url rewriting - How to make a category page the blog home page? in WordPress

Update

Eliminating all of the other solutions, there is at least one remaining: template_redirect :

function wpse121308_redirect_homepage() { // Check for blog posts index // NOT site front page, // which would be is_front_page() if ( is_home() ) { wp_redirect( get_category_link( $id ) ); exit(); }
}
add_action( emplate_redirect', 'wpse121308_redirect_homepage' );

You will need to pass the appropriate category $id , of course.

The benefit of redirecting at template_redirect is that you only get one template-load taking place, rather than a second redirect after the template loads.

Note that you can hook into the process even earlier, such as at pre_get_posts , thereby potentially saving an entire query request:

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'wpse121308_redirect_homepage' );

Original Answer

If all you want to do is display a specific category on the blog posts index, you can accomplish that with a simple filter of the main $wp_query at pre_get_posts :

function wpse1862_pre_get_posts( $query ) { // Only modify the main query // on the blog posts index page if ( is_home() && $query->
is_main_query() ) { $query->
set( 'category_name', 'category-slug-here' ); }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'wpse1862_pre_get_posts' );

If you want to modify the template , then you can do one of two things:

1. Create a home.php with the desired markup
2. Use template_redirect or home_template to force WordPress to include your category.php template.

Edit

And if you want the blog posts index URL to look like:

www.example.com/main

Then you can use a Static Front Page , and assign a static page called "main" as your blog posts index.

And if this is your objective:

I really want the redirect. I want the home page ( http://example.com/ ) to redirect to the category page (which looks like http://example.com/main/ )

...then the accepted answer is correct for your use case.