• INTRODUCTION
• INTRODUCTION
• WORDPRESS AND COMMUNITIES
• GETTING STARTED
• LOGGING IN
• USING THE DASHBOARD AND SETTINGS
• BASIC USE
• ADDING A POST
• ADDING IMAGES
• USING CATEGORIES AND TAGS
• ADDING LINKS
• HANDLING COMMENTS
• ADDING USERS AND USER ROLES
• DESIGN
• POSTS OR PAGES?
• USING THEMES
• USING WIDGETS
• USING MENUS
• MAKING A WEBSITE INSTEAD OF A BLOG
• MEDIA
• ADDING AUDIO
• ADDING VIDEO
• ADDING VIDEOS WITH SUBTITLES
• CREATING AN IMAGE GALLERY
• USEFUL PLUGINS
• INTRODUCTION TO PLUGINS
• ANTI-SPAM PLUGINS
• PODCASTING PLUGIN
• STATUS.NET AND TWITTER PLUGINS
• CALENDAR PLUG IN
• IMPORTING AND EXPORTING
• ADVANCED ADMIN
• INSTALLING ON A SERVER
• INSTALLING WITH SUBVERSION
• SECURING YOUR INSTALLATION
• OPTIMIZATION
• ANALYTICS
• CREATE A COMMUNITY
• INSTALLING A WORDPRESS NETWORK
• WORDPRESS NETWORK ADMIN
• USEFUL WORDPRESS NETWORK PLUGINS
• BUDDY PRESS
• APPENDICES
• ABOUT THIS MANUAL

MAKING A WEBSITE INSTEAD OF A BLOG

If you don't want a list of posts displayed in chronological order on your home page, if you don't want to show any kind of blog but you just want to create a fairly static website, then dive into this chapter!

We have seen already that you can install WordPress and create some pages, and have these page names appear as menu items in a menu that appears on all of the pages. But what do you want to appear on your home page? If you just want a static page, you can create a new page called Home.

Look down the lefthand column of your Dashboard, to the tab area named Settings, and click the little arrow next to it to expand ...

... and then you will be able to see the various Settings options.

 Choose Reading, and change the "Front page displays" setting from "Your llatest posts" to "A static page", as below:

If you already have made a new page called Home, you can choose that page to display as the landing page to your website. As you can see above, you also have the option of choosing which of the pages you have created will display your blog posts (just in case you still want to have a blog somewhere in your site!).

So why not make a blog page at this point, by clicking on Add New under Pages on the Dashboard.

Now you can go back to the Settings > Reading options, and choose your Blog page as the page which will display your posts:

NOTE: You don't need to change any options other than these to make your home page static (no posts) and your blog page display your posts, WordPress figures it out and makes it happen. Thanks, WordPress!