Creating a static front page for your blog
Published
January 13, 2009
If you’d rather have your landing page display something other than your latest blog posts, WordPress makes that easy. This video walks you through the process of setting up separate blog and front pages
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WordPress.tv 
January 17, 2009 at 5:37 pm |
What you’re saying works in theory – but there’s one problem: you can’t delete the default Blog or Home page.
The default Blog or Home page remains displayed and you end up with a dead page (or 2 homepages). I can’t find a way to delete it or change it into a static page, since it’s not listed in the Pages view at all.
So what happens is something like this: http://diamondintheruff.wordpress.com – I would like the Blog (or in some themes, Home) page to not be displayed at all.
I set the About page to be the default page, and the Blog/Updates to host the posts. But how do I get rid of the default Blog page?
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January 18, 2009 at 4:58 pm |
Ah yes, I see the problem. There’s a hack for this – we have an entry about it over at WordPress.com support. Hope that helps.
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January 18, 2009 at 5:24 pm |
The tip doesn’t work because the default home or blog page is not listed in the Edit Pages view – so there’s no way to change its attributes and hide it.
The easy fix was to use a theme that doesn’t have a default “Home” or “Blog” button – such as Redoable Lite or Ocean Mist.
Thank you for replying, though!
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January 20, 2009 at 10:20 am
Yes, I’m limited to choosing themes that don’t have a home tab hard coded in. Otherwise you end with two-home pages!
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January 27, 2009 at 9:07 pm
You can get rid of the extra “Home” on your blog by paying for WordPress.com’s custom CSS and using this for Ocean Mist:
#content .postwrapper .title h2 {
display: none;
}
You should be able to hide it in other themes if you can figure out the right CSS selector.
Scott
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January 17, 2009 at 8:23 pm |
Great video. Thanks for the tip!
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January 18, 2009 at 9:10 pm |
There’s also a problem specific to the “Blix” theme being used with a static front page. When you are on the Posts page, regardless of what it is called, the “Home” tab is highlighted in the NavBar.
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January 19, 2009 at 6:59 pm |
Why do my posts disappear when I do this????
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February 11, 2009 at 9:02 pm |
What do you mean by “disappear”? Your posts are deleted permanently when you try to define a static homepage?
I would guess what you mean is that your posts are not appearing anymore on your homepage. But that’s the whole point of doing this :-s You can still access your posts by simply clicking the “posts” page.
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February 12, 2009 at 7:03 pm |
Cool Information
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February 21, 2009 at 6:12 pm |
Like ‘prprofmv’, I too found this static homepage conundrum to be an irritating feature of wordpress.com. (After all, not all of us are into fiddling with CSS). However after a lot frustrations, I followed Michael Pick’s suggestions and read the help file.
Unlike ‘prprofmov’, having ‘translated’ the rather poor grammar of the entry, I found it worked perfectly. I’m using the ‘unsleepable’ template. I changed the home page to point to my welcome pag. Fine. Then, to avoid having a home and welcome page, I simply made my welcome a child of one of the other pages. It then disappears from the menu, leaving just the homepage. (Thank you Michael Pick!)
Whether it works so easily on all the templates themes(and it should)is another matter… 🙂
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February 21, 2009 at 7:39 pm |
You’re welcome! Glad to hear it worked out for you
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February 25, 2009 at 12:37 am |
Hi, For some reason I can’t get my new wordpress installation to display a static front page. Have followed the above instructions but keep getting a “Error 404 – Not Found” displayed. I wonder if its because my permalink structure only displays postnames ie http://www.myblog.com/home and the home page is defaulting to only “www.myblog.com”
Very frustrating!
Can anyone help?
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February 25, 2009 at 1:39 am |
Hi Grant – there’s a thread on how to resolve this issue in the WordPress.org support forums (linked)
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February 25, 2009 at 4:37 am |
Why does it not display as if it were the front page??
look here http://drinkthedog.com/dd/events/
events is supposed to be the “blog” part and Home is the static front page.
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February 25, 2009 at 10:16 am |
Looks like this forum entry (linked) might apply on this occasion. If not, the .org support forums are a good place to resolve this type of issue.
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March 3, 2009 at 2:52 pm |
Michael;
Very helpful video. I’m an avid reader but sometimes video is a better teaching tool.
I made my Home page parent to my new Front page and it works perfectly. No redundant page links. Thanks.
Brian
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March 3, 2009 at 5:17 pm |
Thanks Brian, glad that worked out for you!
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March 7, 2009 at 9:06 pm |
Hi,
I have WP 2.7.1 and when I click on the “Reading” tab the window that appears does not have an area to create a static page as shown in the video. So what do I do? I really need clear help.
Thanks,
Chris
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March 10, 2009 at 6:53 pm |
Sounds very unusual. I’d recommend checking out the WordPress.org support forums or starting a new thread there to get specific advice. Or, like the user in this thread (linked), it could be that you haven’t created any pages yet? (In which case the feature won’t be there until you do)
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March 16, 2009 at 7:03 pm |
Possibly off topic… I’m new to blogging but not to web design (used to html, css etc). I’ve set up my site (urbanh20.wordpress.com) to have a static homepage but can’t see how to get rid of a navigation lines in the main text area.
I’m very much at the practice stage before setting up a site for a history group.
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April 4, 2009 at 8:35 pm |
Is there absolutely no way to make a static home page avoiding the 2 home page situation? I’m using the new vigilance theme and have created a static home page but as per kunuweb suggests, the only way to hide the second “Home” page is to make it a parent of another page. Seems a rather silly thing to have to do? Any suggestions or solutions? Thanks.
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April 7, 2009 at 11:59 pm |
I’m using the Quadro-theme from elegantthemes.
I also ended up with the built in ‘Home’ button and my own ‘welcome’ page. I solved this problem by adding the ‘pages-widget’ and than exclude the page-IDnumber of my own ‘welcome’ page.
Like this my built in ‘Home’ button points to my own choosen static page. Maybe its an idea for you guys who want to use pagenavigation-widget.
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May 3, 2009 at 7:45 am |
Im not even trying to create extra pages. I Just want to know how to get to my home page to edit my sub title. I also would like to add my own banner to personalize it a bit.
How do I get to my home page from my dashboard???
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May 3, 2009 at 11:55 am |
You can change your blog sub title (or tagline) from: Settings->General on your blog dashboard.
Not all themes supports changing the header – If the one you’re using does, you’ll find it under Appearance->Custom Header
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May 3, 2009 at 1:34 pm |
I just found a solution: First, create a Dummy page and publish it as Visibility: Public. Then change the Parent attribute of the Home to fall under Dummy. Now edit the Dummy page again and make it Visibility: Private.
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May 5, 2009 at 11:09 pm |
Hi, I just tried that but didn’t seem to make any difference – I still have two home poages, albeit one pushed onto the next line, but sends my sidebars out of alignment.
Any thoughts??
Thank you
Andrew
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May 5, 2009 at 11:12 pm |
PS In some browsers it looks fine – eg I Explorere, but in Google Chrome or Firefox, for exmaple, looks all pushed out … v puzzled.
Andrew
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May 9, 2009 at 2:31 am |
Sounds like it could be an issue with your theme. Try checking to see if the same thing happens with the default theme. Then head over to the WordPress.org support forums if you need further help.
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May 15, 2009 at 10:40 am |
Hello.. I tried the static page with Infinity theme it works, but same with the NatMag theme doesnt work?
What can be done to solve this
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May 24, 2009 at 3:48 am |
For those experiencing issues with missing the static page option in WordPress 2.7.1…NOTE: You must create a temporary page first, then go into your Admin>Reading options to create a static page. If this issue continues, you will need to backup your data and re-install WP.
We are currently working on additional advanced options (i.e. plugins, PHP code alterations, etc.) to accomplish the same effect for multiple blogs.
Kontrive Media
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May 29, 2009 at 4:46 pm |
I am also have problem with latest wordpress for displaying static page in front of site (
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June 3, 2009 at 5:06 am |
Blake’s “Dummy” solution worked for me. Thanks!
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June 12, 2009 at 3:05 am |
The sound was terrible. A word now and then. The video played somewhat the same way. I will return tomorrow. A great idea. Front page isa little trickly. I realize that my computer may be part of the problem. I tried to check it and could find nothing.
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June 12, 2009 at 4:49 am |
Sounds like you’re having streaming troubles – if you aren’t already, I’d recommend using the SD rather than HD mode. Alternatively you could download the video file directly from our Miro channel or your feed reader/podcatcher using our media RSS feed – hope that helps!
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June 25, 2009 at 1:13 am |
is there a way to still have the current blog posts still display as part of the page?
so have the static home page with its content at the top, and below that content have the blog posts appear as they would if the blog were still the home page. I’m doing some work on an inherited site so am trying to make changes to someone else’s initial work.
thanks.
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June 25, 2009 at 3:59 am |
This question would likely get a better, fuller response in the WordPress.org forums, where there are lots of active developers and volunteers able to walk you through changes and modifications needed for this type of customization. (I’m assuming you inherited a self-hosted blog here)
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June 26, 2009 at 6:51 pm |
hi, thanks.
I’m doing seo work for this site, hosted on godaddy. so much time spent navigating through ads on the godaddy site to get to the real hosting. crazy.
so not really self hosting, but outside hosting.
I’ll post on the forums. do you happen to know if there are other video or audio tutorials that may cover this issue? I’m severely dyslexic so vid and audio really increase my learning time massively.
thanks for putting up this resource. for someone like me it’s really a huge help.
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July 12, 2009 at 1:34 pm |
I want to create this type of blog for my website where vistors can leave a message ‘Leave a Reply’. Im using frontpage so if anyone of you kind people have a html code for creating this PLEASE send me the code.
Thanks very much
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July 14, 2009 at 4:34 am |
If you’re using self-hosted WordPress (.org), then you might also want to take a look into the several excellent plugins that are available to help you with creating contact forms.
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July 23, 2009 at 10:37 pm |
I found a sneaky solution to the self-hosted issue of duplicate home links in the menu on some themes. When creating the page for the home page as shown in the video, simply leave the title blank. Then when modifying the Reading settings, select that blank page (an empty spot will be in the pull down menu).
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August 12, 2009 at 7:03 pm |
Thanks, I searched for a long time!
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August 14, 2009 at 12:00 am |
Jeff Bennett, you are a genius!! It’s both obvious and simple at the same time. I’ve just wasted about three hours of my life trying to remove the surplus ‘home’ page from the Vigilance theme when all I needed to do was remove the title from the ‘home’ page I’d created myself. Because they are wired to exactly the same link, anyone clicking ‘home’ is taken to the blank titled page… simplicity itself. It obviously took a perceptive mind to spot it. Cheers Jeff!
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August 4, 2010 at 4:55 am |
What if I want a static homepage and then the 3rd tab as blogging page? How do I create such page?
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August 4, 2010 at 5:40 pm |
You can do this now on WordPress.com using a combination of the front page options and custom menus. You can learn more about custom menus at http://support.wordpress.com/menus/.
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January 31, 2011 at 11:00 am |
This video is Superb.I really Likee these tips.Thankyou soo much :).But I am having problem with latest wordpress for displaying static page in front of site. :(.\
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February 9, 2011 at 5:55 am |
Yes, I’m limited to choosing themes that don’t have a home tab hard coded in. Otherwise you end with two-home pages!
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February 13, 2011 at 7:28 pm |
I have been racking my brains on how to do this, your video has made it so simple to understand. I really appreciate This I have put it on my blog under the tab FREE Training along side my other free stuff.
A Big Thanks
Alex Goddard
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May 27, 2011 at 10:34 pm |
lego Trent says:
thank you I have learned so much from the videos. Thankyou.
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May 29, 2011 at 5:12 pm |
I found this page helpful… http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/hide-pages/
I used both this video and that page in my own how-to for students: http://rstepno.wordpress.com/
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November 12, 2011 at 5:29 am |
What a great tutorial, exactly what I’ve been looking for! I really needed to create a static page and I can’t believe how simple it is… Great stuff, thanks!
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May 21, 2012 at 1:24 am |
i accidentally solved the issue of having 2 home menu tabs… all i did was create a new page with a title i wanted on my front page static and set it as such and voila no 2 home menu tabs just 1 home tab that routes to my static page.
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August 23, 2012 at 11:25 am |
Thank you, that did the work for me!!
A+
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January 26, 2014 at 4:23 am |
Ahh !!! this has solved my problems for showing static page in the blog.
thanks a lot for the guide
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May 6, 2014 at 12:51 am |
The way around this is to use the Pages widget. This way your pages in the widget also become Menu titles and the HOME page that comes with the theme is not shown but the Home page you made does. This also allows you to hide pages and when you create pages you can make them parents or give them parents which makes them a sub menu item.
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July 29, 2015 at 1:54 pm |
Great video, Thanks But when I changed the posts to the blog page, my custom theme home page is also showing the blogs. How do I keep the current custom theme home page and just move the blogs to the new blog page?
Thank you in advance.
Gary
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July 31, 2015 at 9:29 am |
really need help on this question: When I changed the posts to the blog page, my custom theme home page is also showing the blogs. How do I keep the current custom theme home page and just move the blogs to the new blog page?
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August 1, 2015 at 6:55 pm |
I figured it out. If anyone else is having this problem here is the answer.
To display “Blog” on the separate page – add category designated to “Blog Posts” to the menu.
Hope this is helpful to all.
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