Creating a Static Home Page with Thesis and WordPress

You can use WordPress to manage a website complete with a blog. You do it by creating a static home page that functions as your landing pad (to greet visitors) and then creating a new blank page that will contain all of your blog posts. With recent versions of WordPress, the process is pretty simple (requires WordPress 2.3.1 or later):

1. Create the page you want to appear as your home page. (Make sure it’s a page, not a post.)


Create the page you want to use as your static home page.

2. Scroll down to the Discussion options and remove the checks next to Allow comments and Allow pings.


Disable comments and pings for this page.

3. Click the Publish button to publish your new page.
4. Create and publish a blank page to use for your blog, and call it something like Blog or Nick’s Blog, whatever.


Create a blank page for your blog.

5. In the WordPress Options or Settings group (on the Administration panel), click Reading.


Under Settings, click Reading.

6. Under Front page, click the Static page option.


Choose the pages to use for the static home page and blog posts.

7. Open the Front page list and choose the page you want to use as your static home page.
8. Open the Post page list and choose the page you want to use to display your blog posts.
9. Save your changes.

If you’re using Thesis, you need to choose to have new pages displayed as tabs in the navigation bar:

1. On the WordPress Administration panel, click Appearance, Thesis Options.


Select Thesis Options.

2. Under Navigation Menu click the plus sign next to Select pages to include in nav menu.



3. Check the box next to the blog page you created. (Do not check the box next to the new home page you created. As long as you have the option checked to show the home link in the nav menu (see the following step), a tab for the page will appear.(Optional) In the list of pages, you can drag pages up or down to rearrange the order they will appear in your navigation bar.
4. Click the plus sign next to Home Link and make sure the Show home link in nav menu option is checked. You can edit the link’s name to use something different for the link than you used for the page name.



5. Click the Save button.

Your new static home page now opens whenever someone chooses to go to your site, and they can click your new Blog tab to go to your blog.

Your new static page greets visitors who can click the new blog tab.

You’ll find other tutorials about this topic that recommend creating a separate template, which you can do if you want to give your home page a unique appearance, but I think most folks just want to have a static page with some unique content to greet visitors.

For more about using Thesis to design your website or blog, check out Redesigning My WordPress Blog with Thesis.

Tagged as: Thesis Theme, WordPress