Start with the thing almost everybody trips over.
#The front page and the posts page are two different things
In WordPress, your front page can either be a feed of recent posts, or a separate page. If you choose the separate page, the feed moves to another page, and that other page is what the posts settings configure.
If you are configuring the feed and nothing changes, you are editing the wrong page.
SettingsReading is where the two are assigned, and it is worth deciding this before you build anything, because switching later means redoing the work.
#Three ways to build
- Through the Customizer, without Pro
The fastest route and the least obvious one. The posts page can be configured with a featured zone at the top, the listing in the style you want, a sidebar and a call to action. That is a complete homepage, assembled with the free theme tools.
- Through the block editor
When the homepage should be a separate page composed from blocks.
- Through Elementor
When you need full layout freedom. Worth remembering the boundary: Elementor assembles the content of the page and nothing else.
The rule for choosing, in one line: take the simplest route that produces the result you want.
#Do not start from an empty page
The fastest way to a good homepage is not building one from nothing. Take the demo homepage and rework it.
Second fastest: copy the sections you like from the demo and assemble your own from those. Both editors can do that.
There is nothing wrong with either. Demos exist for exactly this.
#What separates a composed homepage from a pile
Six things, and they are cheap to get right and expensive to fix later.
Consistent spacing between sections. The most visible difference between a careful page and a hurried one, and the easiest to correct.
One heading hierarchy. Section titles at the same level and the same size throughout. Different sizes in neighboring sections read as a mistake even when each looks fine alone.
No more than two or three accents. If everything is emphasized, nothing is.
No post appearing twice. Two listings drawing from the same source need an offset to separate them.
Rhythm rather than uniformity. Several sections in a row with the same grid read as one long section. Alternate the density.
The first screen. A reader should understand what the site is about within a second. That is the first section's job, not the footer's.
#Check the result
On mobile separately. A homepage is the longest page on the site, and on a phone it is twice as long again.
And check that the homepage leads into sections rather than only into individual posts. A homepage that offers no route deeper is a dead end with good typography.
#Common questions
Should my homepage be the blog feed or a separate page?
A feed if publishing frequency is the point, and a separate page if you want to present sections, featured material and a message before the feed begins.
Can I mix the approaches?
The front page uses one of them, while other pages can each use a different one, so the choice is per page rather than for the whole site.
My homepage settings do nothing
You are editing the wrong page, and SettingsReading is what tells you which page is the front page and which is the posts page.
How many sections should a homepage have?
As many as have something to say, since six sections with a purpose beat twelve that fill space.
It looks fine and feels wrong
Look at spacing and heading sizes before anything else, because those two account for most of the difference between a page that feels designed and one that does not.
#Still stuck
Open a support ticket with a link to the homepage and which of the three routes built it.
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