Using a Static Front Page With WordPress

It seems that the WordPress guys are getting the static front page functionality sorted out. I know it's been available for a while, but the truth is it's never worked very well until now.

When you go into your admin pages and choose Settings, Reading, you can specify whether you want to display your latest posts on the front page, or one of your existing pages, i.e. a static front page. You can also specify a page to display your posts.

The good thing about the latest version, is that all the "behind the scenes" stuff works. For example, the front page responds to the is_front_page() function whether you're displaying a static page or your latest posts.

The is_home() function returns true for the page displaying your latest posts. Be careful thought because this can change…

If you have your blog configured to show your latest posts on the front, then the front page will respond to the is_home() function.

If, however, you have a static front page, then it will be the page which you choose to display your latest posts that will respond to the is_home() function instead, and NOT the front page.

This setup is great if you have a site based completely on WordPress, but you want it to look like a normal website with a blog in a /blog/ subfolder for example. All you need to do is set a static page as the front page, and then choose a second page to display your blog posts, making sure the page slug for the second page is '/blog/'. That's it.

Now I no longer need any plugins to give me decent static front page functionality. Cool…