Conditional tag to not display posts on index.php

I use wordpress as my main site but I don’t want the blog to be on the main page of the website. I would like to create a link to the blogging function and use it as a news and updates type function. I would generally create a website and then call wordpress as the news site but want to keep the same look and feel on the home page and the news page.

Can I use a conditional tag in index.php to not display the posts? Then take the same index.php and rename it to news.php and hard link to it and show the posts? I’ve tried this without the tags and I get path type problems.

I apologize for my newbieness. I’m probably asking for something very odd!