I would suspect that extra file, and/or a problem with your .htaccess file.

What would you suspect is the problem if every page I create just takes me to my homepage?

I’ve changed index.html to Home.php and put it in with my theme but now when I try and add pages and preview them, it just shows me the homepage?

There is another file in the theme folder called home.php – Do I leave that as it is?

Thanks again David.

In my case there was a problem with an unidentified WordPress file… who know where! I just repaired the existing installation of WordPress and everything ran exactly as your guide says. Thanks for putting here!

Sorry you are having problems. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to troubleshoot just via comments.

If you would like me to take a look at it, drop me a message on my contact form with the site link.

Well I appear to be here to make you wrong!

I have deleted all the old html files and published all the new ones in WP including http://www.example.com/index.html.

I have set WordPress to display this page as the home page.

Now when I navigate to the site I get the “Index of” page with the usual list of folders.

The latest error log entry is as follows:

[30-Aug-2010 08:02:36] PHP Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘ABSPATHwp-includes/load.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/account-name-here/public_html/example.com/wp-settings.php on line 19

Huh?

1.) Any links pointing to http://www.example.com will still point to the same site. The homepage has to be either index.php or home.php in the theme you are using. If you make the home page a “page” in WordPress and point to it correctly in WP setting, there will not be an issue.

2.) If you are using WP, the theme that matters is the theme you are using. So copying anything into the default theme will not help you if you are using another theme.

3.) You only override the PHP code if you are not trying to utilize the code in WP. That is one reason I like to use a WP page, and set that as the home page in WP settings.

4.) This conversion is based on the static site having .html pages.

I am having trouble wrapping my head around the final steps.

My current static home page is of course the index.html page. All the links I have built up over the years are to http://www.example.com. I don’t want to break those links and I am uncertain what to do about the new homepage.

If I make the new homepage a “page” then the plugin will make that page end with .html so the address will be http://www.example.com/index.html. That will effectively break the backlinks.

You say to copy the contents of the index.html page from the static site to the theme folder as index.php.

Do you mean the theme folder in WordPress or the folder of the current theme I am using? Both have an index.php file

Do I overwrite the existing php code in either… I’m lost!