Do you know of any wordpress plugin that can do this?

Usually your home page is index.php. If you put a static index.html page on your server it should override your wp home.

You don't need to make a html page for this, it can be done inside Wordpress as it is.

First make a page for your front landing page - call it something like Front and enter your content into it as normal.

Make another page called Blog (or anything else) for your regular posts. Don't enter any content, just publish it as is.

In the General Settings area under Reading set your front page to Static and choose your front page made earlier. Then set your posts page to the second page you made, e.g. Blog from above.

Save the changes and you're all set!

Here is a video on how to set up a static front page.

Creating a static front page for your blog WordPress.tv

Quentin

Install WP in a folder. I.e. yoursite.com/blog.

Then you just link to the blog from the home page and add a static link back to the home page within the blog.

You could probably install the blog in the root folder and put the index.html (or .htm) file in the same folder. Most (all?) hosts will display the .html file first if it exists.

Even if that's not the case, you could edit the .htaccess file to force the issue.

Your static page can be edited with any editor you wish. Create the look anyway you want. It will not however tie to wp-content/themes unless you create the calls to css in the header of the html of the index or static page and you would have to enter the the theme url manually so your static page knows where to pull them from.

Idea- open the index or home page you have now , view the source code, copy and paste as new page in your editor/ftp program i.e. dreamweaver. Then make the changes you want and save that as your new index. Sounds complicated but a simple 10 minutes job, I just aint no teacher and suck at splainen it :p

I'm probably not understanding exactly what you want, but I think you're making this far too complicated.

Why can't you put all the elements of your html page into one in Wordpress and do the static page change? Then you wouldn't have any problem with the index.php file being overridden.

I'm not sure about a complete change of theme John, but I know there's a plugin to change headers doe different pages - Dynamic Headers, you can find it by searching the plugins.

If you want more than just a header change then you can make a page template with your desired theme and upload it as a template to use.

Are you wanting the static HTML file entirely standalone or the content to pull into the Wordpress theme?

If it is the first, then you really don't need to do anything other than save the file in your domain root as index.html. Then in your .htaccess file at the beginning, put

DirectoryIndex index.html

Now any time you go to your root domain, it will display that page.

But if you want specific content in your home page, there are a couple of ways you can do it.

Install and enable the TinyMCE plugin for Wordpress and set it so that it doesn't strip out all your formatting. Then take the content of the HTML file you created, create a new page in Wordpress and paste it in. The formatting should all remain the same. Then go to your Wordpress settings select that page as your default home page.

If there is more "stuff" in the HTML file that would get stripped out even using an editor, the next easiest thing to do is to add a file, home.php, to your Wordpress theme and put the content of your HTML file there . . . just the content portion of the file, it will still call the Wordpress theme header and footer.

I know NPC recommends that, but it's never made that much sense to me.

I just went back and read this. If that is happening, then just name the file myhomepage.html or something like that and set it as the default page in the htaccess.

Although if you have a Wordpress site, I think it's always better to work with Wordpress than fight against it. I would just create it as a page.

Yes, you just create a Wordpress page template and then select that template when you edit the Wordpress page. It can look like whatever you want as long as you include the content calls in the file.

Here is a tutorial in the Wordpress Codex on creating your own page templates

Probably the best way to do this is to create a page template for your home page like CMA01 says above.

Add that page template to your theme file. Then create your home page within WordPress and select your new page template from your page edit screen. (It's in a drop down on the right hand side under the "Publish" button.)

Set that new page as your static home page under your Settings --> Reading menu.

You can give that page template a unique CSS ID and then style the page completely differently from the rest of your WordPress theme. Just add the styling for that ID to your style.css file.

Another very easy way to get a static homepage with Wordpress is to create a new php file named home.php and add that to the current template directory. Wordpress will automatically use that file as the homepage. You can use all the Wordpress template tags, include the loop, or whatever you like.

This way you don't have to worry about changing any of the other template files or editing .htaccess to make index.html work.

Upload .html file, it will prioritze over index.php