We get a lot of questions about using a static homepage with a WordPress Website.  Here’s all you have to do.  First make a page called Home or Welcome.  Insert the content you want into your page, pictures, whatever you want.  Then save it or publish it.  Next create another page called Blog or News and save that also.  Now go to the Settings section of your WordPress Dashboard and click on Reading.

There you will find an area  labeled “Front page displays”.  Select “A Static Page” and then using the drop down selections choose Home or Welcome as your Home Page and Blog or News as your Posts Page.  Now your Home Page will be the static page you chose rather than the blog.  Your blog will now come up as your newly saved Blog or News page.  You now have a static Home page that people will land on when going to your domain and you still have the ability to post news and announcements or a blog.

You can take it even farther by creating a slide show at the top of your page which will give your new home page a more custom look.  A simple way to do this is to install the NexGen Gallery plugin along with the NexGen Smooth Gallery plugin.  Create a gallery of photos or graphics in the NexGen Gallery and then use the Smooth gallery to display them at the top of your home page.  Here’s an example.

You can even go farther with a custom page template and even add  something like the Featured Content Gallery plugin that will also give you a slide show but it’s images are linked to specific posts or a category.

WordPress is NOT just Blog Software it is a website engine with many built in features and even more add on features.  It can be used for many different type of websites.  We would be glad to help you with yours.  Contact Us!

Lots of websites, especially business sites, prefer having a fixed static home page rather that a blog style home page.  One that displays important information about the business so visitors see things like services offered, contact info or anything else that the business owner want everyone to see right off the bat.  This is easy to do with WordPress and yet still have the blog functionality that these sites can label News or Announcements.  All you have to do is this….

Create a page and call it “Home” or what ever you want really.  Now add the content you want to display in that page as your home page and publish it.  Also create a page called “News” or “Blog” or anything you want and leave it blank but publish that too.  In your WordPress Dashboard under settings click on Reading and there you have the ability to select a static page to use as your front page which will be your Home Page and also a selection for choosing a page as your Posts Page which will be your Blog page or News page.

So now your WordPress driven website will have a fixed Home Page and still have the Blog functionality on a seperate page.  So your posts can be used as announcements, news, articles or whatever you can think of.  It’s that easy.

Here’s an example  of a WordPress website that uses a static Home Page and a seperate News or Posts Page.  http://coffee-works.com