From Nate Silver:

The “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

If you’re like me, there is always some configuration option or another in the software that you use regularly which you are aware of, but don’t really understand how it works. Until today, that was the case for me with WordPress static front pages.

If you navigate the the Settings tab, and click on the Reading sub-menu option, you will see the Front page displays WordPress configuration option. This option allows you to specify whether your front page, i.e., the page displayed when a user visits your main site URL, will contain a listing of your latest posts, or a different, static page.

Your latest posts

Selecting this radio option will make your latest posts show up on the front page of your site

A static page

Selecting this radio option allows you to choose a static page as your front page

Front page

The page that you select in this pull-down will now be displayed when a user visits the front page of your site.

Posts page

The page that you select in this pull-down will now display your latest posts instead of any content that it might currently contain (you don’t have to use this option).

What’s the Point?

This functionality makes it easy for WordPress administrators to handle sites with formats that make it more appropriate to show a static page as the front page, but that also want to be able to show the default listing of recent posts without making any template modifications.

I hope you found this article helpful, please feel free to contact me with any of your WordPress questions!