Static Page

Using a static page will give your site more of a landing page feeling to it. Many people favor this, but it does take more work to set up. There are also some techniques to keep the home page content fresh with this approach. First, this is how to set it up:

You need to tell WordPress that you are not going to use the default home page, but rather designate a static page for this purpose. This can be done in one of two ways:

Use your Contribute home page (easiest)

You’ll just need to follow the instructions on “Setting your Home Page.”

Create a New Spiffy Home Page

Each site comes with a Sample Page, and that’s a great choice for this approach. To set the Sample Page as your home page, do the following:

First, we’re going to rename our “Sample Page” to something more home-page like. To do so, go to “Pages.”

Pages in Navigation

Look for “Sample Page.” Click on the “Quick Edit” under this page listing.

Quick Edit Link

This will open the quick edit window (click to enlarge):

Quick Edit Window

In the Quick Edit window, let’s rename the Title and the Slug to “Home.”

Title and Slug Fields

When you are done, click update on the lower right of the Quick Edit Window:

Update Button

Still have that old Contribute home page in there? Here’s how to handle that.

Go to your Page Tree View and find the page that’s named  the same as your site. The Contribute migration tool brought in your old home page with your site’s name. If your site’s name is “Department of Mathematics,” that’s what your old home page was called!

Now that you’ve designated or found the page you want to designate as your home page, follow the instructions on Setting Your Home Page.