How to make website created in WordPress into a blog

  • Hi,

    We’ve recently had our company website created in WordPress.

    The website consists of 4 main pages – Home, Products, About Us and Contact Us.

    However we would now like to start a business blog as well.

    Now I understand that WordPress is actually a blog platform anyway and was wondering if we could somehow extend our WordPress website so that it also functions as a blog as well?

    Or should I do another WordPress installation and use this just for a blog?

    Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated.

    I was planning on doing a new installation, but wasn’t sure if we could do what we wanted with our existing website.

    Thanks,

    mi

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

  • Do not bother with another WordPress installation. You can use your current one.

    I assume you have a home.php and page.php file correct?

    In your home.php page you need to add the WordPress loop so it then displays a list of your blog posts.

    <div id="post_container">
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<div id="title"><h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2></div>
<div id="excerpt"><p><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p></div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>

    Then in your single PHP file do the same as above, but instead of using <?php the_excerpt(); ?> use <?php the_content(); ?>

    Voila

    Or if you don’t want to change your Home page into a blog, create a new page called Blog or something and publish it. Then in the Dashboard, go to Settings -> Reading and set your Front Page to Home and your Posts page to Blog. Easier ??

    Thread Starter mrinspiration

    (@mrinspiration)

    georgerobbo – many thanks for your reply. I had one question about suggestion please.

    What is the single PHP file you mentioned? Is this the page.php file?

    kawauso – many thanks for your reply as well. Just a question for you please.

    I’ve just gone into our WordPress admin and have noticed that our designer created one Post called ‘Products’, and in our website this post is the ‘Products’ page. I’m not sure why he did this, as all the other pages in our website are Pages.

    Anyway, I went to Dashboard- Settings – Reading and saw that he has set the Posts page to ‘Products’.

    I was wondering if I could still do something like you suggested?

    yes – just create an empty Page called “Blog”
    save it
    go to
    admin – settings – reading
    and select “Blog” page for posts

    Thread Starter mrinspiration

    (@mrinspiration)

    Hi samboll,

    Thanks for your reply. I tried to do that, buy my designer has set admin-settings-reading to ‘Products’ which is a post that contains details of our products. He’s done our products page using a Post in WordPress.

    Is there anyway I can grt around this?

    Thanks,

    mi

    Yes, just do what Samboll said and then your post page will be called “Blog” and you will still have the page called “Products”. The products information will now be a post in the Blog page…just copy the information from that post, edit your Products Page, paste it in and save. Then delete the post from your Blog page. See the following video…it may help you understand the process a little better.

    [link moderated]

    Thread Starter mrinspiration

    (@mrinspiration)

    Hi Figaro,

    Thanks for your message. I did your approach. However what happens now is that I can write posts to the Blog page, but the title of the posts on the page are not hyperlinks to the actual posts.

    What I would like is the for the Blog page to have posts on it, and when a user clicks the post title there would be forwarded to the URL of the actual post.

    At the moment it doesn’t do this.

    The posts don’t have a date or them either, nor the ability to add comments.

    I noticed that my designer has created ‘Category’ which seems to be making things a bit strange.

    I think he’s done something with the permalinks?

    My designer is willing to add the blog at a cost.

    I just wanted to know if there was anyway I could do it myself before giving him more money.

    Any help would be much appreciated.

    Cheers,

    mi

    Have you tried to reset your permalinks?

    Thread Starter mrinspiration

    (@mrinspiration)

    Figaro, many thanks for getting back to me.

    Yes, I did change the permalinks.

    The designer has set it to /%category%/%postname%/ and I changed it to default: https://www.mywebsite.com/?p=123

    Is this what you mean?

    However, this change then made the display of the ‘Home’ page look weird, so I changed it back.

    As I said, he’s created a ‘Category’ for the posts. I get a feeling this might have something to do with. The weird thing is, is that the ‘Category’ has a different theme to the main site!

    Sounds like your designer has customized your theme (and maybe even some of the core files), not knowing what customization has been done, it will be difficult for someone to help. One pro of getting someone else to design your site is you can get what you want…one con is that you may get stuck with a custom site that is difficult to get help with from someone other than the person who customized it.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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