wordpress: change your home page to a custom page

so chaunce asked if i could do a small tutorial for a wordpress (wp) question he had… i’m honored that he asked me to do so… actually, i think i might start to write a bunch of tutorials that i’ve learned along the way…

and here… we… go…

this tutorial deals with the user wanting a site with a blog and pages, but the user wants a specific page to be the front page, not the blog (something similar to andy’s site, but not — since he doesn’t want his site to be full-on wordpress)

*note, i suck at technical writing, but i’ll try to fake it… i’m open to suggestions/comments for future tutorials

there’s a few things you’ll need to do before logging into the wp account:

i’m assuming that you’ll want this front page (and other pages) to have the same look and feel as your blog pages…

so open up explorer and make a copy of index.php — rename the copy whatever you want (i renamed it to “page2.php”)

copy index.php and rename copy to page2.php
copy index.php and rename copy to page2.php

next, let’s edit page2.php…

add the following text to the top of the code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: page2
*/
?>
open page2.php and add text to top of code
open page2.php and add text to top of code

i put “page2” but i’m pretty sure you can put whatever you want here — i’ll show ya where this displays in a few steps…

ok go ahead and upload page2.php to your server — should i assume that you know where to put it? (i guess i should’ve done a “getting started” tutorial first…)

now log into the admin and go to Pages > Add New

choose the page title wisely, this’ll be your blog’s address

note where it shows template to the right side — this is where that “page2” came into play

name the new page and change the template to "page2"
name the new page and change the template to "page2"

click Publish

now go to Settings > Reading

change “Front page displays” to “A static page (select below)”:

* choose one of your (already created) pages for the “Front page”
* change “Posts page” to “blog”

click Save Changes

update Settings > Reading page
update Settings > Reading page

that should be it! if you go to the home page of your site, you’ll see it’s now your chosen page — and then if you append “/blog” to your domain, it’ll take you to the actual posts…

new home page
new home page
...and /blog page has all the blog posts
...and /blog page has all the blog posts

boom… you’re pregnant.

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