Front Page: Posts OR Custom HTML, but not BOTH?

  • Unknown's avatar
    scottjsmith · Member ·

    I would prefer having my home page show a “teaser” of the most recent blog entry, along with other content.

    For example: The Front Page would have selected images, video and text, but one column would be dedicated to a couple of paragraphs from the most recent blog entry. Clicking on the title at the top or “More” at the bottom would take the visitor to the Blog page.

    Can WordPress.com do this?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    thesacredpath · Member ·

    There are themes here that have bottom widget areas where you could put images and then set the blog to display only one post per page. Some have three or four widget areas across the bottom. With only one post, shortened with a more tag, you could have the widgets appear higher up on the page.

    With some CSS editing experience and the paid CSS upgrade, you could also use a three-column theme (two sidebars) and then widen one of the sidebars to have images or text. I don’t know if anyway to put videos in a sidebar position though. Widgets won’t accept the code.

    There are also some themes that have an area at the top that can display a slideshow where you could make images, and images of blocks of text appear, but there is no way to control the speed of the slideshow right now.

  • Unknown's avatar
    hallluke · Member ·

    Modularity Lite has a “welcome message” feature and Structure has the home page widget area, both of which you might want to take a look at. As TSP mentioned above, setting your posts to display one per page would be a good idea and there is a whole lot more you could do with the CSS upgrade if you know your stuff.

  • Unknown's avatar
    panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    Videos in text widgets possible this way:
    http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/gigya-shortcode-1-videos/

    “Welcome Message” (under various names) available in a few other themes as well – see here:
    http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/stickies-and-their-appearance/

    But if I understand correctly, scottjsmith wants a static page as the blog front. In that case any theme with at least one sidebar will do.”Selected images, video and text” on that static page, RSS widget in the sidebar (configured to display the beginnings of scottjsmith’s own posts). Or in Bueno in particular, the Bueno Featured Posts” widget – see here: http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/featured-postsimages-in-bueno/

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    Reference link – static front page

    Set the Homepage

  • Unknown's avatar
    scottjsmith · Member ·

    Thanks, all. I read about the themes and static pages. Doesn’t look like WP (.org nor .com) is ready to do what I would prefer:

    Home page with banner ane menu at top, then in body, a “foursquare” that includes:

    A) A Video
    B) An excerpt of the most recent blog entry (without having to manually edit the entry with the “more” or “excerpt” tags)
    C) A History timeline (can be text, but would prefer an RSS feed of blog headlines only)
    D) An excerpt of the most recent blog entry from a second category.

    I had this set up on another service, but they’re discontinuing. They recommended migrating to WP stating there were more features over here, but I am not finding that to be the case.

    Thanks, all.

  • Unknown's avatar
    raincoaster · Member ·

    That is not going to work on WordPress.com. It could work on WordPress.ORG depending on your own technical ability to set it up.

  • Unknown's avatar
    thesacredpath · Member ·

    All you need is a very good working knowledge of PHP scripting and you can build or modify an existing theme to do what you want. Do note though that without a good working knowledge of PHP, MySQL and the security issues and good practices surrounding those you can leave yourself open to all sorts of problems.

    Why not go self-hosted and hire a theme designer to build one for you just to your liking? Costs for that range anywhere from $1000 to $5000 depending on how much time they have to put into things. (Beware of the $100 theme mills.)

  • Unknown's avatar
    thesacredpath · Member ·

    I should have mentioned that the first paragraph refers to self-hosted wordpress blogs, not those hosted here.

  • Unknown's avatar
    hallluke · Member ·

    This is possible on wordpress.com with widgets. If you want to change their positioning then you would need the CSS upgrade and some knowledge of how CSS itself works. Otherwise it should be fairly simple to set up.

    1. The video can be added into a text widget using the gigya shortcode, this will work for all sorts of videos: youtube, vimeo etc.
    2. The easiest way to show an excerpt of your most recent post is to use the more tag and set the your blog to show one entry per page. Although this is also possible with some tinkering if you have the CSS upgrade (and means you don’t have to add the more tag into every post). Click on the link to my blog for an example. You could also use the technique mentioned in number 4 below.
    3. There’s a dedicated widget, Recent Posts, which does this. Or you can use the archives shortcode in a text widget.
    4. The last one can be done by adding your own category feed into the RSS widget, or if you’re feeling more technical by using a feed editor/mangler like Pipes or Feed43. As an example the link to your Entertainment category feed is: http://scottjsmith.wordpress.com/category/entertainment/feed/ which should be posted into the widget URL box.
  • The topic ‘Front Page: Posts OR Custom HTML, but not BOTH?’ is closed to new replies.