No two WordPress sites are the same. Because of that, not all WordPress sites look like blogs. Often times, you’ll want your WordPress site to have a more static appearance, with a welcome or landing page up front, while placing your blog posts in a secondary section of the blog. Fortunately, WordPress makes this extremely easy to do, without having to worry about moving anything around on your server or reinstalling. This lesson will go over the necessary steps to give your blog a static homepage, and move your blog posts onto a separate page with whatever name you like.
header.php file in a text editor. This can be anything from NotePad to a full HTML editor like NotePad++ or Coda for Mac users. Of course, you’d need to download the file first in order to do it this way.
Alternatively, you can edit header.php (or any other file in your theme) by going clicking on the “Editor” link under the “Appearance” section of the dashboard. This will give you access to the theme code, but make sure you copy and save a backup before modifying anything!
Thanks to Shaun for noticing that this part needed clarification!
Leave any questions or feedback in the comments, and don’t forget to click the five stars button rate this lesson!
Hi Chad
I’ve only looked at this first video so far and I am very impressed with your presentation. It’s very clear and concise. Far superior to many other tutorials I have watched and I am looking forward to viewing the others. I am using the Thesis Theme in my blog so I dare say all of your tutorials will work with it.
Regards
Hi Barry!
Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!
Glad you found the video helpful… I look forward to hearing your thoughts on some of the others once you’ve watched them
hi chad, nice meeting you and give my regards to lynne… hey i saw this video of yours and i found it really helpful, but i need to ask for another help i’m using the wordpress 2.9.1 version and i have successfully add my first post nice and easy but when i post another it turn up to be just under the first post.. i tried categories it’ll never show up on the browser..and then there’s always the date posted on every post which i dont want ..thanks
Hi Reinier! Nice to meet you to, and I will definitely say hello to Lynne for you!
When you say your second post appears below the first, are you referring to your blog’s home page? Your home page will display all of your posts, unless of course it’s a static page.
Also, where are your trying to get comments to appear? If you are referring to the navigation bar, some themes display pages in that area, while others use categories (or both) so it will depend. The same is true for the date on your posts – this is something within your theme.
Now, despite being theme controlled, these elements can all be changed
To make your navigation bar show categories, you need to change the
wp_list_pages()tag towp_list_categories(). If you do this, you’ll probably want to leave the “Home” link in place for easier navigation.To remove the date, you’ll need to delete that section of code from the different files that are displaying it. There could be several, depending on your theme. The tag you are probably looking for is called
the_time()and will most likely be accompanied by other things, like the author name or some other text.Let me know how everything goes!
Cheers mate. Helped me allot.
Hi Chad.
I am just about to input some senstive material on to my wordpress document.How do i keep anyone from looking or going in to this material, while i put it on and make changes until i am satisfied to publish it.
Hi Chad
You talk about going into your favourite text editor and pulling up your header. php file and editing your files to hide a page. Sorry mate, but i don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.Still a bit green with the technical stuff. And another thing…Can i turn the whole site into a money site, in other words, no blogging and only for a business site??
Hey Shaun
Glad this post helped!
Header.phpis a file within your blog’s theme, and part of that theme controls your navigation bar. You can modify that section to hide the new page you’re creating, so you won’t have an extra link.You can do this two ways, either download the file to your computer (using an FTP client if you have one you are familiar with) and editing in any text editor (like NotePad, or an HTML editor). The other option is to do all of this directly within WordPress. There is an “Editor” link under the “Appearance” section. This will give you access to the theme code and allow you to make the changes I demo in the video.
No matter which option you choose, be sure to keep a backup of any theme files you are modifying, in case something goes wrong!
Second question: You can certainly use WordPress for non-blogging sites. Basically you need to change your homepage as we’ve done here, and then you can either not select a “posts page,” or you can go ahead and select one, then modify the code to exclude that page as well (I prefer this method as well, it’s a more “complete” solution).
To exclude multiple pages, you list them like this in the exclude parameter:
Then you’ll have all of your “static” pages, but no “blog” page!
And your third question (from the other comment)
Not sure exactly what you mean by “sensitive material,” so it depends. If it’s just text, then you can always save a post as a draft, or publish it as private or password protect it until it’s ready for the world. If it’s being added to a post that needs to remain public, I’d create a secondary draft to do your editing in, and then copy and paste the final product into the public post when it’s ready.
If it’s more than adding content, like graphics/theme changes, I’d recommend setting up a local installation of WordPress on your computer. Basically a blog without the internet. Then you can edit, test and modify all you want without anyone watching.
Google search WampServer for starters, then search for “Install WordPress on WAMP.”
If that doesn’t answer your question, let me know a little more detail on what you’re working on and I’ll try to help
Thanks allot Chad. That helps. Another question for you. I have just installed a new domain on wordpress and the themes on the theme pages are blank. Even if i download and activate a new theme, the themes are not complete and all of themes are blank on the theme pages.I tried to re-install it , but still have the same problem.Is there maybe a problem with wordpress?Had a word with hostgator, my hosting account as well and they say everything is ok on their side.
Hi again, Shaun!
Happy to help
I haven’t personally encountered that issue myself in the past, but I did a little digging, and the good news is you’re not the first!
I can’t say for certain what exactly the issue is, because it appears this can be caused by a few different things. Here’s a link to a forum thread that should help: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/252667
Several people in that thread had the same issue, and solved it with different solutions depending on their individual situations.
Good luck, and keep me posted!
Hi Chad
Been to the forum thread and still no joy.I even have my hosting account, Hostgator looking into it.They say it’s very strange to them as well, because on one of my domains everything is ok, but with the 3 others it’s not.All of the others has the same problem.Is there a wordpress god that can help me with this issue.Do you know an e-mail address or someone i can get in contact with.Not that your help wasn’t appreciated mate.You helped me allot.
thanks man.
Hi Chad
Problem solved. My .htaccess file was missing in the folder. Implemented it and all ok. If there is anyone still struggeling with this issue, just pass on this information to them. Glad if i can help as well.
Cheers man.
Hmm. There must be SOMETHING that those three sites have in common.
How were they installed? Manually or using something like Fantastico/SimplScripts? Were those installs ever moved from a different domain or directory? (and if so, how?)
Also, do the default and classic themes still work? You may want to try deleting all but those two themes, then loading fresh copies of them (download the entire WP package, and then upload the two themes via FTP).
Keep me posted. I’m really looking forward to the answer on this one!
Hey Shaun
Glad you got it worked out! That’s a great fix, and I’ll be sure to remember it if that problem ever comes up again!
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you… you comment got caught in my apparently over-vigilant spam filter. I was wondering how you were doing, so I’m glad I found it!
Thanks for letting us know what was going on, I’m sure it will be useful to others in the future
Hello Chad,
I’m so glad I opted-in to your video training – I almost didn’t, but decided to go ahead just to see what you had to offer. I was at last, incredibly, happily able to hide my thank you page! I like your thank you page! Now I can put that link in aweber for my subscribers. Thanks so much! Your training is clear, and simple to understand. I’m going to make sure that I mention you on my site!
I have 10 survey questions and they all had to be on separate pages (it’s the way the template is set up with AskDatabase.com). I have the 10 pages listed in my page widget and as having no parent. I tried using this technique to remove them from view but it didn’t work. Any advice?
Without exaggerating too much – how can I create a hover list of pages – when I hover over the survey header tab, I’d like a drop down list to appear showing all the pages included in that page instead of having a long list of pages permanently showing in my sidebar widget. Do you have a video training on how to do that?
@Carol
Glad this video helped!
If I’m understanding your question correctly, it sounds like you want a drop down list in your main navigation bar, and then exclude the individual survey question pages from the sidebar.
The latter should be easy to do. The WordPress Pages widget actually includes a handy “exclude” field, where you can add the ID’s of the pages you want to hide (I believe they should be comma separated).
Drop down navigation is, unfortunately, a little more complex if it isn’t already designed into your theme. Implementing a drop down menu that will look nice with the rest of your theme involves a fair amount of styling, as well as slightly more complex trickery to get around bugs in versions of certain browsers *cough cough*internet explorer*cough*
Creating a drop down menu is, unfortunately, a tutorial I haven’t covered here on the site – yet – but you have definitely just bumped it up a bit on the priority list!
There are some useful articles in the Google results for “Create A WordPress Drop down List.” Depending on your comfort level with CSS and template tags, they may be able point you in the right direction!