Question

I am relatively new to wordpress, I am creating a custom theme, and so far it is going ok.
I currently have index.php, header.php, footer.php and sidebar.php.
I have now hit a bit that has been puzzling me for a couple of days.

My home page has a slightly different layout to other pages, how do I theme for that change?

My website is essentially made up, of ‘static’ pages and 2 posts pages, what can I do so that the homepage looks different to the other pages?

Answer 1

Create a page template called home.php. WordPress will use it automatically for the start page.
Example:

<?php
/**
 * Template Name: Home
 */
get_header();

// Do your regular page.php stuff

get_footer();

See also the codex page an Conditional Tags.