Both Homepage and Blog Page direct to static homepage

Do I need to actually create a template for the “blog” page

No – it should use your theme’s index.php template automatically. Does you theme also include a home.php file?

yes it does have a home.php. Should I name it something else?

Yes. Try template-home.php. You will also have to tweak it to turn it into a custom page template but that should only mean adding the comment block at the top.

I was able to change the homepage name and that worked for homepage page. But on the Blog page I have it set to default and I know ther are 2 posts in my blog that should show up but it says there are none.

I started with a blank custom theme from a Lynda.com tutorial. I think I can figure out if I knew what page the”default” was. Is it index.php OR is it page.php?

AND

should that file call the “loop”?

<?php
			/* Run the loop to output the posts.
			 * If you want to overload this in a child theme then include a file
			 * called loop-index.php and that will be used instead.
			 */
			 get_template_part( 'loop', 'index' );
			?>

or should it have something like this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
			<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
			<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/inc/meta.php' ); ?>
			<div class="entry">
				<?php the_content(); ?>
				<?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => 'Pages: ', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>
			</div>
			<?php edit_post_link('Edit this entry.', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
		</div>
		<?php // comments_template(); ?>
	<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

sorry I couldn’t find the “backticks”

ok… I figured out that I had the wrong template and I it is fixed for the blog home. Thank you for your assistence on the homepage file ??

thx!
s ??