I’m not sure what the issue is here: you can reset the default landing page in settings to one showing your latest posts, or any page with posts. Is the page you have showing the posts not available in the Settings>Reading drop down? Which version of WP are you running?
As I understand this question, your problem is not in redirecting the page, but that you want the default url to be different. Is that true?
I have only 2 pages, a default blank page set as my “Front page”, and another blank page as a “Posts page”. Because of the way my theme builds the front and posts page, I want my “Front page” to just redirect to my “Posts page”. I can’t just set them differently under the readings settings because then the theme changes how the pages look.
So what you’re telling me is that the theme will change the format of a posts page if you set it to the home page? Does your theme itself have settings? What theme are you using? This could be better addressed through support for the theme if the issue is as you say.
I can think of a few ways to fix this but I don’t want to drag you through a bunch of backend code if it’s not necessary. Are you self hosting, or hosted on wordpress.org?
I am using the Expound theme with some modifications I did myself, and the site is self-hosted.
Have you tried Expound theme support? They seem to be fairly responsive on their support page, and the issue you’re describing isn’t natively wordpress. If the theme is changing the layout when you set the page to the home page, it’s a configuration of the theme. The only other suggestion I have is to check the template on the page for your posts – that would be in the right hand column.
If it is indeed the theme changing the layout when you set blogposts to home, then the override could be to make a custom template for your posts, or a custom page. However, if you’re going to mess around with the theme, you want to make a child theme first. None of this is particularly difficult, but it’s probably best to troubleshoot the theme and settings first, especially if you don’t write code.
I solved the problem by using a 301 redirect so that users are automatically redirected from my static front page to the blog page.
