Changing from wp blog to static page

[doma1n]

Hello,
I need to change a WP homepage from a blog post page to a static page.
Will this damage my site if i just change my reading setting from 'latest posts' to 'static page'?
If it would, will i have to set up a redirect for each post individually or is there any way i can bulk redirect? (I have about 90 posts) If individually, any plugin recommendations? I've read somewhere that the plugin 'redirection' is the best. Anybody got any good advice before I commit.

Thanks in advance

John

 

[dazc]

Just to clarify, you have a traditional WP homepage with x number of latest posts plus pagination of 'next page' or '2','3','4', etc?

You want to change this to a standard customised 'homepage'?

Short answer is that it will probably not make much difference if, like most WP sites, the bulk of your traffic and rankings are coming from individual posts anyway.

You could mitigate any ill effects by linking to your strongest posts from the homepage also.

 

[doma1n]

Hello Dazc,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes it's a traditional posts homepage. I want to create a static homepage and put all my posts under blog page.

 

[dazc]

Hello Dazc,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes it's a traditional posts homepage. I want to create a static homepage and put all my posts under blog page.

Are all the posts in one level url like:
yoursite.com/this-is-a-post
or
yoursite.com/category/this-is-a-post

If they are in a category you could just change them all to a new category called 'blog'. Wordpress would then create the redirects internally. (You might have to remove the 'category base' if you have a standard set up but there is a simple and effective plugin for that).

Would this affect your current rankings, yes it would but not long-term.

 

[doma1n]

Yes all my posts are on yoursite.com/category/this-is-a-post. You say put them in new category called 'blog' but would I get same results with creating a page called 'blog'? And put them all there. Would that would work also?
What would be my category base be and what plugin would you recommend?
Thanks again Dazc,

 

[dazc]

In .../wp-admin/options-permalink.php you can change the category base from'category' to 'somethingelse'. This can sometimes result in pagnation errors though so I would thoroughly test this method with your set-up and theme before relying on it.

You can remove 'category' altogether with https://wordpress.org/plugins/no-category-base-wpml/
I have used this for years with no issues.
(For avoidance of doubt, this is where you have yoursite.com/category/category-name/this-is-a-post, it just removes the first 'category')

Some themes and frameworks handle the 'blog' archive differently so you may be able put everything in a blog page. Test this though because, again, pagination can cause issues. I develop using Studiopress and I never use their blog template as I have never been able to get a faultless result.

Sorry if this ads further confusion. Maybe worth waiting to see if anyone else has another approach before you dive down this rabbit hole.