How to Make a Splash Page in WordPress

Today a member of the StudioPress Community Forum asked how he could make a splash page for his website which would lead to his widgetized home page. I actually did this for a client last year. Here is what I did.

Some people don’t want a really technical long way to do something. Using this is short tutorial you and/or your client can easily undo this process if you no longer need the splash page.

Create the Splash Page

Go to Pages > Add New. Add your new page and call it, let’s say… “Main.” Add whatever content you want on that splash page. I used a full width page layout for my client as he still wanted the navigation and footer widgets. Save this page.

Redirect Your Widgetized Home Page

Next, go back to Pages. Create a New Page called “Homepage” – no space… just “Homepage”. Make sure your page URL and slug are “homepage” as well. Leave this page blank. Save this page.

Now, go to Settings > Reading. Select Static Page.

From the “Front page” drop down, select the “Main” page. From the “Posts page” drop down, select the “Homepage” page. Save it.

Setting Up the Menu

Go to Appearance > Menus. You will need to add your new pages to your navigation. If you only want them to see the splash page one time, the easiest way I found was to leave “Main” off of the navigation. The only way they will be able to get to that page will be to go back and type in the main URL again in the address bar. Then add your new “Homepage” to a Link. You have the option to just label it Home at this point. Then save the menu. If you decide to omit the Main tab from the splash page, be sure to include a link to the “homepage”.

It’s not very technical and you don’t need of a lot of experience to do it. Let me know how this works for you if you decide to try it out. Or, maybe, you might have another way to do it.