Chip Bennett

As a newbie, doing it via FTP wasn’t a really helpful answer.

Tough love time:

Basic understanding of FTP is a fundamental requirement for hosting your own web site. Trying to host your own website without knowing how to use an FTP client is like trying to play tennis without a racquet.

Your life will be considerably easier if you are willing to learn how to use an FTP client. Using an FTP client is really no different from using a file manager.

Just about every Theme in the WPORG repository will be suitable for a site with or without blog posts.

I’ve found that little checkbox to make pages static…

I have no idea what this means. Static pages are an entirely different type of content from blog posts, and one cannot be converted into the other.

the templates I’m finding still have blog buttons on the main navigation toolbar and I’m not seeing a way to edit them off

What do you mean by “blog buttons”? Can you give a specific example of such a Theme?

What Theme are you using?

Also: are you using a custom user navigation menu, or is the fallback menu being displayed? To find out, go to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Menus, and look to see what (if anything) is selected for the appropriate Theme Location in the Theme Locations meta box in the upper left-hand corner.

If the default fallback is being displayed (i.e. no custom menu is selected for the given Theme Location), then add the following to functions.php:

function themename_child_filter_wp_page_menu_args( $args ) {
	$args['show_home'] = true;
	return $args;
}
add_filter( 'wp_page_menu_args', 'themename_child_filter_wp_page_menu_args' );

That should cause WordPress to output a “Home” link, if the Theme is using the default fallback functionm, wp_page_menu().

I just checked the code of the theme and there is no “the_content()” in it. What should I edit?

What Theme are you using?

You’ll need to modify your Theme.

Full post content is output via the the_content() template tag. Post excerpt content is output via the the_excerpt() template tag.

Use the latter wherever you want to display excerpts instead of full content.

You should be using add_theme_page() for a Theme’s settings page, rather than add_menu_page().

Go to Dashboard -> Settings -> Reading

What does the Front page displays? setting say: blog posts, or a static page?

If static page, what page is selected in the Front Page dropdown immediately beneath?