So you’ve installed WordPress and plan to use it for your small business website. Now what?
The first step to making your website look like a website for your business instead of a blog is to create a static front page and configure WordPress to use this as your home page.
Normally, when someone visits your WordPress website they will see a list of your latest blog posts. If you are using this for your business website, that may not be what you want on your home page.
Luckily, this is easy to change. Don’t worry, you can still have a page that lists all your blog posts too, if you want to have blog entries or articles on your website.
Create a Static Home Page in WordPress – Step By Step:
After you log into your WordPress Admin, create two WordPress pages.
1) Go to Write -> Page. Name the page ‘Home’ and Publish it.
I also like to turn off Comments and Pings in the settings at the bottom of this page before publishing it.
2) Go to Write -> Page one more time. Name this page ‘Blog’ and Publish it.
3) Now go to Settings -> Reading in your WordPress Admin panel.
4) Change the “Front page displays:” settings to look like this:
A Video Walkthrough
Here is a short video from WordPress.org that walks through these steps:
The End Result – More Like a Website Than a Blog
Once you save these settings with the button at the bottom of the page, you’ll see the page called “Home” as the main page of your blog. You can edit this page to have anything you want in it. You’ll also notice there is a page on the site called ‘Blog’ that shows your blog posts still.
That’s all there is to it! Now you have a custom web page for your website, and you can still link to your blog posts if you want to.
Further Customize Your Home Page With Page Templates
The only problem with the screen above, is that the page title (Home in this case) and the Sidebar still show up on your website. You can remove those also, but you’ll need to create a WordPress ‘custom page template’ to do that. It’s not hard – read this article to see how: How to Create a Custom Page Template in WordPress.
See an Example WordPress Website
If you want to see an example of a complete small business website in WordPress with a customized home page, take a look at the Expand2Web SmallBiz Theme. Click here to watch the video!
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Hi .. Good article. I have not setup a WP blog before, so some of my questions may be simple:
Does this work for widget ready wordpress blogs?
Is the Chiropractic Website Template widget ready?
@Todd – thanks! Yes this will work with a widget read WordPress theme. You can download the wordpress chiropractic template (its actually a WordPress theme, not a widget) for free at Chiropractor2web.com. Click here to see a live demo.
Don Campbell,
Great guide. Have a similar step-by-step routine for installing a WordPress theme (RevolutionTwo design template). Each blog will be a site for a clothing product with slogans and messages and a specific URL. You will be able to order the products from an external online store. I want to have tabs for different sections, e.g., about page, product description, viral marketing with feedback from customers, social media widgets, etc. Is it easy to integrate a forum (phpBB) on the blog site?
Thanks for the comment Martin.
I’ve integrated phpBB in with one of my WordPress sites. Actually, I integrated it from a design sense – the header graphic and navigation menu is consistent. The website is Chiropractor2Web – WordPress templates for chiropractic websites, and the phpBB forum is at http://www.chiropractor2web.com/forum.
There are several WordPress plugins available to integrate the user log-ins too.
Hi Don,
I recently wanted to try out using wordpress as a website/blog. I got some hosting and a domain with godaddy and installed wordpress. I also picked a template and installed it as well. What I’m trying to figure out is when you go to my domain, http://www.fobbiegiftwrapping.com, you get a message that says I’ve uploaded my site incorrectly. If you add the wordpress after the domain it shows up. What do I need to do to have it show up without the wordpress addition?
Thanks for your help, Liz
Hi Liz – it looks like you installed WordPress just fine, but it is in the /wordpress directory underneath the root directory of your domain.
There are several ways to fix this – you could re-install WordPress in the root directory. Or your hosting provider may allow you to choose which directory to point your domain at, and you could change it to your /wordpress directory.
Or you could put a file that does a “301 permanent redirect” in the root of your website so that it redirects visitors to your blog. Contact me and I can send you the file that will do the permanent redirect for you.
Hi Don,
This is an excellent resource, and I’ll be back to learn more.
I have downloaded your free E book on using Thesis. Great job on that! My plans include
adopting either Thesis or perhaps the new Corporate theme by Gardner.
Thanks for all the information that you are providing here.
Thank you Chuck – good luck and let me know any feedback you have on the Thesis eBook ok?
Nice job, Don! Been wanting to update my old current site to a WP theme for a long time (mostly for the simplicity, design and robust framework). Thanks again and would appreciate an update on the article.
Best wishes from Italy! Adriana
Thanks for all the info
I’ve got a static site but I keep looking at your blog and wondering about wordpress.
I don’t think I’m ready for the big change yet… I’ll just keep reading your blog.
Thanks for some great articles.
Zafar
Thank you so much for saving me a HUGE amount of time. I was thinking that I’d have to go through the trouble of installing Wordpress in the /blog directory, and then somehow figure out how to match the sidebar with the front page since they’d be 2 wordpress installations.
But now, creating 2 simple pages will do, and all my posts are in /blog, and my site looks more like a website. Fantastic!
Thanks for all the info.
Today I am creating this type of website using single WP. But I don’t know how to create a website and blog with single WP. This article helps me.
Again lot of thanks.
Thanks a million Don – just started out on WP and I have been in a bit of a quandry!
Yours is the first set of instructions that have made sense so far.
Best wishes
Your admin page looks DRAMATICALLY different than mine. I’m guessing I have a different version of Wordpress or have configured your admin page differently to reveal other features more up front? I’m using a MAMP setup and running it on my desktop for development purposes (though I’m only a novice “coder”). From my “Edit Page” page (or what on your set appears to be “Write Page”), I don’t have ANY menu items above like you do: Write, Manage, Design, Comments. Please help. I cannot seem to do what you are doing (even when I create the new page template file in the template folder).
Thanks!
Hi Aaron – you are probably using WordPress 2.8 and my screen shots were taken on the previous version of WordPress. All of the same options are there, except they are on the left hand side of the screen by default, instead of the top.
Where are you getting stuck? Let me know and I can give you some guidance.
Hi Don, great information here.
My static pages still contain a “Posted by” line with a date/time stamp. Is there a way to remove this from the static pages, but keep it for blog posts? Thanks very much. (Using Carrington theme).
@Troy – yes you can remove the “posted by” but this is part of the actual WP theme you are using. So you’ll need to edit the CSS or the page template itself to remove it.
I don’t have the Carrington theme so I can’t tell you exactly which file it is in, but if you use a tool like Firebug you can isolate it and remove it from your pages.
Very nice clear intro to making WP blog into website. Thank you!
Hello Don, I just found this article and it made a lot of sense and helped me a lot.
The only thing I am left wondering is this: if one installs WP in a folder, say “wp” or “blog”, is it possible to have the “Home” page that your post has us create appear to be in the root of the site so that the URL of the home is domain.com/home and not domain.com/wp/home or domain.com/blog/home???
I am sure you would agree that if one wants to make one’s blog look more like a website all the non-blog pages should at least appear to be in the root of the domain, you know what I mean?
@Marc – great question. That’s why I typically install WordPress in the root directory of the site. Not always, it depends, but usually that is the right way to go. Then make the home page a static page, and have a link to the blog on the nav menu. Then it is totally transparent to the user.
I touch on that in this video: How to Install WordPress in 5 minutes or less. If you’ve already installed WordPress in a sub-directory you can move it to the root directory too. I’ll create a video on how to do that shortly.
moving to the root is easy (at least to me) I just never understood why the WP dev team doesn’t clean up the contents of their install folder… there’s so many files that somebody like me who loves organization is appalled by the idea of having all those loose files in the root
Very informative post, thanks. Just one niggling doubt, and that is, with a static home page the content on that page never changes, I believe. If I’m correct, it seems that a blog with a static home page looks better, looks less blog-like, but it doesn’t have the freshness of a blog, it doesn’t contain fresh content.
On the other hand of course, it might be preferable to lack this fresh content, because providing fresh content can be a chore, an obligation. With a static home page, there isn’t this obligation.
@Paul – Good question. Actually a static page is fine from Google’s perspective. Your site will still be dynamic, because you can publish new blog posts and articles, pinging Google each time to come back and crawl your site. Google will set a crawl rate for your site based on how frequently you update it.
For a small business it is way more effective to have the home page be a static (or nearly static) page that describes the business and has a clear call to action, rather than an ever-changing list of blog posts. Then you can just add a tab to the page that lists the blog posts, or some some other internal linking that helps with SEO.
Hi,
I have a website made of static pages (www.huesandtones.net). I have installed WP under the directory ‘blog’ on my site. Currently, both these are maintained separately (The website static pages are in the root directory, while WP stuff goes in root/blog).
I want to use WP for complete site hosting (CMS). I want the menu structure on the site intact, while keeping my blogs on front page. (some examples – scottmccloud.com, boltcity.com). Please advise how I can achieve this.
thanks and regards,
Shirish
I haven’t tried to create a static page yet on any of my blogs. Your instructions are so simple I am inspired to go do it. Thank you.
Margaret
Hello Don,I’m glad I found your blog.I’m new to wordpress,very new!!
I installed wordpress and have my theme and named my blog.But before I go ahead ,I like to change the size of the page.Right now it is the same size like the blue “default” theme.It does not fill the screen like by other blogs.
I hope I could it explain clear enough ?? I don’t have a glue what I’m doing!!lol.
Thank you very much.Ulla
I have been creating CMS sites for clients for years using Joomla, Drupal, and Word Press. My hands-down favorite is WordPress because once the job is done clients have no trouble maintaining the site and making changes on their own.
I have never had a WordPress site hacked but cannot tell you how many times I have had to go head to head with Joomla hackers. As for Drupal, I do not recommend it unless you have lots of time and an interest in CMS. If you just want a site, fast, easy, and basic, go with WordPress.
WordPress is a great, versatile, and although it is marketing as a blog tool (and is a fab blog tool), it really can be tweaked to function just about as well as any other CMS.
Thanks for encouraging others to think outside the blog box.
@Shirish – there are a few ways you can do this, I would use a custom page template to create a page with the header but no sidebars, etc. and set that as the home page.
@Margaret – thank you!
@ Ulla – That is determined by the Theme you are using. That’s the beauty of WordPress; there thousands of free themes you can look at and find one that is closer to the look and feel you want.
@Lahle – Thanks for your insights! I agree with you 100%. I’ve used Drupal for projects before, but not Joomla. Appreciate you sharing your experiences here.
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your tips so freely with others. One of the hallmarks of someone that knows what they are doing is someone who will share their thoughts. Any web design/SEO company that says they cannot tell you what they are doing because it is a trade secret is one that is only interested in your money.
I just looked at your gallery of Word Press sites. Nice work!
Thank you Lahle – my pleasure. Thanks for this comment, you made my day!
-Don
The static page tip is just great. I’ve been wanting to build sites for some small local businesses but I love blogs and didn’t know how to make it work. Thanks for sharing that.