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How easy is it to "strip" out a wordpress theme so I can have a salespage as the homepage?

by Ashley Gable
19 replies
As the title asked how easy is it to strip out all the sidebars, footer, header and everything and then replace it with my own sale page css?

I have a blog that was installed in the root directory, now I want to add a sales page as my homepage.

All the "sales letter" themes I have seen are what I need. I have a particular style of sales page that I use.

But is it even possible? Can I do all that and then set it to be the homepage?

Thanks in advance, hopefully someone here knows about this kinda thing
#easy #homepage #salespage #strip #theme #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author nmarley
    I'm sure there's more than one way to do it, but here's how I'd go about it:

    First, create a new WordPress "page" to be your homepage. Then, under the "page attributes"->"template", select "no sidebars".

    Then go to the WP settings area -> reading and there should be a "Front Page Displays" section. Select the Static Page radio button and select your page that you just created as the front page.

    Now, this part's where I'm not 100%, but I believe your page should now belong to a CSS class which is the name of your page. So, for example if you named your page above "helloworld", then the main content area of your page should have the CSS class "helloworld".

    So you can add customizations to your "helloworld" class in styles.css (or whatever the css file is called). For example, you could set the headings to not display. Not sure about removing the footer for just the one page.

    But you could also modify the styles.css file to remove that too if you didn't want it for any of the site.
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    • Profile picture of the author sparkingproducts
      Hey AshleyAA,

      The way you accomplish this is different for every theme. I can help you out with this if you want. I'm a specialized wordpress developer. Just PM me if you're interested, thanks.
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      • Profile picture of the author Ashley Gable
        Thanks guys!

        I appreciate the help, I actually found a plugin that does it though! Its fairly cheap but it does exactly what I need and is pretty easy too.

        thanks again for the help

        Ashley
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        • Profile picture of the author theohanden
          I needed the same. Have you seen the canvas theme from woothemes? It's completely customizable - awesome might be what you need as well
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        • Profile picture of the author alternative-answer
          Originally Posted by AshleyAA View Post

          Thanks guys!

          I appreciate the help, I actually found a plugin that does it though! Its fairly cheap but it does exactly what I need and is pretty easy too.

          thanks again for the help

          Ashley
          Can you point me to the plugin please. Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Macksheppard
    You can get a plug in for that. I just purchased Wordpress Sales Page, Landing Page, Squeeze Page And Minisite Theme | WP Spire (not an affiliate link) The have very good documentation, video tutorials and loads of templates.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
    An even easier way to go, is to create your sales page as a static HTML file (say using DreamWeaver, FrontPage etc) and then copy it up to your blogs root directory and save it as index.html

    Now when a visitor hits your site, your sales page will be shown first, but if someones types in www.yoursitesite.com.index.php, then will still access the blog..

    Hope this helps

    Bruce
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    • Profile picture of the author sharris203
      Originally Posted by Bruce Hearder View Post

      An even easier way to go, is to create your sales page as a static HTML file (say using DreamWeaver, FrontPage etc) and then copy it up to your blogs root directory and save it as index.html

      Now when a visitor hits your site, your sales page will be shown first, but if someones types in www.yoursitesite.com.index.php, then will still access the blog..

      Hope this helps

      Bruce
      That doesn't work for me. Even when using a .htaccess hack if there are index.html and index.php files, I can never load the index.php.

      My solution is to use a custom page template with everything (header, the loop, sidebar, footer) removed.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author missm2m
      hello....installation failed. it's blank. ?
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  • Profile picture of the author Flaura78
    Just what I wanted to know... Have been stuck for a week because of this. Thanks for the info
    Signature

    Online Marketing Agencies let you down? Leave it to Laura!
    Customized automated online marketing sales funnels for your business.

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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    1. The index.html "solution" will never work. You can NOT have 2 index files in the same directory!

    2. If you are like the OP:
    I have a particular style of sales page that I use.
    then look at the "no optin..." link in my sig: you will get a guide that tells you exactly what to do.
    Signature

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    • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
      Of course you can have 2 index files in a directory.

      HTML uses index.html, wordpress uses index.php

      When the server runs, its will look to see if an index.html files exists, if it doesn't then, it will look for a index.php file.

      So the index.html file has preference over the .php version..

      Bruce
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      • Profile picture of the author sharris203
        Originally Posted by Bruce Hearder View Post

        Of course you can have 2 index files in a directory.

        HTML uses index.html, wordpress uses index.php

        When the server runs, its will look to see if an index.html files exists, if it doesn't then, it will look for a index.php file.

        So the index.html file has preference over the .php version..

        Bruce
        On my server on Host Gator index.php had priority over index.html
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  • Profile picture of the author webfighter
    Can't you just edit the index.php or home.php already there?
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  • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
    The default/normal setting is that .html takes preference over .php

    But if your server is configured differently, then by inserting this line into your .htaccess file you can change the preference..

    DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

    Take care

    bruce
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  • Profile picture of the author necoo
    I appreciate the help, I actually found a plugin that does it though! Its fairly cheap but it does exactly what I need and is pretty easy too.
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  • Profile picture of the author sharris203
    Honestly this is extremely easy. It's just a few steps, free too.
    1. Make a .php file name anything (squeezepage.php for example) using this code and upload it into your theme's main folder
    HTML Code:
    <?php
/*
Template Name: Snarfer
*/
?>

[your html goes here]
    2. Create a new page in Wordpress, leave it blank, but under the page template dropdown choose the template name from the first step

    3. Under Settings > Reading, choose the page you created in step 2 as the front page
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