If you want to create a brand new page and have it be your homepage, create a page and publish it. Then go to Dashboard—>Settings—>Reading…

From here…

If you pick your latest posts to display, you’ll have to change the features and teasers to what you want it to be

If you pick a static page, you have the choice to chose any page that you have created already

Try this technique…

First thing I did is made an image in photoshop. Use any graphic program you want. It’s 1050 px wide X 100 px tall. I uploaded it to my server and placed it in the custom/images folder. This is what it looks like. It’s been shrunken down to fit within this blog post….

Shadow.png:

Next, put the image onto the background by placing the following code in the custom.css file and uploading it to your server. You can move the image from left to right with the first % value. Adjust it to create your desired effect.

body.custom {background: url(images/shadow.png) repeat-y scroll 50% 0 ;}

And that’s it!

The inline style sheet can be styled right in the functions file instead of the custom.css file. Here’s a real simple example.

First create a function and name it whatever you want…

function homepage_stylesheet () {
}

Next, run that function only on the homepage and turn off PHP by adding the following…

function homepage_stylesheet () {
if (is_front_page)) { ?>
}}

Next, add an inline style sheet…

function homepage_stylesheet () {
if (is_front_page)) { ?>
<style type=”text/css”>
</style>
}}

Next, turn PHP back on and add the style sheet to the head of the page with a hook…

function homepage_stylesheet () {
if (is_front_page)) { ?>
<style type=”text/css”>
</style>
<?php
}}
add_action(’wp_head’ , ‘homepage_stylesheet’);

Finally, you add whatever styles you want between the opening and closing tags of the style sheet. For example say I wanted to make the content area of just the homepage black I could add this code….

function homepage_stylesheet () {
if (is_front_page)) { ?>
<style type=”text/css”>
#content {background-color: #000;}
</style>
<?php
}}
add_action(’wp_head’ , ‘homepage_stylesheet’);

In your custom.ss file add the following code. You can put it anywhere you want but I recommend putting it at the top. Remember,
once you make the change, save it, and upload the new file to your server. Always describe what you’re doing by putting your
description between the comment tags /*  */ at the beginning shown below in green. The comments aren’t shown on your rendered page and it just makes things easier for you to remember…

/*colorize the teaser text*/
.custom .teaser .format_teaser {color: #ff33ee ;}

Chose whatever hexidecimal color gives the desired effect

In your custom.ss file add the following code. You can put it anywhere you want but I recommend putting it at the top. Remember, once you make the change, save it, and upload the new file to your server. Always describe what you’re doing by putting your description between the comment tags /*  */ at the beginning shown below in green. The comments aren’t shown on your rendered page and it just makes things easier for you to remember…

/*colorize the teaser content*/
.custom .teaser .format_teaser { background-color: #eeeeee ;}

Pick whatever hexidecimal color gives the desired effect

Go to Dashboard —-> Appearance —->Design Options…

Type whatever you want to display inside the white box, hit the save button

You can set it up so it just shows teasers with no feature article like this…

Go to Dashboard —-> Appearance —-> Design Options…

Pick 0 from the drop down list and get a look like the above homepage with no feature article, just teasers. Remember you can determine the number of teasers to show by checking out this tutorial

Go to Dashboard —-> Appearance —->Design Options…

Make sure that features and teasers are chosen in the dropdown menu and hit the save button…

Now this is where you have to figure out how many teasers you want to show. Go to Dashboard —-> Settings —->Reading…

With the number 3 I have in the box that gives me the look of the above homepage. For example if I chose to have 10 posts show it would look like this…

Dashboard—-> Appearance —-> Design Options….

As it sits right now the feature box will not show up on your site until you implement it with a hook. Here’s an example of how to put just text in the feature box…

In your custom_functions.php file add the following code. You can put it anywhere you want but I recommend putting it at the top after the <?php tag. Remember, once you make the change, save it, and upload it to your server. Always describe the function and put it between the comment tags /*  */ at the beginning shown below in green. The comments aren’t shown on your rendered page and it just makes things easier for you to remember…

/*use the feature box below header*/
function text (){
echo ‘<div class=”textbox”>some stuff in the feature box</div>’;
}
add_action(’thesis_hook_feature_box’, ‘text’);

Name your function whatever you want. In this case I named it “text”

I gave it a div so I could style it in my custom.css

It will be placed according to the choice I chose in the drop down menu, being full width above content and sidebars in this scenario

It will show up on every page and post because I chose “sitewide” instead of “on homepage only”

Now you can style it any way you want…

In your custom.ss file add the following code. You can put it anywhere you want but I recommend putting it at the top. Remember, once you make the change, save it, and upload the new file to your server. Always describe what you’re doing by putting your descripton between the comment tags /*  */ at the beginning shown below in green. The comments aren’t shown on your rendered page and it just makes things easier for you to remember…

/*text in feature box*/
custom .textbox {
border: 1px solid;
background: red;
font-size: 2em;
width: 100%;
text-align: center;
padding: 2em 0 2em 0;
}

Feel free to change any of these to create your desired effect

I created a blank page and used the default template in the attributes section. Go to Page —-> add new

Click “Publish”, and now you have a blank canvass to build your homepage from.

Next in my custom_functions.php I created a style sheet just to style this page only…

In your custom_functions.php file add the following code. You can put it anywhere you want but I recommend putting it at the top after the <?php tag. Remember, once you make the change, save it, and upload it to your server. Always describe the function and put it between the comment tags /* */ at the beginning shown below in green. The comments aren’t shown on your rendered page and it just makes things easier for you to remember…

/*my homepage stylesheet*/
function welcome_stylesheet(){
if (is_front_page()) { ?>
<style type=”text/css”>
#content_box {margin-top: 36em; background: none;}
#content .top {margin-top: 13em;}
#sidebar_1 {margin-top: -2.6em;}
#sidebar_2 {margin-top: -4.5em; }
#content {background-color: #ffee99; padding-top: 1em;}
/*This nudges the teaser content up against the right sidebar*/
#column_wrap {width: 77.3em; background: none;}
#sidebar_2 li.widget {background: #ffeeee; padding:0 0 .5em .5em; width: 103%; margin-top: 1.7em; margin-bottom: -.8em;}
</style>
<? }}
add_action(’wp_head’ , ‘welcome_stylesheet’);

If you want to see how I placed a custom box on the homepage, check out this tutorial