Wordpress is a fantastic software package to build websites. Did I say websites and not blogs? That’s right. Building websites with Wordpress is very easy to do and preserves all the great reasons that makes it a great blogging platform.
Here’s the way to make Wordpress look and feel like a regular website:
I’m assuming that you have a domain name and have uploaded/installed wordpress already. If you haven’t done so yet, I found that GoDaddy is a great place to buy your domain and that HostGator is a great hosting company to use. With HostGator
all you have to do is to click one button to install Wordpress – it couldn’t be easier.
To make Wordpress to function as a ‘normal’ website you first have to designate a page as your “Home” page. Right now, the home page in Wordpress is a page that displays your posts (blogs). The front page that you will create will be static – with a welcome message or some sort of content that doesnt’ change. Luckily, Wordpress makes it very easy to do this. All you have to do is to identify the page that you want to be your ’static’ page (Home page). Log in to WordPress administration page and click ‘Settings’ then “Reading”. Select the “A Static Page” button, then choose which “page” you want to use as your home page. Then click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page. That’s it! If you want your dynamic content (fancy way of saying the page where your blog postings will show up) to show up on a specific page, then (on this same page) choose which “page” you want to use as your posts page. Click save. Now you have a static home page and a page where your posts will appear.
But, what if you want to create your own page and make it your home page? This gets a little bit trickier because when you create another page a s a “home” page you end up with two home pages in wordpress -the new one you created and the original. Not good and confusing for visitors to your site! Let’s have a look at how to do this and end up with only one home page in Wordpress.
First create your new “home” page – click on ‘pages’, ‘create new’, and name it “Home”. Click ‘publish’ and then visit your site. See what I said earlier – two home pages! Don’t panic, there is one little thing left to do to eliminate the original home page. Click ‘Appearance’ from the left side bar, then click ‘Editor’. You now should be looking at the code for your site. On the right side of the page, find and click ‘Header’. Find this line of code:
<li><a href=”<?php echo get_option(’home’); ?>/”>Home </a></li>.
It is worth it to mention the value of backing up your site right now. Even if it is a brand new site do so. I’ve deleted the wrong piece of code a few times and didn’t back up. I couldn’t find the place to re-paste the code and the site stopped working correctly. I had to create a new wordpress site on a new domain name, upload the theme that I was using when I tried to cut out the line of code and then highlighted the entire ‘Header’ code and pasted it over the code that I screwed up. Not a fun experience!
Delete it. I’ve also found this line in the ‘Main Index Template’ if it wasn’t in the ‘Header’ file. Remember to click ‘Update File’. Check out your site now – there will now only be the new home page that you created!
One last thing to do – Page order. By default, Wordpress shows pages displayed in alphabetical order. Not great if you want your ‘home’ page to be at the left hand side (1st position) on your top bar and in your side bar ‘pages’ widget. FYI – By default, newly created pages have a Page Order of zero which will put them at the front of your menu if you forget to change it.
1. Locate the page you want to change the Page Order setting for in the
2. The Page Order setting is on the bottom right-hand column under ‘Attributes’
3. In the Page Order ‘box’ type the order (numerically) that you want the page to appear. If it is your home page, put in ‘1′. Example of a typical order of pages:
- My New Home Page
- Recent Posts
- About
