By default, the home page of your WordPress is the page that exists in your WordPress theme. Having a custom homepage is great for so many reasons. Firstly, you have so much more freedom and flexibility when you create your homepage from scratch.
Secondly, whoever installs a WordPress theme, gets the same homepage on their site.
Some WordPress themes have really great homepage designs which are customizable too.
But mostly, the homepages are pretty strict.
If your site has a different homepage that stands out, a page that speaks for you, has your aesthetics, isn’t it the best?
There are plenty of tools available to build a cool-looking homepage. It is pretty easy to get excited and try out everything.
I would strongly recommend first browsing through different sites/blogs to get inspiration for your page.
When you look at different homepages you will come across features you love, features you dislike, and changes that you’d like to make on your own page.
Narrow down your research by checking out the sites that fall into your niche.
You’ll notice that the top sites in a niche have a somewhat similar layout and that’s for a reason. Because it works. That is what the audience is familiar with.
So, sit down and decide on the basic color palette, and the structure of your homepage.
Here are some sites whose design I love, check them out!
| Site Name | Link |
|---|---|
| Later | later.com |
| Hootsuite | blog.hootsuite.com |
| Neil Patel | neilpatel.com |
| ShoutMeLoud | shoutmeloud.com |
| TechCrunch | techcrunch.com |
| Brit + Co | brit.co |
| Dame Traveler | dametraveler.com |
| Labnol | labnol.org |
| Kinsta | kinsta.com |
| Oberlo | oberlo.in |
| Sprout Social | sproutsocial.com |
Also Read: Medium, A Platform To Publish Articles For Free | GarimaShares
Table Of Contents
Set your homepage as a static page
You need to create a static page and title it as home.
Go to your WordPress Dashboard > Pages > Add New. For now, keep it as an empty page. We’ll get to the design and content later on.
Go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Customize.
You’ll be at the page where you can customize your current theme. In the options listed, one of them will be titled ‘Homepage settings’ or simply ‘Homepage’.
Currently, on your site, the homepage would be set to ‘Your latest posts’. You have to change that to a static page.
Select the static page you created a while ago titled ‘Home’.
Install a page builder plugin
It is quite difficult for beginners to customize WordPress page layouts. Although there are premium WordPress themes available out there for diversity, they’re still hard to customize if you’re not fluent in HTML and CSS coding.
A page builder lets you design the page with much ease using simple drag and drop tools. There are many page builder plugins for WordPress that allow you to design custom pages or a homepage.
No need to understand coding, no need to handle the backend.
Page builders can be compared on the basis of how easy they are to use, how many elements they have available in the free and paid versions, how responsive and eye-catching is the design, etc.
Page Builder Plugins On WordPress
Elementor
Elementor is a great drag and drop page builder plugin for WordPress. When you are designing your custom homepage in WordPress with Elementor, you can see the changes that happen live.
You can choose from page templates in the gallery to get ideas. Just click on one and the whole design gets placed on your site.
All you have to do after this is edit and customize it with your content.
There are many elements to choose from:
- Images
- Accordions
- Sliders
- Gallery
- Social media
- Testimonials
- Google Maps
- Buttons
- Videos
- Any widgets you’ve installed outside of Elementor
You can either try the free version or buy a paid license starting at $49. The free version is pretty decent too but if you are serious about your site’s design and can afford it, buy it.
Also Read: How to create and edit reusable blocks in WordPress
Comments: No doubt Elementor has great design options for you but it also slows down the site as its code is not that efficient, users have reported this.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium page builder plugin for WordPress. It is amazing when it comes to ease of use & speed. Unlike most plugins, SeedProd is coded efficiently so that your pages remain light and don’t harm SEO.
There are more than 100 templates to choose from to build your custom homepage in WordPress. And they can be customized using simple drag and drop tools.
You get templates for coming soon pages, 404 pages, sales pages, thank you pages, landing pages, etc.
Also Read: How to make your blog look professional
Things like color schemes and blocks can be saved to be re-used later, hence, saving time.
Some of the features of SeedProd are:
- Contact forms
- Buttons
- Countdown timers
- Social profiles
- Optin forms
- Smart Sections
- Subscriber Management
- Spam Protection
- Mobile Device Preview
- Font Combinations
- Custom CSS
The pricing starts from $39.50 for a single site license.
More options for you to build the perfect custom homepage
Here’s a list of some more WordPress page builders,
- Divi
- Beaver Builder
- Themify Builder
- Visual Composer
- Thrive Architect
- Page Builder by Sandwich
- Oxygen
- Brizy
- WP Page Builder
- Page Builder by Site Origin
