Having grown tired of looking through dozens of forum posts and codex pages, I have decided to risk ridicule and ask what s probably a bonehead question:

How do I set up my front (static) page so that an excerpt of my latest blog post is displayed?

Is there a plugin, ATO setting, magic incantation? I can't seem to find it anywhere. Lots of Q&A about other things, but nothing so basic as how to make the post excerpt show on the home page.

Thanks for not biting me too hard.

A static page does not show changing information by it's nature, that is why it is static. If you want to display the excerpt of the latest post ( a non static piece of information) you will have to use a plugin or page template. This is not a theme option.

Now you could make the front page display your posts and in the theme options, display only one post and display it as an excerpt. But I don't think that is what you are looking for.

Do a google search using 'wordpress plugin post on a page' or some other terms and see what you can find