Dream in Infrared comes with 6 page templates to help you manage your site. Richard Sipe has a great write-up explaining how to use them for static front pages, to make your wordpress less of a blog
Default Template
By default, pages do not have a comment form. In my experience, it’s much more common to selectively enable comments, than to selectively disable them. The wordpress default seems a little odd to me in this regard, so I’ve swapped it. Also, instead of the widgetized sidebar, they use my Sane CMS menu trick, so that pages appear less “blogish”, and more like traditional websites.
Comments-Widgets
Sometimes, though, you want comments. so rather than using custom fields, I’ve included a seperate template. If you want widgets but not comments, you can always just turn off comments, using the Discussion options on the Write page.
“Magazine” Layout
This layout shows an excerpt of the first post, and smaller excerpts of the next 4 posts. It also includes the widgetized sidebar, making it a great choice for a static front page. The reason this isn’t the default blog layout is that having a more traditional blog layout for pages after the front page (the “Older Posts” link at the bottom of the excerpts) makes it easier for readers to go hunting for an article that’s moved off the front page.
Table of Contents
This page simply lists its subpages underneath the content of the page. It’s designed for portfolio use, although there are lots of other great uses for it (you can see it in action on the Documentation page). You can also use the page to list posts in a specific category, if you use posts to organize your projects, rather than pages. You’ll need to use the “Custom Fields” option at the bottom of the Write page:
- Create a key of
cat_contents, and set the value to the ID of the category you want to show. - In order to show a thumbnail for a page instead of an excerpt, you’ll need to create a custom key called
thumbnailon that page, and set the value to the image you want to use.
Links Page
Displays your blogroll below the content of the page.
Archives Page
Displays monthly and category archives, and Long Tail graph of your tags, if Ultimate Tag Warrior is installed.
