How To Create A Custom Front Page In WordPress

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.

Related posts:

1. How to Add an About Author Box in Thesis 1.6
2. How to Add an About Author Bio Box in the Post Footer in WordPress
3. Secure Your WordPress Blog Against Malicious URL Requests
4. 5 Additional Extreme Steps to Secure Your WordPress Blog
5. How to redirect web pages using a very simple PHP code

Tagged as: Custom Front Page, Customization, tutorial, wordpress