The term home or home page is used in web development to refer to the the main page of a web site. It is often used in the navigation menus and other user interface elements of the website to direct users to the main page. By default, a WordPress website shows a home page with your latest posts listed in reverse chronological order.
Users can, however, choose to use a static page as their custom home page. This can make the website feel less like a blog and more like a fully featured website. Many users will choose to do this if they want to have their blog restricted to one section of the website.
There are several ways to modify your homepage or create a static front page. The first way is to either create a front-page.php file or a home.php file. Normally WordPress will serve your index.php file on the homepage. Before serving your index.php file WordPress will check to see if you have a front-page.php file. If you do, then it will serve this one instead. If you don’t have a front-page.php file, then WordPress will check to see if you have a home.php file before reverting to index.php.
The second way to modify your home page is to create a regular WordPress page in your admin panel. From Settings » Reading, you can select the name of the page you just created to be your homepage. You can also choose another page contain your blog posts.
Other terms used to refer to the home page are front page, main page, and main index page.
This post was originally published in the wpbeginner glossary.
