Aurora’s homepage is one of the bigger visual decisions in setup, covered briefly in our complete Aurora setup walkthrough, but it deserves a closer look on its own. The theme ships with five homepage layouts, each composed of different sections. Picking the right one depends on what you publish and how readers should consume it. This post is the comparison.
Default
Section count: 8 sections.
Key sections: featured post block, recent posts feed, dual-column section, category showcases, custom content slots.
Aesthetic: conventional blog homepage. Recognizable, and it works across most content types without feeling out of place.
Best for: general blogs, niches without strong visual demands, and bloggers who want something that simply works without much fine-tuning.
Bold
Section count: 8 sections.
Key sections: hero slider (#hero-slider) for prominent featured posts, after-hero showcase, magazine-style grid sections.
Aesthetic: news and magazine-style, with a strong featured emphasis. The hero post dominates the first scroll.
Best for: blogs that publish frequently, meaning multiple times a week, news-style content, and blogs that benefit from giving one post prominent placement.
Crisp
Section count: 9 sections, the most of any Aurora homepage.
Key sections: featured post, multiple post grids, dual-column blocks, category sections.
Aesthetic: clean and content-forward, more grid-based than Bold’s hero-led approach.
Best for: blogs with substantial back catalogs, essay-style content, and sites where readers benefit from browsing multiple categories at once.
Laid
Section count: 7 sections.
Key sections: image-forward featured area, relaxed spacing, photo-heavy sections.
Aesthetic: spacious, image-led, and relaxed. Noticeably less dense than Bold or Rich.
Best for: lifestyle blogs, photography blogs, food blogs, and travel blogs where images carry the posts more than headlines do.
Rich
Section count: 7 sections.
Key sections: multi-column layouts, dense grids, multiple category showcases.
Aesthetic: dense and content-packed, magazine-style but with more emphasis on volume than on featured highlights.
Best for: high-volume blogs, niche resource sites, and blogs that benefit from showing many posts at once, like deal sites, review aggregators, or encyclopedia-style blogs.
Understanding Aurora homepage sections
Each layout is composed of named sections that appear in a specific order. Common sections across layouts include:
- #featured-post: a prominent featured post, usually first or near-first.
- #hero-slider: rotating featured posts at the top (Bold).
- #after-hero: a follow-up section directly under the hero.
- #dual-col: a two-column section, often used for featured posts.
- #newspaper: a magazine-style multi-post block.
- #swap: a section with image and text in alternating positions.
Aurora also includes custom content slots (aurora_hcc_first, second, third, fourth) where you can insert your own content between sections, which is handy if you want to drop in a newsletter signup or a promotional block without editing template files.
Post counts per section
Each section type has a maximum post count. For example, the featured post section shows 1, the hero slider shows 3 to 5 posts, the dual-column section shows 2, and the newspaper grid shows 6.
If you don’t have enough posts to fill a section, it simply shows fewer, or hides entirely. This is why brand-new blogs sometimes look a little sparse at first. The homepage layouts are built assuming you have a reasonable body of posts to draw from, so a blog with only a handful of posts published so far may want to start with Default and switch to something more elaborate once there’s more content in the archive.
Choosing based on what you publish
Fewer than 2 posts per week, essay-style
Default or Crisp. Hero-led layouts tend to feel empty without frequent updates to fill them.
2 to 4 posts per week, mixed content
Default, Bold, or Crisp all work well here, largely coming down to visual preference at this publishing pace.
4 or more posts per week, news-style
Bold or Rich. Both are designed with high-volume content in mind.
Photo-heavy or visual content
Laid. It’s the layout that makes images the clear focal point rather than a supporting element.
Long-form / pillar content
Default or Crisp. Both are less hero-dependent, which suits content meant to be read rather than skimmed.
Choosing based on what you want to highlight
One specific pillar post
Bold’s hero slider gives a single post massive visibility on the homepage.
Multiple pillar posts
Crisp or Default, since both offer multiple featured slots without one dominant hero post.
Category browsing
Crisp or Rich. Both include multiple category-specific sections for readers who browse rather than search.
Newest posts
Default. Its recent-posts feed is prominent and easy to scan.
How to switch between homepage layouts
Go to Customize, then Homepage, then Homepage Style, and pick from the dropdown. The change previews instantly, so you can see it before saving anything.
Switching layouts doesn’t lose any content, so you’re free to experiment without worrying about breaking something. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see Aurora’s how to switch homepage layouts documentation.
Customizing within a layout
Aurora’s homepages aren’t rigid templates. Each section has its own settings, including which posts to feature (by category, by tag, or manually), post counts within the section’s limit, show or hide toggles for elements like excerpts, dates, and categories on cards, and custom content in the aurora_hcc_* slots. Each section can also carry its own heading now, using the Section Title field, so a category showcase can read “Trending Topics” or “Reader Favorites” instead of appearing with no label at all.
Go to Customize, then the Homepage panel, where each section has its own dedicated settings. Aurora’s guide to setting up posts in homepage sections covers this in more detail if you want to fine-tune what appears where, including how the Section Title field works. If you want to change how those headings look beyond the Customizer’s defaults, this CSS guide covers general and section-specific overrides.
The “no custom homepage” option
You can skip Aurora’s homepage layouts entirely and use a plain chronological feed instead. Go to Settings, then Reading, and choose “Your latest posts.” The site’s homepage then becomes a standard archive of recent posts.
This works well for blogs that don’t want a curated homepage experience. It’s simpler to maintain and there’s less to configure up front.
Mobile experience
All Aurora homepages collapse to a single column on mobile. Multi-column sections stack vertically, and hero sliders simplify to fit the narrower viewport.
Test on mobile before settling on a final layout. Some layouts feel noticeably different on phones than they do on desktop, and since Google indexes mobile-first, the mobile version of your homepage is effectively the one that matters most for search. For more on picking a homepage around what you actually publish, our post on choosing a homepage layout based on what you publish digs deeper into the decision from a content-strategy angle rather than a feature-by-feature one.
Where this leaves you
Aurora’s 5 homepage layouts each suit a different kind of blog. Default works for general blogs, Bold for news, Crisp for content-rich essay blogs, Laid for image-heavy niches, and Rich for high-volume sites. Pick based on what you actually publish, not visual preference alone, and remember that you can switch layouts anytime. It’s worth setting aside an hour to experiment with your real content and see what genuinely fits before you settle on one.
