A new client is using multiple WordPress plugins to create “landing pages”. Some of these plugins have been removed from the plugin directory. They will not receive any (security) update in the future. In a call it became clear, that we had very different ideas of what a landing page actually is.

What is a landing page

There is not a single best definition of what a landing page is. For me, it can be as simple as a single static page on your website, that presents all the information necessary to reach it’s primary goal. The page is reachable by a permalink and this link can either be found with the right keywords on a search engine or is used in social media posts.

Landing pages can be more complex depending on the goals they want to achieve (like selling things, getting new customers, etc.) and can use techniques to track their success in different ways.

A simple landing page

Many people would argue, that a landing page has no, or just a very limited navigation. Visitors would usually “navigate” from a landing page to another page (shop, checkout, registation, etc.) use “call to action button”. So on a complex website with a huge navigation, a sidebar and a large footer, those elements might want to be removed. But you might not have to use a plugin to do that, as WordPress offers an easier method for this.

Creating a “landing page” template

When you create a page, you can pick a “Template” in the “Page” (or “Post”) tab in the block editor. Those templates are offered by your theme (if it has some), but you can also create them in your child theme. You can find more information on how to create page templates in the Theme Handbook but often you simply copy the page.php, singular.php or index.php file, rename it (usually those files are prefixed with “page-“) and add a comment to the beginnig of the file with the name:

<?php
/**
* Template Name: Landing Page
*/

Just below that you usually find a call to get_header() which will load the header.php file from the theme. This is another place where we might want to customize our landing page template by using a different header. For this you pass a string to the function:

get_header( 'landing-page' );

If call the function like this, WordPress will try to find a file header-landing-page.php instead of the default file. Just copy the header.php as well, rename it accordingly. Now you can be creative in this new file. You can remove the navigation menu all together, use a different navigation position or even change things like logo, etc. in this template.

Creating content for the landing page

Now we are done with our new (and maybe reduces) header, we can continue with the content of the landing page. But this is quite simple the block editor offers all elements you need for a simple landing page, including easy to use buttons.

The future of landing pages

While this approach still needs some custom code, there is a new way in sight to create landing pages: Full Site Editing! Once this is available in WordPress (and themes), you no longer have to create page templates in a child theme. You simply customize the layout of the entire page. So adding/removing navigation menus will be become as easy as writing the content of the page. Then special landing page plugins really need to offer something important, that would justify using another plugin.