Adding Home Page To My Website...

[web_designer 7]

hi trappers, i want your opinions of what i am going to do. i have a blog and i am working on my portfolio now, and i noticed through my searching in the net that most websites that have blog and portfolio, have a home page that leads to both of them.so i decided to add a home page to my blog, but i started it about eight months ago, so i was just wondering is adding a home page that leads to my blog will reduce the traffics?? or make me lose my visitors??is anyone here have the same?? if yes please give me some tips and the advantages and disadvantages of that.thanks in advance.

[Maggot 1]

hi trappers, i want your opinions of what i am going to do. i have a blog and i am working on my portfolio now, and i noticed through my searching in the net that most websites that have blog and portfolio, have a home page that leads to both of them.

so i decided to add a home page to my blog, but i started it about eight months ago, so i was just wondering is adding a home page that leads to my blog will reduce the traffics?? or make me lose my visitors??

is anyone here have the same?? if yes please give me some tips and the advantages and disadvantages of that.
thanks in advance.

Like you said you have a blog and now you will have your portifolio up so your visitors will be shared by both these websites....

If you have a homepage it wont make you loose traffic...

[Shahrukh 0]

Many people read the first page of the site to judge whether or not to read more.So, it won't be good to move away the blog completely. Instead, you can have a box with the latest from the blog and a summary of the portfolio on the main page.

[deadmad7 4]

If you are adding a homepage with ways to get and posts from both your portfolio and YOUR blog, then don't be worried at all. Simple fact why, your HOMEPAGE changes everyday... that's because Wordpress creates "dynamic" pages of your blog and executes PHP and mysql calls everytime a user goes to your site. Now, there is a other thing called "static" webpages which are just normal pages which won't change unless edited by you. So, what you are doing is basically doing is adding a normal homepage to your blog. No harm done. Instead, static webpages are actually better for your site because it reduces the server load and saves costs. I recommend that you add a image to your blog with two widgets on the top and both having images that say "meinterest BLOG" and "meinterest Portfolio" . These images/widget places should be below the banner. Now, below the images you could posts from either your blog or your portfolio. This could give a "personal" feel to it, in my opinion.What most webmasters do nowadays is that they have a blog on your site and have a Menu link leaded to another domain for their portfolio. This idea works well and if you want to take advantages of your SERPs and Pageranks on your Blog, you could add a folder like "meinterest.com/portfolio" and use another Wordpress installation under that URL. You could do this by going to Settings>General on WP Settings and change the "What address do you want to access this site by?". Good Luck!

[web_designer 7]

thanks everyone for your reply.

@Shahrukh, i though of that either. adding the latest topic from my blog and the latest design from my portfolio in the home page. thanks for the suggestion.

I recommend that you add a image to your blog with two widgets on the top and both having images that say "meinterest BLOG" and "meinterest Portfolio" . These images/widget places should be below the banner. Now, below the images you could posts from either your blog or your portfolio. This could give a "personal" feel to it, in my opinion.

god deadmad, you read my mind. i already did that but in a different way. i added two images of my blog and portfolio in the home page but i put them in photo borders and wrote on them, "my blog", "my portfolio" . now i am sure that you are working in CIA were you spying on me??

What most webmasters do nowadays is that they have a blog on your site and have a Menu link leaded to another domain for their portfolio. This idea works well and if you want to take advantages of your SERPs and Pageranks on your Blog, you could add a folder like "meinterest.com/portfolio" and use another Wordpress installation under that URL. You could do this by going to Settings>General on WP Settings and change the "What address do you want to access this site by?". Good Luck!

well i prefer putting both of them under one domain so i will point my domain to the home page and create two folders one for my blog and the other for my portfolio. i think this way the site will be more neat.

and i thought of the static page in wordpress. but if i added the recent posts box an the recent design box. this way it will be dynamic unless i do the edit myself.right??
what do you think guys??

[deadmad7 4]

and i thought of the static page in wordpress. but if i added the recent posts box an the recent design box. this way it will be dynamic unless i do the edit myself.right??

what do you think guys??

 

Not really, if you add the "recent posts" widget to your sidebar, the HOMEPAGE will still be a static page -- it would just also load sidebar.php . So, i think you should try the Blog and Portfolio Images on the upper side of the page and just have a normal sidebar, besides i would hate to lose that awesome sidebar

 

And you can't do the updates by YOURSELF, thats just too time consuming. Just add it to the widget area in the sidebar and you don't even need to worry about that. But i have another idea that since this is more like a "personal" blog, on the sidebar, in a small text widget you could add something like "Hi, I'm Taha" and give a short description like the one you have in your twitter page about what you enjoy and have small 50x50 or 25x25 picture of you. This could really establish yourself with the visitors. You could also add a PHP function so that the widget ONLY appears on the homepage and not on archives or posts. Also, at the bottom of your posts, you could use the "Author description" function of wordpress to show the same thing like "The Author of this post..." or "This post was written by..." and have a box showing your interests and picture.

 

Also, at the end of EACH post, you could have a few bullet points showing the "key points of the post" titled something like "Highlights of this Tutorial". This way, people could recollect what they have learnt. Another suggestion is that added a simple plugin called "Yet Another Wordpress Related Posts Plugin" to your blog, it shows the related tutorials of the current one, so after visitors finish one of them -- they could easily find one more that shows a similar thing and this way people could read ALL the tutorials in your site and have them interested the whole TIME! Good Luck!

[web_designer 7]

Not really, if you add the "recent posts" widget to your sidebar, the HOMEPAGE will still be a static page -- it would just also load sidebar.php . So, i think you should try the Blog and Portfolio Images on the upper side of the page and just have a normal sidebar, besides i would hate to lose that awesome sidebar
And you can't do the updates by YOURSELF, thats just too time consuming. Just add it to the widget area in the sidebar and you don't even need to worry about that. But i have another idea that since this is more like a "personal" blog, on the sidebar, in a small text widget you could add something like "Hi, I'm Taha" and give a short description like the one you have in your twitter page about what you enjoy and have small 50x50 or 25x25 picture of you. This could really establish yourself with the visitors. You could also add a PHP function so that the widget ONLY appears on the homepage and not on archives or posts. Also, at the bottom of your posts, you could use the "Author description" function of wordpress to show the same thing like "The Author of this post..." or "This post was written by..." and have a box showing your interests and picture.

Also, at the end of EACH post, you could have a few bullet points showing the "key points of the post" titled something like "Highlights of this Tutorial". This way, people could recollect what they have learnt. Another suggestion is that added a simple plugin called "Yet Another Wordpress Related Posts Plugin" to your blog, it shows the related tutorials of the current one, so after visitors finish one of them -- they could easily find one more that shows a similar thing and this way people could read ALL the tutorials in your site and have them interested the whole TIME! Good Luck!

well since i don't use widgets in my sidebar. then it is not an option i think, even it may make things easier for me but i coded my sidebar myself. not added a single widget to it. and i don't prefer adding a sidebar to my home page. especially my blog sidebar, because i have a different design for the home page which is will be similar to my portfolo. i would like to know what do you think guys about it. i will post it in the showcase and ask for feedback .

and i already added a little lines about me, but not a picture or any personal information, even i must say that your suggestions are great, but i cherish my privacy .

about the author thing i don't think i need it, since i am the only one who write in my blog .

key points of mt topics is a great idea too, i never thougt about it before. thanks for suggesting that for me. and also thanks for suggesting the plugin about related topics for me, i was thinking of that a while ago but i was lazy to search and find a good one . same as updating my wordpress version. i should update it to the newer one but i was kind of busy and lazy the last month to do that. thanks for your help and your notes.

[deadmad7 4]

well since i don't use widgets in my sidebar. then it is not an option i think, even it may make things easier for me but i coded my sidebar myself. not added a single widget to it. and i don't prefer adding a sidebar to my home page. especially my blog sidebar, because i have a different design for the home page which is will be similar to my portfolo. i would like to know what do you think guys about it. i will post it in the showcase and ask for feedback .

You don't use sidebar widgets? Really? So, you just add the code yourself to sidebar.php huh? That's the hard way though, but it works And sure, i think we would love to review the design. Would you be coding that yourself too? And any sneakpeeks?

and i already added a little lines about me, but not a picture or any personal information, even i must say that your suggestions are great, but i cherish my privacy .

I don't see any lines about you lol All i see is your name in the copyright.. :ph43r: Staying hidden isn't going to help your site as much as it will if you make yourself known. It could also help you since you said you are a freelancer.

about the author thing i don't think i need it, since i am the only one who write in my blog .

Well, this is true unless if you could let me post some "guest" posts on your blog I think that would be interesting...

key points of mt topics is a great idea too, i never thougt about it before. thanks for suggesting that for me. and also thanks for suggesting the plugin about related topics for me, i was thinking of that a while ago but i was lazy to search and find a good one . same as updating my wordpress version. i should update it to the newer one but i was kind of busy and lazy the last month to do that. thanks for your help and your notes.

All these "little" tricks that bloggers add like "guest" posters, highlights, What's next on the series, about the author,etc. are the things that make your site STAND OUT from the other MILLIONS of bloggers out there. And if you are going to update your WORDPRESS to 3.0 version, DO NOT DO IT ! I tried to for my site and it just ruined the whole thing, all the plugins like "all in one seo" and other essential plugins aren't compatible yet! So wait until all plugins move on to 3.0 compatibility!

[The Simpleton 2]

Hi

 

I re-created my blog a few days back and I asked myself this exact same question, whether or not to put in a home page. After giving it some thought I decided to put in the home page, and I also put in links to few more pages, and the blog is just one of those links now. So what started off as a wordpress blog has now become a small, yet complete personal website. I think it's sort of fun to have different things to offer to the reader and having a home page is a great way to start. I took a look at your site just now and saw that you haven't put in a home page yet, so I think you haven't made up your mind? You do have an 'about' page but it isn't the home page for now. I'd say it would be a good idea to try out the home page idea for a few days and check if it's making any impact on your traffic stats. If you feel it's reducing your traffic, then you can always go back to the old layout. Trying out the new layout for a few days will help you decide which style suits your website more. After all, it's your site!

[deadmad7 4]

Hey, I just found a WordPress Plugin called "WP Super Cache", it basically turns all Dynamic Pages into FULL STATIC HTML pages. It only needs downloading and installing then sit back and watch your site performance increase. I tested it out on my site and it loads a second faster, but thats only because I don't have any content yet. Install it and wait a day or two and compare both the before and after site speeds, it will probably decrease by more than 5 seconds on some sites.

[mahesh2k 0]

Don't make your front page static- because that way it'll be hard for search engines to see if your page is new and updated. Search engines only care for text content as update not flash or images. I suggest you to check out some portfolios on smashing magazine or devlounge so that you can see how other designers are blending the front page with content and the folio or graphic. I have seen many sites that do have static page with blog feed for readers to read and the graphic to keep readers busy in navigation or in folio. Check how other designers are doing this effectively, copy them and from there you can add what you want. Variation will always be there even if you imitate them . @deadmad - WP-super cache and front-page is entirely different concept to handle here. In front page static- some people can have html handcoded to look static as the way they want while wp-super cache purposefully turns into html to speed up server and to avoid multiple heavy calls.

[vhortex 1]

If you add a homepage when search engines are already indexing your site, this will mean reduce traffic since search engines will think that the pages they are following was lost. this can be avoided however by putting all the keywords that was used before in searching your site at the homepage's meta and making sure that a sitemap is submitted or available to the search engine.You have only added a single page but search engines will think it was a new website which they must crawl again. :DDo not use static homepage, be sure to feed somewhere on that page all the new contents that you have posted and links to an archive type content history like wordpress do on its archive. You need this dynamic insertion of new contents and archive and possibly also dynamic titles to make sure that search bots can travel to this links.

[The Simpleton 2]

Don't make your front page static- because that way it'll be hard for search engines to see if your page is new and updated. Search engines only care for text content as update not flash or images. I suggest you to check out some portfolios on smashing magazine or devlounge so that you can see how other designers are blending the front page with content and the folio or graphic.
I have seen many sites that do have static page with blog feed for readers to read and the graphic to keep readers busy in navigation or in folio. Check how other designers are doing this effectively, copy them and from there you can add what you want. Variation will always be there even if you imitate them .

If you add a homepage when search engines are already indexing your site, this will mean reduce traffic since search engines will think that the pages they are following was lost. this can be avoided however by putting all the keywords that was used before in searching your site at the homepage's meta and making sure that a sitemap is submitted or available to the search engine.
You have only added a single page but search engines will think it was a new website which they must crawl again.
Do not use static homepage, be sure to feed somewhere on that page all the new contents that you have posted and links to an archive type content history like wordpress do on its archive. You need this dynamic insertion of new contents and archive and possibly also dynamic titles to make sure that search bots can travel to this links.

So if a small part of the static page is dynamic, i.e. with updates from the site, would that be enough to please the search engines or do we have to remove the static home page altogether?

[web_designer 7]

So if a small part of the static page is dynamic, i.e. with updates from the site, would that be enough to please the search engines or do we have to remove the static home page altogether?

good question simpleton, i want to know the answer too. for me, here is what i am going to do. my domain where my blog is right now is(http://meinterest.com/), now i will keep the same path but it will lead to the home page. in the home page there will be links for my blog and for my portfolio. and i will add the recent posts of my blog in the home page and the recent design of my portfolio. the path of my blog will be (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) and the path for my portfolio will be (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). i will put each one in a separate folder in the cpanal. and the home page will be absolutely dynamic, index.php. so what do you think guys??

[mahesh2k 0]

So if a small part of the static page is dynamic, i.e. with updates from the site, would that be enough to please the search engines or do we have to remove the static home page altogether?

Depends on how much part is static. Parts like sidebar, footer and navigation remains static for almost any site. But if you just added feed to static page then it will serve no different than those static pages which are manually updated. Search engines rarely considers those pages as dynamic. More updated content(full posts or full feeds) in dynamic sites is what crawlers are looking for. Even short feed is not sufficient because that way crawlers can find out lesser updates of page.
If you want readers for your blog then getting static page is worst thing you can do-from both SEO and user point of view. But for portfolio and occasionally updated blog it's enough to keep feed and your folio on front page. But in later case don't expect search engine traffic and reader involvement to your site.