The default homepage is the homepage design that comes with your site’s theme. This guide will show you how to find and edit the content and design of the home page.
In this guide
If your site uses a theme that supports the site editor, you can access and edit the default homepage. A quick way to determine if your site uses the site editor is to check for Appearance → Editor in your site’s dashboard.
First, make sure your site is using the theme’s default homepage instead of a custom homepage with the instructions below.
Select the appropriate tab for your admin interface style:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Reading.
- Under “Your homepage displays“, set the dropdown to — Default —.
- Click the “Save Settings” button at the top of the screen.
If any other page is selected here instead of — Default —, then your site is using a custom homepage.
To find and edit the default homepage:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Click on Appearance → Editor.
- Click anywhere on your site on the right side to open the editor and close the left sidebar:
You are now viewing the homepage template, which may be labeled as Home, Index, or Front Page at the top of the screen:
First, it’s helpful to understand the overall layout of your site’s homepage template. To see this, open List View by clicking the icon at the top left of the screen that looks like three horizontal lines above each other:
Here, you’ll see all of the elements (known in the WordPress editor as blocks) of your homepage. A typical default homepage template will contain the following elements:
- Header: The header contains elements like a site title, logo, and menu. The header is a template part that appears across the entire site. Therefore, any edits to this header will apply to all pages on your site where the header template part is inserted.
- Content: Everything between the header and the footer is the main content of your homepage. You will likely see text and images, organized into Groups, Columns, and more. If your theme displays blog posts on the homepage, you will likely find a Query Loop block here too.
- Footer: The footer contains elements like a site title, contact information, and a WordPress footer credit. The footer is a template part that appears on every page. Therefore, any edits you make to this footer will apply everywhere on your site where the footer template part is inserted.
While every WordPress theme is different, this is the standard structure of a default homepage template that you can expect to see on most themes. In addition, you may see other elements in this template, which you can edit as you wish.
The default homepage gives you a professional, well-designed layout to start from. To personalize the default design, you can swap out the text and images for your own content and add or remove any elements on the page.
- To change any text, click on and type the new text you want to show:
- To change any image, select the corresponding Image, Cover, or Gallery block in List View and click Replace in the toolbar that appears alongside the block:
- To change the fonts and color palette, use the Styles options.
- To delete any content, see Remove a Block.
- To add any content, see Add Content Using Blocks.
- To move any content, see Select and Move Blocks.
- To make changes to the navigation menu, see Menus.
As you make changes to your homepage, you can click the Save button in the top right corner to save your changes:
Watch our recorded webinar that will guide you through every step of the process of setting up a compelling homepage:
Check out our complete schedule of webinars to learn how to do lots more with your WordPress website.
