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Wordpress: Static Home pages and templates

Posted by Jim Edwards on 10/12/07 • Categorized as Web Design

Two months ago I went to Costa Rica on a short term missions trip to help iglesia-del-este.com renovate their building. I know, I know, what’s a geek doing trying to renovate a building….well if you must know I was mainly taking pictures and video, but I did manage to pick up a paintbrush every so often so people wouldn’t call me lazy to my face. While I was their I met Greg Kedrovsky the Pastor of the church and we began to talk about web development and specifically the use of Wordpress. So with my caring heart, I promised to send Greg some great links that I thought might be able to help him with his web ministry…well it’s been two months, and do you know how much fruit has been spread due to my kind heart…..none, I totally forgot about it when I got home. Nice, luckly for me Greg emailed me and reminded me of his request. So I thought well lets kill two birds with one stone and make my answer into a post and make everyone happy! So here we go.

Greg writes..”Remember that you told me you were going to send me some links to sites that had WordPress templates that I could use for my web work here. Specifically, you said you were going to send me links to some places where I might find templates that had a “static entry“ for the “home page“ of a WordPress site so that I could maintain a welcome/orientation message on the front page, along with the blogs following.”

Static Home Page
Well there are two ways to accomplish this. First with the release of WordPress Version 2.1, the option to set your own front page can be accomplished via your Administration > Options > Reading panel. I realize that upgrading isn’t always an option, server limitations, fear of new technology, general apathy…whatever. So if that’s not an option, I highly recommend Semilogic’s “Static Front Page” plugin for Wordpress. I’ve used it, I love it, and it’s simple as pie to implement.

The following comes directly from Semilogic’s website:

Create a static page (Write / Page) called “Home”, and another called “Blog”.

That’s it, you’re done…

You can safely rename the two pages after you’ve created them: What really counts are the pages’ slugs, which needs to be “home” and “blog” respectively.

The plugin removes the home page from page lists, and changes its permalink to your blog’s url to avoid duplicate content.

Your site will resume to its default behavior if no home page is available.

Now before I leave this topic, I would mention again that if at all possible I would highly recommend upgrading Wordpress to 2.3. It’s amazing, and definitely worth the time and effort. For instructions on backing up and updating go here. Please backup, I did an update once, forgot to check the stats on my server only to discover that my php wasn’t up to snuff…thank God I backed up or I would have been toast.

Templates for Wordpress
I’ll list a few different sites that I’ve found over the years for great Wordpress themes. I’ll also list the ones that I’m currently using on our sites, and why I went that way.

ITChurch.com
Here at ITChurch we used Redblack 1.0 by Your Index yes I know that link is toast, and doesn’t take you to the theme, however I can’t seem to find the original location of the theme….guess that’s one way to keep ITchurch unique! If someone finds the link to Redblack 1.0, please post it here, and we’ll correct this link. Thanks to Chris for finding this link!
livethegreat.com
Our monthly ezine for KCBT. This site uses Mimbo which is a template designed by Darren Hoyt. I can’t tell you how much I love this template. It’s amazing! it’s a magazine like layout, which for a newsletter or ezine looks perfect. It allows us to showcase several articles on one page, and it so far has really shown to draw views into the smaller articles.

Drjeffadams.com
This is the daily blog of our Head Pastor Jeff Adams. I hate admitting this, cause it’s kind of funny, but it’s really a World of Warcraft theme called Wowza 1.01 by Kiven . Now this brings up a good point, When I first started using Wowza I was attempting to tweak the theme and had deleted the link which gave credit to Kiven for developing the theme. Folks…that’s a no no. Now Kiven caught it, and gave me a good public scolding…which I deserved for not checking my work. We now link to him, and all harmony has been restored to the universe. But it’s a good reminder to link the credit!!! People work hard at this stuff, and they do it for free!

Other places for Templates
There are literally hundreds of sites out there that offer templates for wordpress. Of course you’ll need to check to see what version the template runs with, with the implementation of widgets in the newer versions of Wordpress I highly recommend finding a template that works with widgets. Below I’ve compiled a list of sites that have free templates, there are sites where you can buy them, but since I’m cheap and I’m assuming you are too, we’ll just advertise for the free guys today!

http://themes.wordpress.net/
lots of great themes that are organized by color and number of columns!

http://www.wpthemesfree.com/
I just found this one, but it’s seems to be loaded with themes sorted by genre

http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/
Ok this isn’t really a template site, but an online tool to generate your own template….limited yes, but pretty cool.

http://wordpresstemplates.name/
Another template site….looked difficult to navigate till I found the categories on the right column…..scroll down it’s there.

Ok I could do this all day, but I’m not going to. So below is a great list directly from the horses mouth. This is reposted from Wordpress.org. If you can’t find anything here, I would suggest two other options…1. try google and type in free wordpress themes 2. Your too picky!

I joke but seriously, remember good web design isn’t just about flashy, get your attention, blow your mind stuff….Although that’s nice…It’s really about functionality, ease of use, and integrating your customer. Keep those things in mind, and you’ll start seeing amazing layouts in a whole different way. For example Mimbo (I mentioned earlier) It’s not super flashy and cool. But it’s my favorite layout of any template I’ve seen to date. It’s simple and easy to navigate and it gets the job done.

8 Comments

  1. Kiven
    October 18, 2007 • 7:00 pm

    Thanks again, Jim! More power!

  3. chris
    January 25, 2008 • 11:22 pm

    can i use them on my site at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  4. Jim Edwards
    January 26, 2008 • 2:07 pm

    Chris #2- If your referring to the templates…we don’t own them, they are publicly available… Hosting them through your site would probably need to be run through their creators. We are simply reporting on them.

    If your just looking for a way to plug your template site…I removed the link. Listing a category for Adult templates isn’t something I really want to promote at ITChurch.com (good luck with your site). I hope you can understand that decision.

  5. Abunza
    February 6, 2008 • 1:44 pm

    Your information is very much appreciated.

  6. exterior design
    March 16, 2009 • 4:45 pm

    I really liked your blog!

  7. Free Stuff
    April 10, 2009 • 3:43 pm

    It’s amazing theme…. nice updates! good work..

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