Fairy Blog Mother
If you don’t want your readers to go straight into the blog posts area, you can create a separate front page as the first point of call.
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Blogs usually go straight to the posts page by default, but this can be changed if you want your blog to look more like a website. You can create a page called ‘Homepage’ and another called ‘Blog’ or ‘My blog posts’ and change the immediate access to your new Homepage.
At the moment your blog opens out into the posts page:
You know this is the default index page because the URL (http://settingupablog.wordpress.com) has no additional pages listed on the end.
So now we have to create two new pages, a ‘Homepage’ and a ‘My Blog Posts’ page. (For more information on creating pages, see my blogging e-course ‘Creating Pages’.) You need to write a welcome message on your homepage, so that visitors know what kind of ‘website’ or blog they have come to, and understand its subject, purpose and that they have to click on the other pages to find out more.
In fact, what goes on a homepage is quite important if you wish to keep your visitors longer than 3 seconds, as that is the average time someone takes to decide whether it is the right website or not, and whether they should take action to click on any of the pages.
I haven’t written much in the example below, so you could be much more adventurous and informative in your content.
Once you’ve published your pages, you will then see the extra pages under the Pages Widget:
Then back to the Dashboard through the grey link at the top, and go to Settings > Reading in the left sidebar:
You then change the settings to ‘Static Page’ and select which pages represent the Front page and Posts page. Don’t forget to Save Changes:
All done! Now your visitors will automatically go to your Homepage when they visit your blog:
And when they click on ‘My Blog Posts’ page they will then go to the news-roll like posts page (like the example at the beginning of this pdf) which will have the URL http://settingupablog.wordpress.com/my-blog-posts/ instead.
Don’t forget to view my other blogging visual e-courses to learn more about how to create a successful blog.
© Alice Elliott 2009
