How do I make a Wordpress Page act like the default home page displaying multiple posts?

Question

I basically want a Wordpress "Page" that acts just like the home page and loops through recent posts and displays them. How do I do this?

Answer 1

If you go to Settings->Reading and then for "Front Page Shows" select static page, and then select a page from the dropdown, then edit the source code for this file to include a standard WP loop like -

<?php if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <h2><?php the_title() ?><h2>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

Answer 2

Use the wordpress loop, but you can control which posts show up in the loop using query_posts()

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts