How to assign pages as Home and Blog Archives
Assign pages as a homepage and as a posts page
Based on the theme that you’ve purchased, you probably have several options for Homepage, Custom Blog, or Coming Soon page. I’m going to show you how to assign the page of your choice as your homepage, and how to assign a page as your Blog Archives.
- On your WP Dashboard, go to Settings > Reading
- Under “Your homepage displays“, select “A static page“
- For “Homepage“, choose the page you’d like to have as a homepage from the dropdown menu. If you’d like to hide your homepage while you’re working on your site, you can assign the Coming Soon page. Essentially, you can assign any page available as your homepage, so it’s not limited to the given homepage options on your theme. You can even choose any of the available Custom Blog pages as your homepage.
- For “Posts page“, choose the “blog” page or “blog archives” page. What this does is, it’s going to automatically make the assigned page as the main archive of your blog. It will have
What does assigning a page as a “posts page” do?
Assigning a page as your “Posts page” designates that chosen page to display your blog posts. When you select a page under this setting, WordPress will use it as the main page for your blog posts, essentially creating a blog index. This means that when visitors click on this page, they will see a list of your most recent posts. This is particularly useful if you want a static front page (homepage) as shown on the tutorial above, but also have a separate area on your site where your blog posts are organized and easily accessible. When you set a “Posts page”, WordPress will automatically use the page in your theme to display the posts in reverse chronological order.
What is the difference between Custom Blog Index and Blog Archives?
Blog Archives is any page you assigned as your blog index under Settings >> Reading. It automatically displays all of your blog posts in reverse chronological order, and it has pagination. Because the page is limited for customization so we have another blog page, which is “custom blog Index”.
On “custom blog index” you can customize your page like you do any other page. The difference is, the blog posts you have here doesn’t have pagination. To point visitors to this page, you will include the link to the blog page on your main navigation menu (Appearances >> Menu). And inside the page after the blog posts loop, you can include a button that says “more blog posts” that directs to the default “blog archives” page.
