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How do you set up a static front page on a wordpress website?

by JustaWizard
10 replies
I've read in a number of threads people saying that they do this - I'm pretty sure I "get" what they mean, but I"m not 100$ sure as I've only gotten into using Wordpress as a website in the past couple of months.

So, how do you do it, and what's the reason/benefit/purpose for doing so?

THANKS!

David
#front #page #set #static #website #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Sheryl Polomka
    You create your page. Then go into your WP admin and go into 'settings' then 'reading'

    There is an option there to select a static page for your home page, choose that option and then you choose which page you want as your home page.

    You will then need to set up another page called 'blog' or something else if you prefer and select that as the page you want your blog posts to show up (that's if you're planning on having the blog on there also)

    I guess the benefit is if you want a particular page to always be on your home page. Perhaps if you're doing a review or a sniper site you might want your main page or post to always show on the home page.
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  • Profile picture of the author Leanne King
    People often want a static page so the wp site looks more like a static website rather than a blog (with posts cycling through). If you want to do this it's easy. Just write a page (or a post if you want) and publish it. Then go to Settings/Reading and choose the radio button for a static front page and choose the page (or post) you just wrote from the drop down menu. Click to save changes and you are done.

    All the best
    Leanne
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    • Profile picture of the author JustaWizard
      Yeah, that's basically what I want to do with my sites because they're not blogs and I don't want the endless scrolling feature, but need a CMS because I do lots of pages.

      I want my main page to be a static page, so the navigation will be your typical "contact" etc.,...

      .....so does that mean that all my other pages/posts are basically "reachable" by someone at my home page by clicking on the categories? - i.e., how do I get it to function like an HTML website so people can go to any article they want?-- is it done as I've described, or...?

      THANKS!
      David
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      • Profile picture of the author Jim Carpenter
        Thanks Leanne, I haven't gotten to that part of your book yet.

        jim
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  • Profile picture of the author Sheryl Polomka
    You can put a 'pages' widget in your sidebar to give a list of all the pages, or you can use a theme that has a navigation menu across the top listing all your pages. The problem with the navigation bar is if you have too many pages they wont all fit.

    There is a plugin that you can use - just trying to remember off the top of my head, I think its called 'my link order' or something like that - where you can set it up to only list the pages you want, you add the pages as links and then have those links showing in the widget in the sidebar.
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  • Profile picture of the author Quentin
    You really should watch the Wordpress videos at wordpress TV.

    Here is the video on cms with wordpress.

    Creating a static front page for your blog WordPress.tv

    Here is how some of mine look that have static from pages.

    MP3 Sound Stream Software Streaming Audio made Easy
    Making Online Business Easy
    MSI Prompt audio book recording Teleprompter Software

    Once you get a lot of pages you can use a plugin to sort the child pages. There are two good ones. NRS Folding pages which you can see on The IM Club and a windows style one you can see here.

    Business web marketing for small to medium businesses.

    Quentin
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  • Profile picture of the author Jean Patton
    I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post my blog link(s) here so Admin, I'm sure you'll let me know.

    Since I started using a WP salespage theme (couple of wks ago), I've been 'playing' with it myself and have written a post on what I'm learning and one thing being creating a menu since there aren't any side tabs.

    Here's my post:
    Creating A Site Menu | Jean Patton's Online Marketing Resource

    Also, when I first started I created my static page as a post instead of a page. When I realized my mistake, I wrote a post on that too along with editing my Error 404 page to CMA for any future mistakes ;0)

    Here's my first post on that:
    A Free WordPress Template | Jean Patton's Online Marketing Resource

    Hope it's helpful!

    Jean
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    • Profile picture of the author Minisite Nerd
      Originally Posted by Jean Patton View Post

      I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post my blog link(s) here so Admin, I'm sure you'll let me know.

      Since I started using a WP salespage theme (couple of wks ago), I've been 'playing' with it myself and have written a post on what I'm learning and one thing being creating a menu since there aren't any side tabs.

      Here's my post:
      Creating A Site Menu | Jean Patton's Online Marketing Resource

      Also, when I first started I created my static page as a post instead of a page. When I realized my mistake, I wrote a post on that too along with editing my Error 404 page to CMA for any future mistakes ;0)

      Here's my first post on that:
      A Free WordPress Template | Jean Patton's Online Marketing Resource

      Hope it's helpful!

      Jean


      With my MiniSitePress Theme I made the navbar list the pages I want it to, then I placed that at the bottom of the page, although it can easily be moved to the top of the page.

      If you are using WordPress as a CMS, you may want to try the PageMash plugin which will let you hide pages. Also look for a page widget or if you want to get fancy you can hand code.

      PageMash will do the trick though and allow you to take pages off the navbar so only the ones you want visitors to see show up there.
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      • Profile picture of the author JustaWizard
        To all of you who've posted replies, thank you very much - I've hit the thanks button on you all for your helpful replies.

        It would appear that I'll need to review each and all of your suggestions more carefully, and then play around with the theme...

        THE MAIN THING I'm shooting for is ease of visitor navigation... ostensibly we web surfers are notoriously "impatient" but the point is that if it's work for someone on my site to find an article, they'll leave.

        SECONDARILY is my need for the CMS to handle a large amount of content, which I think of as articles because my sites are informational in nature with collections of articles...

        So with the above in mind and after sleeping on it, here's what I've come up with:

        TOP NAVIGATION will be for my main pages, with a static home page for all who arrive at the site, and I'll use drop down navigation for sub-pages where that makes sense.

        CATEGORIES IN THE SIDEBAR: If I have 10 categories (e.g., main topics such as "stage fright" "presentation skills" "seminar logistics" and so on, with let's say 10 articles in each category, then I've neatly arranged 100 posts/articles....

        ...and that should make it easy on the visitor to

        1. Quickly see what the site is about

        2. Quickly find what they're looking for

        Do you have any feedback on this or suggestions for improvement?

        The last large article site I built I did in DreamWeaver creating a template and as you can imagine, a 100 page site built this way is much more difficult to create navigation.....

        the site I'm referring to is Public Speaking Training so you can see what I mean and get an idea of where I am/was, and know where I'm heading.

        THANKS! :-)

        David
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  • Profile picture of the author Leanne King
    David you can do a number of things - here's a few. Generally, posts are assigned to categories not pages (but if you really want pages then there is a plugin that will allow you to assign pages as well to categories). To allow navigation for your visitors you can just use the Categories widget in your sidebar to show your categories, the pages to show your Pages (you can also use plugins like page mash or page order or hide page and exclude pages to change the order they appear in and whether to display or not if you don't want to fiddle about with code). If you post regularly you might also like to use the Recent Posts widget and/or related posts plugin/s to guide your visitors to your good stuff. If you want to really customize your navigation then use the multi level navigation plugin or navigation list plugin

    That's enough to get you started for now

    Leanne
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