Creating a “Blog Page” — With Paging

Nathan Rice on May 14, 2008

If there was one question I get asked the most about WordPress themes, it’s this one: how do I make a custom static homepage at the root of my blog’s address (e.g. http://example.com/) and have my blog posts go into a /blog section (http://example.com/blog)?

WordPress is becoming more and more usable as a Content Management System, so naturally the question comes up.

But they don’t want to abandon the idea of a blog either. Blogs can be an integral part of a business website, and it makes sense that businesses and individuals would want the site and the blog managed from the same WordPress installation.

The First Option

The idea is simple … create a category called “blog” and place every single post you create in this category by making it the default category. Make all other categories “children” of the blog category.

This is actually a pretty decent option for users with a fair amount of WordPress experience. It allows you to accomplish the desired effect, and also lets you create other top-level categories for other purposes than categorizing posts (for instance, using top level categories for things like setting feature posts, press releases, or like me … theme releases).

The Second Option

The second option is a little more complicated, but is certainly a viable option for theme developers releasing themes for mass distribution (this is the option we use at iThemes. See the iCompany theme as an example.).

Here’s a step-by-step:

  1. Copy your index.php file
  2. Create a new file called blog.php and populate it with the contents of the index.php file
  3. Make it a page template by pasting the necessary code at the top. (making sure to change the template name to “Blog” instead of “Bio”)
  4. Create a new WordPress “page” (Write > Page) from your Dashboard
  5. Don’t worry about content on the page, but make the title “Blog”
  6. Before you click publish, scroll down to the “Advanced Options” and expand the “Page Template” section.  Choose “Blog” from the drop down menu.
  7. Click Publish.

Now, you’re going to want to edit the blog.php file one last time. Find “the loop“. It should look something like this:

Replace that code with this:

query('showposts=5'.'&paged='.$paged);
while ($wp_query->have_posts()) : $wp_query->the_post();
?>

You can change the “showposts=5” to whatever number you want. It just depends on how many posts you want to be shown on a single page. Plus, but using ‘&paged=’.$paged we are able to keep paging intact … a problem that kept many people from using this method in the past.

Then, find the line of code that looks like this and remove it:

You’ll also probably want to remove any thing that has to do with not being able to find the page you were looking for. Hopefully you have a 404.php file that will take care of that for you.

Finally, after you’ve done the above, find the following code:

and change it to:

The Third Option

The final option is by far the easiest for the end user. It requires no code editing at all and accomplishes the same goal as the other 2 methods. The only problem is that it does screw up the “current_page_item” class for the home link and the blog link. Check out the possible solutions here.

Anyway, here’s how to do it.

The first thing you need to do is create a blog Page. Nothing fancy here, just write a new Page, title it “Blog”, and click “publish”. No need for any content.

Then, Assuming you’re still on the dashboard, click on Setting > Reading. Once there, you should see something that looks like this:

Default Reading Settings

Go ahead and click the radio button that says “A Static Page”. Then, you’re going to want to choose a page to use as your front page (any one of your pages will do), and you’re going to want to choose your “Blog Page” as the page to use for the posts.

Voila! You’re done! Save the settings and you should now be using one of your Pages as your homepage, and your blog Page is now housing all of your posts (and yes, paging does work with this method as well).

Conclusion

So there you go! Three different ways to accomplish the same general goal. If you have any suggestions for a better way of getting this done, feel free to leave a comment below and if it works well, then I’ll add it to the post.

24 Replies to “Creating a “Blog Page” — With Paging”

  1. Murk May 15, 2008 at 6:16 am

    … or install WP in a subdirectory, and have a static page, or a page produced my other means, in the higher directory.

  2. Nathan Rice May 15, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    @Murk,
    The idea is to be able to manage your entire site from within the same installation of WordPress. By moving it to another directory means you have to have 2 separate installs.

  3. Sean Gaffney May 16, 2008 at 7:04 pm

    Hey Nathan,

    I do something similar to Option 2, however the contents of my blog.php is simply this:

    This is the method recommended in the WordPress codex, as shown here:
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Making_Your_Blog_Appear_in_a_Non-Root_Folder

    Hope that helps someone!

  4. Sean Gaffney May 16, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    I guess the code got stripped… probably for the best. However, it’s still available from the link listed.

  5. Nathan Rice May 16, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    @Sean Gaffney
    Yeah, query_posts is great. But using WP_query helps avoid loop conflict. Either one is fine as long as you aren’t trying to run multiple loops.

  6. Chip June 11, 2008 at 1:52 am

    I really like the first option, with the category “Blog”. I intend to change one of my blogs into a static web site, however I don’t want to lose the WP functionality, so I will create a “Blog” category, and everything will be listed there (there’s really not that many articles, that’s the reason).

    Thanks for the tips 🙂

  7. Team Nirvana June 29, 2008 at 9:46 am

    This is surely helpful.

    I was thinking of doing the same. So, left out my main page blank and only populated the /blog section with installation going on in it.

    Would try this for sure.

    Thanks for sharing.

  8. JamesSpratt.org July 3, 2008 at 7:59 am

    I go with @Murk’s suggestion. It’s what I do on my site and it works for me, I just hope it works for the average visitor too.

    And be sure to use Lester Chan’s WP-PageNavi when it comes to the pagination itself.

  9. BeemiaNar July 8, 2008 at 7:22 pm

    tests time mashine

  10. bot July 10, 2008 at 5:41 pm

    cool site , thanks

  11. Cho. P July 24, 2008 at 9:49 am

    You’ve just saved my life.

    Thank you.

  12. Create a page link to the blog posts in Wordpress : OSWeb2Design Blogs July 26, 2008 at 2:40 am

    […] That is all. I got the solution from this post. […]

  13. jessica July 27, 2008 at 4:25 am

    thanks for this post! answered my question very well.

  14. Flector September 22, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Thank you very much, excellent idea.

  15. Diaper Dad October 6, 2008 at 6:27 am

    Excellent, the information I was looking for! Thanks so much 🙂

  17. Vince February 3, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    I want the landing page to just show one cat and a blog page with everything else.

  18. Willow June 7, 2009 at 8:03 pm

    Wow! Thanks for the tips.

  19. mercime June 9, 2009 at 4:30 am

    Nathan, thank you for sharing the best solution for the Second Option – home.php plus blog.php. That code should definitely be in WP codex. All my previous research got me was that it could not be done, hah! I got hung up on getting the pagination to work for hours before I found your post which finally solved it. Thanks again.

  20. Douglas June 10, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Excellent, thanks for this post, it made my day! I used the second option. I’ve been trying to figure this one out for a while! Cheers!

  21. James August 1, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    I don’t understand the first option. Doesn’t WordPress post all blog posts to the front page automatically, no matter which category they’re in? If that’s the case, creating new categories will organize your posts, but new posts will still be added to the home page. This wouldn’t make it static. Am I missing something?

    Thanks

  22. mikemick August 24, 2009 at 9:37 am

    I couldn’t figure out how to get pagination to work with WP_Query(). The &'paged='.$paged in your example is exactly what I needed. THANKS!

  23. sahithi November 9, 2009 at 7:22 am

    I don’t want to use wordpress to build my blog .I want them using PHP,javascript,css web technologies .how can I do that can any one assist me on that ,pls

  24. Joe January 11, 2010 at 10:14 pm

    Thanks for the tutorial, but I don’t want to use WP for this code.

    Let me explain. WP is great, but I want to run a query from outside it to update a different website. To this end I have been trying to use wp_query() but cannot establish the long list of dependencies it needs. Does anyone know of any examples of standalone wp_query() use?

    Thanks.

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