Wordpress is not only a state-of-the art blogging platform, it can be used for many, many other things besides blogging. You can use it for creating a membership site, a games arcade, or even turn it into a static looking website. There are many benefits of using Wordpress as a static website. For starters, you don’t have to fuss around with tricky html or css, and it can be updated easily with a click of a button. Here are 3 methods that I use to turn my blogs into static minisites.
1. Use a static frontpage. In your Wordpress dashboard you have the options to turn any of your pages into your front page, so it will be the first page that everyone will see when they visit your site. This will give it the look and feel of a static site. To do this login to your dashboard and choose “settings”, then click on “reading”.
Then choose “a static page” and choose the page you would like to display on the front of your blog from the drop down list.
2. Remove the time and date stamp from your posts. If you don’t plan on updating your site all that often it may be a good idea to remove the ime and date stamp from your posts and pages. Then when a visitor turns up on your site your content won’t look outdated. To do this you will have to fiddle with your code a little bit, here’s how:
First step is to login to your Wordpress dashboard and then click on “design”. Next choose “theme editor” and choose “single post” from the right hand side. Then you need to delete this piece of code:
<?php the_time('d M Y'); ?>
You may have to open other a few of your other template files and make sure that t his code doesn’t appear there too. (Click image to enlarge).
3. Make prettier permalinks. Dont’t you just hate those standard Wordpress permalinks that look a bit like this: http://YOURSITE.com/?page_id=11. Well these permalinks are not only bad for SEO, they are a huge turn off to your visitors too. To change permalinks, again login to your Wordpress dashboard and choose “settings”. Next click on “permalinks” and choose “custom structure”. Then write in the box next to it “/%postname%/”, like this:
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I’m new to this blogging stuff but I very interested in creating
a regular website into a wordpress static website.
Q1. Can a static wordpress site with static pages ping or is
that only for blogs.
Q2. Can a static wordpress site get indexed as quickly as a
blog does?