by Colin Theriot View Post

      Then you would simple create the WP site as normal, create the static pages you wanted, and then make sure all your blog posts are set to category "blog" and then make your permalinks be /%category%/%postname%/

      All your static pages would appear in the root and your blog posts would appear under /blog.

      But this might be considered better practices:
      Originally Posted by ajchaffers View Post

      if you want the pages that are part of your blog to go to /blog you can add /blog/ in the settings / permalink section then all the blog posts will start with /blog. works great.
      And this makes the will work to you just have to make your permalinks
      /%pagename%/%postname%/       (idk if its pagename)
      Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath View Post

      Wrong.

      When you designate a Page (any Page created in WP) as your "posts page" in Options > Reading, it will act as if you had your blog in a subfolder:
      example.com/your-page-slug
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  • Profile picture of the author jcoolbaugh
    There's an easier way to do it. Simply create pages titled Home, About, Contact, and Blog. Then go into your Reading settings, set your home page to display a static page, and choose Home. Then choose Blog for your posts page.
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    • Profile picture of the author Colin Theriot
      Originally Posted by jcoolbaugh View Post

      There's an easier way to do it. Simply create pages titled Home, About, Contact, and Blog. Then go into your Reading settings, set your home page to display a static page, and choose Home. Then choose Blog for your posts page.
      Yeah, but that won't make all blog posts appear under /blog. It will just make a page at /blog have the new posts on it. The way I read it, he still wanted all the blog posts to appear to be inside /blog as well.

      EDIT: According to others who are more knowledgeable, the above is incorrect. My bad.
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      • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
        Originally Posted by Colin Theriot View Post

        Yeah, but that won't make all blog posts appear under /blog. It will just make a page at /blog have the new posts on it.
        Wrong.

        When you designate a Page (any Page created in WP) as your "posts page" in Options > Reading, it will act as if you had your blog in a subfolder:
        example.com/your-page-slug
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        • Profile picture of the author Colin Theriot
          Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath View Post

          Wrong.

          When you designate a Page (any Page created in WP) as your "posts page" in Options > Reading, it will act as if you had your blog in a subfolder:
          example.com/your-page-slug
          Huh. How about that. I would have to say that my only defense is that possibly, at some point in Wordpress's past, this must not have been the case.

          At least I hope so, because I swear I've been through this on a client site back
          when I used to do this sort of thing. Admittedly, I don't usually make static sites myself much anymore. I should have double checked.

          I have not tested again, but I will take your word for it, as that's how it always *should* have behaved, and Wordpress tends to evolve that way. I rescind and thank you for correcting me, Istvan!
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    • Profile picture of the author deertrail
      Originally Posted by jcoolbaugh View Post

      There's an easier way to do it. Simply create pages titled Home, About, Contact, and Blog. Then go into your Reading settings, set your home page to display a static page, and choose Home. Then choose Blog for your posts page.
      I guess the only drawback to this approach is that every post would have to be under the "blog" category, so I couldn't use categories the way one "normally" does with WP. Guess I could use tags instead...
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      • Profile picture of the author jcoolbaugh
        Originally Posted by deertrail View Post

        I guess the only drawback to this approach is that every post would have to be under the "blog" category, so I couldn't use categories the way one "normally" does with WP. Guess I could use tags instead...
        You most certainly can. The only thing that changes is the page your posts display on. You can still use categories and tags just as you would with a straight wp blog
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      • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
        Originally Posted by deertrail View Post

        I guess the only drawback to this approach is that every post would have to be under the "blog" category, so I couldn't use categories the way one "normally" does with WP. Guess I could use tags instead...
        You are wrong about this.

        The built-in method to use a WP Page as your "frontpage" and another WP Page as your "post page" has nothing to do with categories.

        Please, visit your own WP admin panel > Settings > Reading and see the options you have there. Note: you MUST have already created 2 Pages (e.g. one title Home, another titled Blog) to be able to select the options. That's all.

        The possibility to do what you want is there in WP out of the box, you just need to get familiar with its features and use them properly
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        • Profile picture of the author deertrail
          Ah, you're right... just set up categories no problem. Thanks again!
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    ^^ what she says.

    You guys are over-complicating it... or you are not familiar with WP although you like to talk about it
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    You are welcome, Colin

    Re: your earlier experience... the only thing I can think about would be the WP versions when this possibility (to use a Page as frontpage) wasn't built-in and you had to do all kind of tweaks to get the desired result. I don't remember exactly how it worked but it's quite possible your memories are from that period.
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    • Profile picture of the author deertrail
      Thanks for the replies everyone, this has been very helpful!
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  • Profile picture of the author deannatroupe
    Are you trying to get pages outside of the blog to look like the blog?
    Are you working with something that is /blog, but you want a home.html page to look like the blog pages?

    This is how I accomplished that on my website, I just went to the theme that I wanted the outside page to look like and used the stylesheet from that theme.

    So the code would look like this:
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.(yourdomainhere).com/wp-content/themes/neoclassical/style.css" type="text/css"> Only you would replace the (yourdomainhere) part with your actual domain name and the neoclassical part with whatever theme you are trying to copy on the other page.

    I hope this answers your question. Feel free to pm me if that's not what you were trying to accomplish.
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  • Profile picture of the author jcoolbaugh
    FYI - You're not making a Blog category... you're making a Blog PAGE.
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