WordPress is undeniably one of the most robust and user friendly blogging and content management systems on the web. Although when many persons think of WordPress, they limit this amazing free open source software to blogging, while not realizing that this system is used by lots of top online companies around the world to provide news and other types of products and services. Top names such as CNN, BBC, Flickr and Time. So as bloggers, we don’t need to limit ourselves to the simple blog layout since WordPress provides quite a few options for further customization.
So today, I’ll show you how to create your own custom front page that can serve your visitors as a sales page, introductory page or just about anything you wish.
Step 1 – Create your custom page
To create a custom page, simply duplicate your page.php file which is found in your theme’s main directory and give it a name of your choice. This name must be different from “page.php” This is found in your “wp-admin/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/. Where “yourtheme” is the name of your currently active theme directory.
Step 2 – Add required code to your new file
Add the code below to the top of your new page, replacing “New Page Template” with a name of your choice. This is what WordPress uses to detect the file type (whether its a template or not) and the template name.
<?php /* Template Name: New Page Template */ ?>
Step 3 – Select your new page template
Once you’ve created and saved your new template, within your WordPress dashboard create a new page and select the new page template you created in the template selection drop down menu and click publish as shown below.
Step 4 – Publish and set your new front page
Go to Settings then Reading in your WordPress dashboard and select the static page radio button and select your new page from the drop-down as your front page display as shown below and click save.
Final – Create your content
You may look at your original page.php template file to get an idea as to what you may want to include in your custom page template like the header and footer or possibly the sidebar. Remember, the content you place here is up to you.
See how simple that was? You have now created your custom front page for your WordPress blog. You may go ahead and add any content you like to your new page.
If you experience any difficulties in getting this done please feel free to ask for further assistance. I would love to help.
Very well written and easy to follow article that novice WordPress users can benefit from.
Thanks for the tutorial.
Glad you found it useful
Great post Sam! I’m not sure if this was done here before but what about a post on the benefits of changing the permalinks in your URL code?
.-= Natalia´s last blog ..4 Ways to Raise Start-Up Capital =-.
Thanks for reading Natalia
I will definitely write a post about that. Having the correct permalink structure is very important for your site to be as search engine friendly as possible.
Nice step by ste tutorial Robyn
.-= Kharim´s last blog ..Encouragement To Boost Self Confidence =-.
Thanks for reading Kharim
Robyn, why not just create a blog post and make it sticky by selecting the “Stick this post to the front page” option. Or perhaps I’m missing something?
.-= Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate´s last blog ..Tri Cities Washington Cold Winter Nights Makes For Abundant Springtime Babies =-.
Hey Colleen,
Making a post sticky would only allow particular blog posts to remain as the first entry displayed on the front page of the blog regardless of the number of new posts that are being published. So, any new posts published would fall below that main sticky post. However, you would not be able to make the entire page sticky.
The tutorial above allows you to create an entire front page with any information and design you want and don’t usually show blog posts in the regular blog style. So, you could create a front page that looks like google’s search page for example and have links in your navigation bar that point to your blog.
Hope this clarifies.
Nice! I’ve been thinking lastly bout a static home page; even polled it on the old blog to see what readers thought.
Colleen above has an interesting question, here’s another…..why the custom? Why not just add a page as normal and then do all the stuff mentioned…;step 4 for instance.
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Aweber Affiliate Link Contest! – This Is It!! =-.
Hey Dennis,
Please let me know when you create that front page. I would love to see your ideas in action
Creating the page within wordpress and using it simply as front page may limit extreme customizations that you would like to implement for your front page. This new page will have all the same elements of a regular wordpress page. So if you’re thinking of a complete overhaul for your new static home page you would need to edit lots of html and php which would pretty much make it a “custom” page. These types of page customizations cannot be done in wordpress so that’s where the limitation comes in. However, if you wish to use a regular page as your front page with the same header and sidebar as your blog then option no. 4 alone would be fine. It all depends on how far you would like to go with your design.
Creating the custom file also allows you the distinct advantage of reusing that page as a template for the future.
Let me know if that clarifies
I would definitely want the header and sidebar to match, can i do that with your custom settings?
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..UPDATED: Aweber Affiliate Link Contest! – This Is It!! =-.
nice post, dude..in fact i will use it as my landing page but before i need to learn bit of PHP
.-= Tushar´s last blog ..Who are You Writing For- Google Spiders or Real People? =-.
Thanks for reading Tushar
Glad it helped. If you need any help with php just let me know.
Hi Robyn,
been off the grid for some days and just saw that you restarted publishing some articles lately. Nice intro to WordPress static pages and especially front pages.
To add a level of simplicity for new bloggers, any page can become a front page. You just have to publish it and then jump to step 4 in the tutorial. For the custom design you need to apply the preceding steps.
Nice article Robyn
.-= Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius´s last blog ..Custom Search: make the most out of Google Maps with optimized geolocation results =-.
Sachin, that’s exactly what I was asking about above…
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..UPDATED: Aweber Affiliate Link Grab Contest! – This Is It!! =-.
Sorry Dennis, I missed your comment. Here you are then, confirmation given
.
Cheers
Sachin
.-= Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius´s last blog ..Custom Search: make the most out of Google Maps with optimized geolocation results =-.
Thanks for reading and sharing Sachin
thx for the info.
.-= MK´s last blog ..手机视频转换工具Mobile 3GP converter =-.
Thanks for reading
I think the sidebar.php should be customised too, according to the template name…I use it alot on my sites.
One of the options of WordPress is to choose a static front page, creating a page that shows the same content instead of the the blog loop. Most WordPress bloggers are familiar with this option…