By default when you first install Wordpress and add your chosen theme you will have a Home Page that displays your most recent Blog Posts. This is dynamic and changes every time to display new posts as you add them.
You can control how many posts are shown by the changing the “Blog pages show at most” value in the Reading Settings in your Wordpress admin dashboard. In addition if you don’t want to show full posts you can add the More tag in each post from within the post editor (visual or html) to control how much of each post is displayed.
But what if you don’t want posts displayed on your home page.
What do you do?
How To Change Your Home Page In Wordpress!
Well fortunately this is quite simple to change from Wordpress admin, but may not be obvious until you try it out for yourself. You have the facility to set a different page that you create as the home page for your Wordpress site or blog.
In addition you can also set another page, which you also create, as the Blog page of your website, where all your blog posts will be displayed, just as they were originally on the home page.
So let’s get to it!
We are therefore going to do 3 or 4 things:
[1] Create a fixed Home Page to which you can add any content you want and which will always stay the same unless you change it. It has no blog posts on it. This is called a “Static Front Page” according to Wordpress and many others.
[2] Create a Blog Page where all your posts will be displayed as they previously like they were on the home page.
[3] Make the New Home Page the real home or front page and move the posts to the Blog page
[4] Remove the old Home page from the Menu Bar if it is still there (theme dependant!)
Introduction To The Reading Settings
By default the settings you get in READING are as follows below and this configuration will display your latest posts on your home page or front page, and in this case it will be 10 of them.
Your home page on your Wordpress blog or website therefore might look like this with all your recent posts listed with the latest at the top of the page:
Here’s the full details of what you need to do to change things:
[1] How To Create A Static Wordpress Home Page
In order to create a differnet home page you first have to Add A New Page and call it something relevant for now such as New Home or Home2, so as not to get it confused with the original home page.
If you view this New Home page on your site it might look like this:
Notice that in this case we now have the New Home page as well as the old Homepage in the menu bar. This double home page scenario is a feature of the theme being used and is a common problem. The old home page entry needs to be removed form the menu bar and we’ll get to that later…
First we need to create the blog page to display all your posts. It needs no content as this will be provided by the blog posts:
[2] How To Create a Blog Page in Wordpress That Is Not The Home Page
Once again creat a new page, but this time call it Blog or whatever you want for the page that will display your blog posts (eg Posts, Recent News, Articles etc).
This page when displayed on your site at this point will look like this (no blog posts yet!)
[3] How To Make The New Home Page into The Real Homepage and Add Posts To The Blog Page
To get this done is really easy and just requires you to change the READING Settings to make both of these things happen:
Simply change the checkbox for “Front page displays” from your latest posts to “A Static Page“.
Change the “Front page” in the drop-down list of pages to New Home (or whatever you have called you new home page).
Change the “Post page” in the drop-down list of pagesnext to it to Blog (or whatever you have named the new page you created for your blog posts).
Click on the SAVE CHANGES button and you are done (well almost!)…
If you then go to your Wordpress site by just entering the website address into the URL box of your web browser then your site shoudl display the new Home page with any content you may have added to it:
Notice that in this case we still have the old Homepage in the menu bar and we need to get rid of this, but the New Home page now comes up as the front page of your site.
[4] Fixing The Double Home Page Problem In Wordpress
Depending on the Wordpress theme you are using you may find that you now have 2 Home Pages!!
This is not good, obviously and the old homepage needds to be removed from the menu bar.
Unfortunately this can only be done by editing the code in one of the files that make up the theme you are using. Fortunately this is very easy to do from within your Wordpress admin area.
Just click on APPEARANCE and then EDITOR. On the right hand side of the window you will see a list of Theme Files and you should click on Header (header.php) as this file is where the code for the Menu Bar will be.
The header.php file will then be displayed in the editor window and you can edit the code there directly. Scroll down a little until you find the text that is the name of the old home page, which in our case was Homepage. If you can see it easily then use the Find function (usually under Edit) in your browser to locate it. Normally it will be in a line of code on its own.
When you find it the line of code it is in needs to be removed. You could just delete the line, but I prefer to comment out the line instead, just in case I need to put it back in the future. You can do this by putting the characters <! – ( 2 dashes!) and some spaces in front of the line to be editted out and some spaces and then – > ( 2 dashes again!) after the same line of code. This makes that line a comment instead of code so that it won’t be executed, but just ignored.
This is the line of code I commented out in the editor above:
When this is done click on UPDATE FILE to save your changes.
The old Homepage should now have been removed from your menu bar.
If you have any problems doing this just let me know and I can help you out!
You can now change the name of the New Home page to anything you like and in this case I simply changed it to Home:
Also if you now look at the Blog Page you will see that it has all the blog posts on it just as the old Homepage used to:
And that is it – you are done!
You have just fixed one of the most confusing issues with Wordpress and a major weakness in most themes – that of a fixed front page or differnet home page from the deafult provided.
Once again if you have any questions just leave a comment or contact me.
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I am new to wordpress. I have been looking for this home page fix for many days. Thanks so much for your tutorial here. I still have one more question, don’t know if can help. How to remove(or hide) date, author, no comments, tags on my home page? I want to put a photo on my home page and obviously I don’t need to show those information above and under my photo. Also these will show on my other pages like about me, photo gallery and contact me. I think I have to modify the index.php file for home page, but I can’t find other files related to my other pages.
Well, I get it. All I have to do is to modify the page.php file. This is the template for all new pages those created in Admin panel. After removed unnecessary functions in the file, the pages look tidy. The new home page in this tutorial also become a new page. So, the original home page is gone and nothing have to do with the index.php file until I switch to a new template. Anyway thanks for the inspiration!
Hi Peter – I really need to see your home page and know which theme you are using to be able to help you – if you make another comment and leave details I will have a look – or you can use the contact form if you want to keep these details private – Dave
Thanks, Peter, that all worked great, now here’s the problem I’m having: when you go to my site, clicking on HOME in the header or left sidebar takes you to my homepage. But clicking on HOME under Recent Comments takes you to my BLOGS page. How do I fix this? ~ Jean
Oops, sorry, Dave, I meant to address you.
Hi Dave, I am also new to wordpress and while I am learning how to use it, your clear and logical post really helped. Thanks!
Jane
Fixed problem by downloading new Recent Comments widget at: http://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2008/02/06/new-wordpress-widget-recent-comments/#comment-26862
@Jean – Thanks for the update and neat solution!
Just wanted to say THANK YOU for posting this tutorial.. this was a nagging irritation I had with visitors going straight into the blogs page so this helped. Quick question – any hints or advise on how I can change the orders of how pages are layed out.. right now it’s in alphabetical order and I can’t figure out how I can change the order of the pages by preference. Thanks.
@Rachel – If you do a QUICK EDIT on any page you will see a field/box called ORDER with a number in it (defaults to 0) – just change the number for each page to get them in the order you want.
This is EXACTLY what I was looking for, thank you so much! I am going to tackle it this weekend.
One more question though….what about the permalinks to all the blog posts that I already have? Do I need to manually go in and change all the posts from “.com/home” to “com/blog”? If I don’t do anything, won’t all the archived blog posts that were made under “home” get messed up?
Again, thanks so much!
@ Lisa – Permalinks are a separate issue and nothing to do with what we are doing here, so no need to change your permalinks!
Hey Dave!
I understand how to set a static page (thks 4 your tutorial). But how can I have a static HTML page, not a wordpress page? I’d like to be able to use an HTML editor (like NVU), create a page, and use it for my static homepage. Is there an easy way to do this? Does it depend on the theme I’m using.
Thanks in advance,
George
@ George – One way is to have Wordpress located in a folder (such as /blog) on your website and the HTML page as the Home Page with links to your Blog – Alternatively, depending on exactly what you are trying to do, you can embed HTML code into your Home page in Wordpress – good luck!
Hi I’m using the Flexibility 3 theme and I followed your tutorial (great by the way). Not sure what I did wrong, but when going to edit the code, I did the steps as stated but the page still showed. Then I deleted the line out completely and the page still shows. I’m not sure if I was toying with the wrong line or what, but any help is greatly appreciated.
Hi Trhonda, it’s hard to know what you did without seeing the code – so if you want some free help send me your admin login details and I will take a look for you…
Dave,
I’d be interested in any solution to removing the original Flex 3 “Home” tab.
I’ve completed the process successfully with other themes, but Flex has me stuck!
Thx,
Kyle, not sure if this is what you mean, but there is no need for a code change in Flexibilty 3 to remove the original Home Page as you can switch off the Home Page tab from the menu by going to Appearance >> Flexibility 3 Theme Options >> Navigation tab and then changing “Navigation Home link display:” from Yes to No (= 3rd option down) and click on Save Changes – easy!
Dave,
Can’t believe I missed that.
You’re right, so easy!
Thank you.
Hi Dave,
This is a great tutorial. I actually downloaded the blue sensei theme so I could practice using the tips outlined above. Followed all the steps, and you’re right on target – easy to get rid of duplicate home pages. However, if you go from the home page, and click on the tab that says “Blog”, when you arrive on the blog page – both “Home” pages appear – meaning I show two tabs for “Home” when on the blog page. Does that mean that the CSS has to be modified in the page.php or possibly the singlepost.php? Thanks!!
Looked at your website – but could not see what you are talking about. Every theme is different, so I would have to take a look to help you…
Thanks Dave,
I was actually working on a sample website – followed your directions and
the only issue was that on the “blog” or page that featured the posts, the
page titles appearing in the header showed BOTH home pages. This only
happened on the page where the blog posts were featured.
I did end up going with another theme, but was wondering if this
was preventable. Without being able to show you an example I can
understand if you’re unable to respond. Regardless, your information
here is soooo very helpful! Thanks for providing the resources.
Hi Dave, I am having a problem and I am sure you will be able to help me. I am very new to WP and I realy enjoyed reading your articles. here is the problem I am having, when I create a page and add items or pictures to it, the items and pictures shows up twice. How can I fix this. Thanks very much for your help on this.
Use the contact form to send me your login details as well as the page with the problem and I will take a look for you – not seen this before!!
I just want to ask how to remove the other home. I have a double homepage. I follow your instructions but still the same I can’t get rid out of the home. thank you so much
In Flexibility 3 there is a setting in the Theme Options which allows you to remove the Home Page tab from the menu – hope that helps!
Hello, I’m having a bit of a different problem, I hope you can help me! When I make posts they go to the recent posts box. They do not show up on my front page at all. I do have the setting for the front page to show latest posts set. (not set to show a static page) and I have it set to show the 10 latest posts.
I’m using Wordpress 3.0.3 and the Multiple Streams theme.
I’m losing my hair fast over this, I hope to hear from you! LOL
Thanks!
Frank
Hi Frank – I don’t know this theme, but it might be that you have to select a posts Category for the posts that you want to see listed on the home page. This will be done in Themes Options if there are any, under Appearance inthe admin area. If this is not the problem then if you want you can use the contact form to send me your login details and I can take a look – Dave.
Dave! Thank you so much! I’ve wasted so much time trying to get my blog to work right and you fixed it right off! You are the man!
Thank you!
Frank
No problem – happy to help!
Yep – this can be theme dependent and this may not work for all themes, although for most it should. Some themes may ned a different coding change to make it work. If you need help in the future let me know at the time and I will take a look…