A Tale of Two Plugins (or How to Create a WordPress Static Homepage)

If you’ve used WordPress for any length of time, you probably know it’s so much more than just a “blogging platform.” With all the amazing WP developers out there, you can find a plugin to do just about anything you’d want your WordPress site to do.

To begin to transform your WP blog into a full-blown WordPress website, one thing you might want to do is create a static homepage. In this case, when someone types your url (www.yourdomain.com) into their browser, instead of going directly to your blog’s main page, they land on a home page that you create. This site, you’ll notice, uses a static homepage, which you can see by clicking the “Home” link found on the navigation bar. I use my static homepage to give a big-picture view of what I’m up to and some of the stuff I’ve created.

There are several ways to create a static WordPress homepage. The easiest way , however, is by using a plugin. There are 2 plugins that’ll create a static homepage for you, and I’ve tried them both. The first one I tried was created by Denis di Bernardy. It’s very simple to install; just create a page titled “Home,” install the plugin in your /wp-content/plugins folder, and activate it on the Plugins page of WordPress control panel.

There’s a small problem with this plugin, however. It’s not really a problem, but more of an inconvenience. The way this plugin works, if you want a static homepage AND a blog, you have to create a new category called “blog,” make it the default category, and place all your posts in that category (along with any other category(s) you might assign the post). So, in effect, when people visit your blog, they’re not visiting your main blog page, but an archive page for the blog category.

No, it’s not a big deal, but it’s not ideal. Ideally, when someone clicks on a link to our blog, we want them to go to our blog’s “main page” rather than an “archive page.” Why, you ask? Well, it’s makes content management easier, and from a designer’s perspective, it makes the design easier and more flexible. Afterall, we’ll probably want our blog’s archive pages to look different than our blog’s main page.

Not to fear. The Filosofo Home-Page Control plugin, created by Austin Matzko will do the trick. With this plugin, your blog stays completely intact, and you can assign whatever page you like as the site’s main landing page.

To install and activate the plugin, download the plugin here, unzip it to your hard drive, then upload it to the wp-content/plugins folder on your server. After that, you’ll want to visit the Plugins page on your control panel, and activate the plugin. If you haven’t done it yet, you’ll need to create a new page that you want to use as your homepage (call it whatever you want). After you do that, click the Options tab, then look for the link called “Home-Page Control.” Once you make it to that page, just assign your chosen page as the home page and click “Save.”

If you have any problems with that plugin, be sure to look over the comments on the Filosofo’s site. You solution is probably there.