When you work in web development for over 20 years like I have, everyone you know asks you questions about their web site. Recently I have had quite a few people ask me if they can use Wordpress to build a web site for their business, even if they do not want to have a blog. Although the Wordpress software is primarily used to build blogs, it has a wonderful feature that make it perfect for static type web sites as well.
The feature we will be working with is available after you have created at least one page in your Wordpress site. Wordpress has the ability to create both posts and pages, and you will create a page by clicking on the “Add New” link under the “Pages” sub menu. By default, Wordpress creates a generic “about” page so you will likely already have one created, however, for this to work you need to create a page that will contain the content of your home page. It’s probably best to call this page “Home”, but you may prefer to name it differently. You can put some basic content there for now and change it after things are set up, but make sure you publish this page so it can be displayed.
Now that you have the page created, you will need to tell Wordpress to use this new page for your “home” page. This is done on the Reading Settings page. You can access this page within your site administration area by opening the Settings sub-menu and click the “Reading” option. A page similar to the screen capture to the right (click to enlarge) will appear. The option you will change is the “Front Page Displays” option. First, click the “A static page (select below)” option, then use the drop down next to “Front Page” to select the page you want to be your home page. Save this setting and your site will now display the selected page for your home page.
Now I know you are going to ask me about the other option on that screen. If you have no intention of writing a blog, just don’t select anything there, it can be left as is. However, if you plan to have a static home page but also a blog page, you can use this option to select which page will show your blog posts. You will need to have created a page in Wordpress for this purpose. You do not have to write any content on the page you create since Wordpress will replace it with your blog posts. Create an empty page with whatever name, probably “Blog”, and publish it, then return to the Reading Settings page and select that page for the blog posts.
As you can see, though Wordpress wasn’t specifically designed for it, a person could use WordPress for a static type web site. In fact, I have done it several times. Here are some examples:
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Thank you for this very helpful information. I just published a static Home page using Wordpress (downloaded from my host). However, prior to this, I had published a Home page using RVSitebuilder at my host. The Wordpress Home page has not overridden the prior web page, as that one is still showing if I type my website URL into my browser. I’m thinking maybe it takes a few days to override the current page? I’m really stumped, any help would be much appreciated.
You may need to look at the files in your main folder on your web hosting account. It sounds like the RVSitebuilder program published a file named index.html, where Wordpress uses index.php. Most web hosts will display the .html file, if it is not there it will display the index.php. You may also see something like index.htm, default.html or default.htm. If any of those files exist, you must delete or rename them for your new Wordpress page to be seen.
wonderful read, keep up the great work. more writers like you are needed on the net
I’ve been kicking computers around since the 99-4A day, and Wordpress is the best and easiest I have ever see for any job.
And you GrandSlambert, are doing great work.
I want to create a site with wordpress (not a blog), but dont have a host yet ( I want to play with it before getting one). Is this possible?
You can always sign up for a free account over at http://wordpress.com and try out the software. There are some limitations when it comes to plugins and themes, but you can get a good feel for how the software works.