In this Quick Guide, we’ll explain how to create a custom homepage for your WordPress site.
What a Custom WordPress Homepage Is
This idea of a custom WordPress homepage goes by some other names, including “dynamic front page” and “static front page” among others.
These terms all point to the same idea: rather than going with WordPress’s default of showing your most recent posts on your website’s homepage, you want to create a custom front page with content you define.
Wanting to create a custom front page in WordPress is common for business websites, which usually want their front pages to communicate the business’s marketing message, and drive people to desired activities like filling out a contact form or buying a product.
In this video and text Quick Guide, we’ll show you how to set a static home page in WordPress, and point you to our best advice for building a beautiful front page for your site.
How to Create a WordPress Static Front Page
To set a custom static homepage in WordPress, follow the steps in the video below:
And here’s a text guide to the same information:
5 Steps to Set a Custom WordPress Homepage
- Open the WordPress Customizer. I do that by going to “Appearance > Customize” in the left sidebar of the administration area.
- Once the Customizer opens, click on “Homepage Settings” to open the panel.
- Then, select, under “Your homepage displays,” the words “A static page.”
- Select the page you want to be your new homepage on the dropdown labeled “Homepage.”
- Select (or quickly create by clicking “Add New Page”) your “Blog” page to make that page the main page of your site’s blog section. That’s what WordPress means by the words “Posts page”: the page it’ll use as your blog section’s main page.
Another Option: Setting a Static Front Page in WordPress the “Old-Fashioned Way”
The way I most often recommend people set a custom homepage in WordPress is using the WordPress Customizer. That’s what we outline in the video and above. If you feel like rocking it old school, though, here’s another way to set a WordPress dynamic front page.
- Make a WordPress page for your posts page (the main page of your site’s blog section). Generally you’ll just make a page called, say, “Blog,” and not bother to set anything else there. Don’t worry about giving the page “content”; your theme will ignore it and will take care of the rest.
- In the administration area of your WordPress site, for go “Settings > Reading.”
- On that page with the heading “Reading Settings,” you’ll see at the very top the text “Your homepage displays.” The default value for a homepage that displays blog posts is “Your latest
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This article was written by David Hayes and originally published on WPShout.