Getting ready

Nothing special is needed here. The possibility of using a static page as a homepage is built-in in the WordPress—however, a lot of bloggers aren't aware of it.

In this recipe, we will learn how to set up a static page as a homepage for your blog, though, we won't create the entire page for you. Now that you have learned how to create and use page templates, setting up a homepage shouldn't be a problem.

How to do it...

How it works...

WordPress allows you to choose between the post lists (most used in blogs) and a static page of your choice as homepage.

This second option gives you quite a few of possibilities, in particular if you'd like to create a non-blog site using WordPress.

There's more...

If you have chosen to use a static page as homepage, how about executing some PHP in it? If this idea seems appealing to you, you should definitely check out the Exec-PHP plugin. You can download it for free at the following link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/.

To install Exec-PHP, simply use the standard How to do it... described in Chapter 1. Suppose you want to execute some PHP within a post or a page, you can do it by simply turning the WordPress editor to source mode and starting with coding your PHP.