Choosing a Static and Post Page in WordPress
One of the latest additions to recent versions of WordPress is the ability to choose which page you want your posts to show up on, as well as which page you want to be your home page; and you can do it from the Options panel quickly and easily.
- Navigate on your Dashboard to the Options menu.
- Select Reading from the secondary menu that is now visible.
- The first section of the Options > Reading page gives you the choice that we’re interested in. As you can see in this screenshot, the first choice to make is whether or not your posting page will be the first page on your website. In other words, your homepage is also your posting page, with the first radio button selected. If this is what you want, then there is nothing for you to change. Good for you.
- If you’d rather have a home page separate from your blog posting page, read further. Select the second radio button, as shown below.
- Now the question becomes: what page should be the first page? Hopefully you already have one in mind, in which case you just have to choose it from the drop down box. In this example I’m choosing the About page of Theme Playground for the home page.
- Next, you want to choose the page that posts will now go to. Again, you probably already have something in mind. Choose that page.
- Hit Update Options. There you have it! Your home page has become your About page (or whatever) and your blog page has become another page on your site. We didn’t do this for Theme Playground because, well, it would really mess things up. But hopefully this tutorial was some assistance for your situation.
Now I’m curious. Who out there has a page other than their blog page up as the first page on their WordPress site? Any blogs running that way?
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About the Author: Ryan Imel
My name is Ryan Imel, and I’m a full time freelance web developer. I work a lot with WordPress, but am comfortable with other systems too.
9 comments so far
Phil Gerbyshak said:
My website (linked above) has a static page as the first page. The “articles” piece is the bloggy piece. Not a ton of articles/posts yet, but thought I’d offer it as an example.
Derek Epperson said:
I’ve followed your instructions, but can’t seem to find the options for front page/posts page.
I recently upgraded to 2.2.2
What am I missing?
Ryan said:
That’s interesting. The options should be right on the Options > Reading page. Are you on a self-hosted WordPress or on WordPress.com?
Any chance I can get the URL? Worst case scenario, I could even jump onto the Dashboard and have a look-see for you.
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ed said:
when I do this my “home” button is no longer highlighted when I am on the page designated as “home” — how to fix?
Teeth Maestro said:
My business website [dental clinic] needs a static front page to attract customers while I plan to run a blog as a side effort.
Rodney said:
I’d like to know how I can make a home page be a static page and still be called “home” in my sidebar. If you see my site you’ll see what I mean. THere are two “home” buttons now.
Ryan Imel said:
Hey Rodney. Just checked your site, and didn’t see what you’re talking about. I’m assuming you figure it out? Or changed your theme?
DTs Flash Drive Blog said:
Thank you for this easy tutorial. I just set my blog up this way, feel free to check it out. What I would really like however would be to show the static front page PLUS recent posts at the same time. The front page “post” could be on top and the recent posts below that. But I guess the separate solution works just as well and might be better for loading times.