WordPress | Content for your posts page

posts-page-content.php

<?php
// If your title is within the header or another include
if ( is_home() ) {
    $postspage = get_option('page_for_posts');
    $postspagetitle = get_the_title( $postspage );
    echo '<h1>' . $postspagetitle . '</h1>';
}
?>

<?php
// For your themes index.php file
$postspage = get_option('page_for_posts'); // Returns the ID
$thepage =  get_post( $postspage );
$content = $thepage->post_content; // Get raw page content
$postspagetitle = get_the_title( $postspage );
echo '<h1>' . $postspagetitle . '</h1>';
if ( !empty( $content ) ) {
    $content = apply_filters('the_content', $content); // Apply filters to add formating
    echo '<div class="the-content">' . $content . '</div>';
    if ( current_user_can( 'edit_pages' ) ) {
        // Let us also add an edit link for ease during development
        $editlink = get_edit_post_link( $postspage );
        echo '<a href="' . $editlink . '" class="edit">Edit</a>';
    }
}
?>

Posts page content

I've always found it frustrating that once you specify the page in; Settings > Reading > Posts Page, any content in that page vanishes.

This is because WordPress uses your themes index.php file for the posts page template. It is, generally, a fairly slim file that simply outputs the posts.

However, we often want our posts page to contain some sort of introduction, and we want the title to be the title of the posts page itself as opposed to the title of the latest post.

The above code fixes this. It grabs the title and the content from the page you've set as the posts page within settings.

Also note, even outside of index.php we can check to see if we are on the posts page by using is_home(), hence the first chunk of code which could go in your header file or another include.