Putting the booking flow on your front page

Symptom: you set the booking page as the site's static front page (Settings → Reading). At its own address the flow works perfectly; as the front page, it doesn't appear.

Why it happens: many themes use a special front-page design that paints its own landing layout and never displays the page's actual content, and a shortcode only runs when the content is displayed.

What Tempo does about it: when your front page is the booking page (or any front page containing the booking shortcode), Tempo steps around the theme's front-page design so the content, and therefore the flow, renders. On most sites this makes it just work, at the cost of that theme's front-page styling.

Our honest recommendation: keep a real front page. Your landing page (brand, photos, a big "Book now" button) is usually worth more than saving members one click, and the booking flow lives happily one click away. If the landing design your theme paints on the front page matters to you, this is the way.

If you do run the flow on the front page, also set Tempo → Settings → General → Book classes page to the front page so all links agree; see The booking flow starts on one page then jumps to another.

Theme developers who want to handle this themselves can opt out of Tempo's front-page handling; that filter is documented in the For Developers section.