How to set a page as the front page in WordPress

Out of the box, WordPress shows your latest posts at the root address. To show a specific page there instead, you change one setting, and it takes about a minute. Most problems people report afterwards have nothing to do with that setting. They come from the theme’s template, a cache, or a page that was never published.

This guide covers the setting itself, what a working result looks like, and what to check when the homepage won’t change. If you want to change what’s on the homepage rather than which page it is, our guide to editing your WordPress homepage picks up from there.

What you need before you open Settings > Reading

You need an administrator account and a published page. WordPress.com’s support docs say only published pages appear in the Homepage dropdown. Drafts, private pages and pages waiting for review won’t be listed. Our guide to adding pages in WordPress explains status and visibility if a page is missing.

Next, decide whether you want a separate blog. If you publish posts, create a second, empty page called Blog or News and publish it too. This becomes the Posts page. If you never publish posts, you can skip this step. WordPress.org’s Reading screen documentation says a Posts page is optional.

Make sure you’re working with an actual page. A block theme may already have something called “Front Page” or “Home” under Appearance > Editor > Templates. That is a template, not a page, and it never shows up in the Reading dropdown. Many people design the template for days and then can’t find their “homepage” in Pages. If that’s you, create a real page and assign it.

How to set a page as the front page

1. In the dashboard, go to Settings > Reading.
2. Under “Your homepage displays”, choose “A static page”.
3. In the Homepage dropdown, pick the page visitors should see at your root address.
4. If you created a blog page, pick it under Posts page. If not, leave Posts page empty.
5. Click Save Changes.

That’s the whole procedure. It matches WordPress.org’s static front page guide, and you don’t need a plugin. Elementor’s help center sends its users to the same Settings > Reading screen. Building a page in a page builder doesn’t change where you assign it.

Two rules catch people out. First, the Homepage and the Posts page must be different pages. Second, the Posts page only shows your post list. WordPress.org’s Reading settings documentation says WordPress ignores that page’s own template when it shows posts there, and nothing you type into the page appears. If you put your designed homepage in the Posts page slot by mistake, its content disappears.

What a correct result looks like

Open your root address, such as example.com/, in a private browser window. Your normal window is logged in, and logged-in users often skip the page cache that visitors get. The private window shows you what a visitor sees.

• The root address shows the page you picked, with its content and the layout you expect.
• Menu links to that page now point to the root address. You don’t need to change the page’s slug.
• If you set a Posts page, its address lists your recent posts.
• The browser tab shows a real title, not “Home” or the theme’s name.

If all four look right, you’re done. If not, work through the next section in order.

Why the homepage didn’t change after you saved

Saving the setting almost always works. When the root address still looks wrong, something around the setting doesn’t match it. Support docs and forum threads keep naming the same causes. Nobody has measured how often each one happens, so the order below runs from the quickest check to the slowest.

The setting didn’t save, or the page isn’t published

Open Settings > Reading again. Check that “A static page” is selected, the right page is in the Homepage dropdown, and Save Changes was clicked. Then check the page’s status under Pages > All Pages.

A page that was published last month may not be published today. WordPress.com’s troubleshooting guide says a previous homepage can move to Drafts after a theme change. Publish it again, then select it again in Reading.

A cache is serving the old homepage

This is a common reason a correct change looks wrong, and you won’t see an error. Clearing your browser cache doesn’t help if the old copy is stored somewhere else. A caching plugin, your host and a CDN can each keep their own copy. Purge them in that order, then test again in a private window.

Host caches cause the most trouble after a migration. In one WordPress.org support thread, a site cloned to a new host with Duplicator kept showing the default “Hello World!” and “Sample page” content on its homepage, whatever the owner changed in Reading. The fix was clearing a host cache the owner didn’t know was running. If your host’s control panel has a cache tool, use it. If you can’t find one, ask the host.

A block theme’s Front Page template is in charge

If you see an Editor item under Appearance, you’re on a block theme. That means the homepage has a layout layer you may not have looked at yet. WordPress.org’s Template Editor documentation says the Front Page template draws the homepage whether Reading is set to latest posts or a static page. WordPress.com’s troubleshooting guide adds that some block themes give that template priority over your Reading choice.

The usual symptom is a homepage with only the header and footer, or a layout that ignores your page. In a resolved WordPress.org thread on Twenty Twenty-Five, the selected page’s content disappeared as soon as it was set as the static homepage. Removing a Front Page template the user had created brought the content back.

First decide where the homepage content should live. Then set things up to match:

• Content lives in the page. Open Appearance > Editor > Templates > Front Page. Add a Content block where the page’s content should appear, and save. Then check that the page is still selected in Settings > Reading. This is the fix WordPress.com documents.
• Content lives in the template. Edit the Front Page template directly. The assigned page then has no effect on what visitors see, so don’t spend time editing it.
• The template is beyond repair. Use Reset on the template to restore the theme’s default. Reset throws away your changes. WordPress.com says View Revisions can recover earlier versions.

Our guide to customizing a WordPress template safely covers the Site Editor side in more detail.

A classic theme has its own front-page.php

Classic themes can cause the same problem with a file. WordPress’s Theme Handbook on front page templates says that when a theme has a front-page.php file, WordPress uses it for the front page before any page template. If that file never outputs the selected page’s content, editing the page changes nothing on screen.

Look in the theme folder with your host’s file manager or SFTP, or ask the theme’s support team whether its front page uses page content. If it doesn’t, the fix is a template in a child theme. That’s developer work.

A plugin or theme conflict

This is rarer. WordPress.com’s troubleshooting guide describes the standard test: switch to a default theme for a moment, deactivate plugins, then turn them back on one at a time. Use a staging copy if you have one. Change one thing at a time, or you won’t know which change fixed it.

What changes if you run a WooCommerce store

WooCommerce assigns its Shop page separately, under WooCommerce > Settings > Products. WooCommerce’s documentation warns that the Shop page is drawn by a template and may look different from your other pages. You can pick the Shop page as your homepage in Reading. Do it on purpose, and check your theme and extensions afterwards, because a page doing both jobs doesn’t always behave like either one.

Product category archives aren’t pages, so they never appear in the Homepage dropdown. A better option is a real homepage that points visitors to your main categories. Redirecting the root address to a category archive is not a good substitute.

Two traps on the same Reading screen

“Discourage search engines” left on from staging

Below the homepage options, Settings > Reading has a “Search engine visibility” checkbox. WordPress.org’s documentation says ticking it can add a noindex,nofollow robots tag to the site, while visitors still see it normally. Staging sites often have this box ticked, and the setting goes live with the site at launch. If your new homepage looks right but never shows up in search results, check this box first.

A redirect is not a homepage setting

Don’t redirect example.com/ to another address to make a page your homepage. The Reading setting shows the page at the root address. A redirect tells browsers and search engines the address has moved, which isn’t true. Save redirects for URLs that have actually changed, as our guide to redirecting WordPress pages explains.

When to stop and get help

Stop when the fix needs code. That includes a classic theme’s front-page.php that ignores your page, a custom template in a child theme, or a host cache with no purge button you can find. Ask your host about server caching before anything else. That one question resolves many “settings ignored” threads.

On a store, test template changes on a staging copy first, because a broken homepage costs orders. If you’d rather hand the job off, SiteSelf can change the Reading setting from chat through its connector plugin, then fetch the homepage and tell you what it found. That kind of request is what website edits through chat covers.