The home page for your UTC Blog can be set to display a simple page, a featured page with special widgets, or your blog posts. Read on to learn how to configure or change your blog’s home page.
Featured Content “Hero Unit”
The default display of the home page has a featured content “hero unit” and 3 widget display areas.
Blog Admins can configure the Hero Unit in the Dashboard, via Appearance > Theme Options | Homepage.
- Enter the featured content information in the form fields. Most of the fields, such as the Heading and Sub Heading, take plain text. Some, such as the Content and Featured Content, accept HTML.
- The Featured Content field requires HTML, and is best used to display an image or video. Do a little research to learn how to insert an HTML image tag, or an HTML media object embed tag.
All fields are optional. You can experiment to see what looks best for your Blog.
WordPress Widgets
WordPress widgets are used to display information such as Recent Posts, Categories, Custom Text or Custom HTML. If your account has the Blog Admin role, you can see the available widgets from the Dashboard via Appearance > Widgets.
You can insert as many widgets as you like into each of the 3 widget areas below the Hero Unit.
Changing the Home Page to Display a List of Blog Posts
Many blog owners choose to display the most recent posts, or post excerpts and “thumbnail” images.
- To create a page that displays recent posts, go to the WordPress Dashboard and choose Pages > Add New.
- In the title area, enter Blog. In the Page Attributes box (see image below), choose Blog Excerpt (summary), then Publish.
- Next, go to Settings > Reading and change the options for “Front page displays” to “A static page” and choose your newly created Blog page.
Visit your Blog’s home page, and you should see a list of the most recent blog posts, if there are any.
Changing the Home Page to Display a Single Page
If you want to display some simple content on the Home Page of your blog, you may want to create a Page. The Home Page of UTC Blogs is a good example of this, using the “Right Sidebar – Half Page” template. It is an intro to the Blog, and contains a Widgetized list of Active Blogs in the sidebar.
Similar to the process above, you can choose or create any page to be displayed as the front page of your blog. Simply choose any page from the list in Settings > Reading. You can choose a page with the Default template, or any of the other Templates listed in Page Attributes. You can also change the Template for a page after the page has been created.