Create a Custom Homepage

When you activate a theme, your site will use that theme’s default homepage, which you can edit how you wish. However, you may prefer to build a new homepage from scratch. This guide will show you how.

In this guide

1. Set a Custom Homepage
2. Create a Custom Homepage Template
   1. Apply Your Template to a Page
3. Classic Themes
4. Compelling Homepages | WordPress.com Webinar

Set a Custom Homepage

To set one of your published pages as the home page, take the steps below.

Select the appropriate tab for your admin interface style:

Default ViewWP-Admin

1. Open your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to the Settings → Reading section.
3. In the “Your homepage displays” dropdown, select one of your published pages:

Setting a Custom Homepage

4. Click the “Save settings” button at the top right of the Site settings panel.

When you view your site’s Pages, the newly-selected page will have the Homepage label as shown below. You can click this page to edit the content of your homepage.

Your custom home page will display the Homepage icon in your Pages list.

1. Visit your site’s WP-Admin dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings → Reading.
3. Next to “Your homepage displays“, select the “A static page” option.
4. In the dropdown, choose the page you want to use as your homepage. Only published pages (not drafts) will show in these dropdown lists.
5. Click the “Save Changes” button to save your selected homepage.

Create a Custom Homepage Template

A template sets the overall structure of your page, including the header, footer, and how the page content is presented. Use Templates to control this structure and use Pages to edit the main body content.

To create a new homepage template:

1. Go to Appearance → Editor in your site’s dashboard.
2. Click Templates.
3. Click the + icon to the right of Templates to create a new template.
4. Choose “Custom template” from the drop-down.
5. Give your custom template a memorable name, such as My Custom Homepage, and click the “Create” button.
6. We recommend adding the following elements:
   • Header: You can choose an existing header template part, or put together a new one from scratch containing common elements like a Site Logo, Site Tagline, and Navigation.
   • Content: The main content in the template will come from your page, so for now add the Content block to display your page’s content in the template.
   • Footer: You can choose an existing footer template part, or put together a new one from scratch containing common elements like copyright text, your Site Title, and Contact Info.
7. Click Save and visit the next section to learn how to apply your new template to your homepage.

In this brief video, you’ll see a new custom template created, a Header template part, Content block, and Footer template part added.

This video has no sound.

Check out our dedicated template guides for more detailed steps on working with templates.

Apply Your Template to a Page

In the previous section, you created a custom homepage template. To apply this template to your page:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Click on Pages.
3. Click on your homepage to edit it.
4. Open the page settings sidebar on the right.

If you do not see the sidebar on the right, click the Settings icon in the top right corner to bring up the settings. This icon looks like a square with two uneven columns:

The settings icon in the top right corner

5. Next to “Template“, click the template name and select the template you created in the previous section of this guide.
6. Click “Update” to save your page with the new template applied.

⚠️

The Home or Index templates cannot be assigned to a Custom Homepage.

Also, if the Front Page template is active on the site, the assigned Custom Homepage will ignore any template options in the page editor and will use the Front Page template.

Learn more about Templates.

Classic Themes

Classic themes rely on the pre-built design of the theme to determine color schemes, layouts, and more. If your site uses a classic theme, you will not have the Appearance → Editor option in your site’s dashboard. The classic theme controls the page template and can’t be directly edited.

We recommend switching to a site editor theme for full control over your site. On a classic theme, you edit the page content by following these steps:

1. Go to Pages in your site’s dashboard.
2. Click the title of the page you’ve assigned as your homepage.
3. Edit, add, or remove blocks as desired (learn how to use the WordPress Editor here!)
4. Click the Update button in the top right corner to save your changes.

Some classic themes may offer optional “Front” or “Home” templates. These special templates will have a unique design specific to the site’s homepage and only apply to this specific theme. Refer to your theme’s guide to learn how to configure this template. The theme documentation is located under Appearance → Themes. Then, click Info for your active theme:

Compelling Homepages | WordPress.com Webinar

Watch our recorded webinar that will guide you through every step of the process of setting up a compelling homepage:

Find more webinars at: https://wordpress.com/learn/webinars