So, we’ve just created an awesome web page on our brand new WordPress site. The sad thing is, there is no link to it from the home page of the site. We have to now create a link. But we’re going to do something even better. We will make this new page our home page. This is the first step to ditching the WordPress blogging system and use WordPress to create a beautiful website that looks nothing like a traditional blog.
So in order to set this web page as our home page, we need to go back into our WordPress Dashboard.
Once inside the Dashboard, we hover our mouse over “Settings.” It will then fly out a set of options. And we look for “Reading” and click it.
Once we click “Settings > Reading” it will load a screen similar to the screen shot below.
As you can see, WordPress is configured to show your latest blog posts on the home page. But you can change that by selecting the Radio Button next to “A Static Page.”
So let’s do that.
Now that we’ve selected the option for our home page to display a static page instead of a blog post, we’ve got to specify “which” static page should be shown.
So far, we’ve only created one web page. So we won’t have much of an option to select. There will just be that one web page for us to select. So let’s go ahead and click the down arrow shown next to the “Homepage: Select” option, and select the only web page we have so far.
And we did it! We’ve selected our first web page as the homepage. Let’s scroll down and see if there are any settings that we’d like to tweak since we’re already here.
You know what, I don’t even need to touch any of those settings since they no longer apply. Nevertheless, I’ll change those two “10s” into “100000000000000.” That is, some millions, because I want no limitations on my website, if I ever have to use that feature somewhere along the line.
But for now, it doesn’t apply to anything, since I’m not creating a blog here. I’ll still change it anyways.
As for the “full text” or “summary option,” that doesn’t apply anywhere, since, like I said, I’m not creating a blog here. I’m creating a website using WordPress. So I can just leave that the way is.
Do I want to discourage search engines from indexing this site? Absolutely not! In fact, I wish for it to appear at the very top for certain search terms! So I just leave that box unchecked.
And, I click the “Save Changes” button.
A new page loads telling me that my changes have been saved.
So let’s test this out. I’m going to close the browser and type in my website domain once again: hotelamazonasgy.com, and see if the changes have really taken effect.
And well, what do you know? It worked! As you can see, the home page now contains the web page that I had created earlier.
So that’s the first step to ditching the WordPress blogging platform and creating a beautiful website using WordPress.
Now it’s time to play around with some themes. Let’s do some “theme switching” to see which one looks most beautiful and functional for our hotel website.
Yes, our next lesson will be, “Trying Out New WordPress Themes.”
