Frontpage based on pages

In this theme we’ve added a new way to build frontpages that makes things easier than ever, even for WordPress beginners!  Instead of a widget-based homepage that requires fiddling with settings and rules, we now use a brand-new page template called Frontpage, which populates its content using subpages.

This new feature will be extremely useful for users who can’t or don’t wish to our quickstart package to install WordPress along with the theme and widgets as a new installation, as they will not need to manually place and configure the widgets, which can be tedious.

Now, you only need to import your posts and pages from WXR files — more details about importing are available here — and create a new page. When creating the page, simply select ‘Frontpage’ as the page template and save. This newly-created page will be used as the base for the homepage on your website:

How does it work?

The ‘Frontpage’ page template acts like a framework of a house; it has the basic shape, but it needs the content. When building a house, you might add to the framework by adding a room; with the StoreFront frontpage, you can create a new ‘room’ by adding a subpage to your “Frontpage” page. Each subpage will have different features, depending on its position and content, and whether it has its own subpages or not; however, the first subpage of the frontpage will always be a header slideshow.

Think of it as adding furniture to your room; the ‘Frontpage’ page creates the basic structure, the subpages of the frontpage create the rooms, and the subpages of the subpages create the decoration for the room if needed.

The order that elements will appear on your frontpage depends on the publish date of the subpages; for example, if you have 5 subpages created one after the other, the subpage that was created first would appear in the header position of the theme, the second subpage would appear underneath the header, and so on until there are no more frontpage subpages.

Want to know more? Learn how to create each section in the following links:

• Header Slideshow
• Tabbed content
• Article or product showcases using News Show Pro as a shortcode
• Parallax background element with overlaid text