Mixing Wordpress and Landing Pages

[Vcize]

I'm wondering how people typically work their sites that have landing pages, but also have articles, etc.

In this case, I have a loans website that is currently a wordpress blog. I want to start capturing leads instead of just running adsense, so I'd like to put up a landing page to capture their info on the home page (as well as replacing several inner pages which were previously articles about specific types of loans that some customers are landing directly on).

So the question is, how do I work those landing pages in there without breaking my entire wordpress site structure (by moving it to another directory)? Additionally, is there a way to access the wordpress widgets from the landing pages? I'd love to have "recent articles" among other things down at the bottom of the lander.

 

[Victory]

Create a wp page using a custom template, make your homepage have a full page modal dialog via js on first visit (using cookies for calculating 'first visit'). Jquery-ui has a modal dialog widget that is straight forward to use and can pull from your custom wp-page.

The custom wp page can use whatever widgets, sidebars whatever, wp has.

 

[Vcize]

Ah, custom templates may be the answer. Hadn't messed with them before.

I don't think the full page modal dialog is necessary as wordpress now has functionality to set a page as your static homepage. The problem was that it was still encapsulating that page in the normal wordpress theme, with its sidebars, etc.

So with a custom template can I basically just have a designer throw together a landing page and copy/paste that into the html block of a new page within wordpress?

 

[fixie]

In this case, I have a loans website that is currently a wordpress blog. I want to start capturing leads instead of just running adsense, so I'd like to put up a landing page to capture their info on the home page (as well as replacing several inner pages which were previously articles about specific types of loans that some customers are landing directly on).

If the landing page has similar style to the wordpress blog (current css and code structure does not conflict with existing wordpress style file), you can add new templates. In case you want to have different looking sites in your wordpress, just upload them as they are in the wordpress root directory (where wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes folder is). My suggestion is to put it in a separate folder so that files are more organized.

So the question is, how do I work those landing pages in there without breaking my entire wordpress site structure (by moving it to another directory)? Additionally, is there a way to access the wordpress widgets from the landing pages? I'd love to have "recent articles" among other things down at the bottom of the lander.

Yes, you can have access to wordpress functionality outside of the wordpress installation. On one of the sites I made, I used this code in the header of the page:

<?php
// Include Wordpress
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
// Change path below to location of wp-blog-header.php on server
require('blog/wp-blog-header.php');
query_posts('showposts=2');
// Change the number of articles to whatever you like
?>

and in the code itself a loop:

<?php while (have_posts()): the_post(); ?>
//Do stuff here
<?php endwhile; ?>

 

[ranktrackerpro]

To the OP - you need a better WP theme, one that lets you turn on/off certain sections.

Then it's up to you whether you want to include the sidebar, header, footer on the landing page, while leaving the rest of the structure and your blog intact.

One such theme that allows you to do this is Thesis, but there are others as well.

It's not free, but well worth it and I think they have a trial or money back offer.