WordPress® All-in-One For Dummies®

Creating the Front Page of Your Web Site

For the most part, when you visit a blog powered by WordPress, the blog appears on the main page. Lisa's personal blog at http://lisasabin-wilson.com, powered by WordPress (of course), shows her latest blog posts on the front page, along with links to the post archives (by month or by category). This setup is typical of a site run by WordPress (see Figure 2-1).

But the front page of Lisa's business site at http://ewebscapes.com, also powered by WordPress, contains no blog and displays no blog posts (see Figure 2-2). Instead, it displays the contents of a static page that Lisa created in the WordPress Dashboard. This static page serves as a portal to her design blog, her portfolio, and other sections of her business site. The site includes a blog, but also serves as a full-blown business Web site, with all the sections Lisa needs to provide her clients the information they want.

Both of Lisa's sites are powered by the self-hosted version of WordPress.org, so how can they differ so much in what they display on the front page? The answer lies in the templates in the WordPress Dashboard.

You use static pages in WordPress to create content that you don't want to appear as part of your blog but do want to appear as part of your overall site (such as a bio page, a page of services, and so on).

Figure 2-1: Lisa's personal blog, set up like a typical site powered by WordPress.

Figure 2-2: Lisa's business site, set up as a business Web site, rather ...