Custom Homepage Template for Wordpress as a CMS
When designing for WordPress as a CMS, it’s important to know how to design a custom homepage Page Template for your WordPress Theme.
Some of the things I’ve done to enhance a Custom Homepage Page template is to add special homepage widget areas to allow featured content to be added to the homepage and edited easily. If you’re going to do this you might want to make sure you have plenty of text widgets available. You can define more in the functions.php file if the stock 9 text widgets aren’t enough. Need to add php into a widget to add some cool frontpage bell or whistle? No problem, there’s a php widget plugin for that.
Another thing you can do is to add a second loop using query posts to call in your blogposts under your homepage text or into a separate featured box. Or you can get really good using the query post call to include different posts from a few of your different categories, or that are tagged differently. RSS widgets can also give you ways to add other content from areas of your site outside wordpress. Have a forum? Use an RSS widget to call in the latest posts. Have a shopping cart? Use an RSS widget to add the featured, on sale, or newest items from your cart into your wordpress homepage.
Bottom line is that between widgets and template tags, you can make your WordPress as a CMS Homepage jump through some pretty amazing hoops.
If you need help creating a unique site with a great custom homepage, using Wordpress as a CMS, and you want a quote, please use this form.
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