How to include custom code on a page that's set to act as homepage?

Question

I have a page called 'home' which is set to be the front of my site, but I'd like it to show the most recent blog post or two at the bottom. I have some PHP that will do this from another site

<?php 
query_posts('showposts=1');
while (have_posts()): the_post(); ?>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
<p><a href="<?php echo $siteroot .'/blog/' ?>">Go to the Blog...</a></p>
<?php endwhile; ?>

But I'm not sure where to put it in order to make it so it only shows on this one particular page since is_home() returns false for the page.

Answer 1

Since you are saying it's a "Page", I believe you should try is_page instead of is_home:

<?php
    if ( is_page( 'about' ) ) {    
         // Code to be shown on Page whose slug is "about"
    }
?>

OR for the way your code is, this should do:

<?php if ( is_page( 'about' ) ) { ?>
    <!-- Code to be shown on Page whose slug is "about" -->
<?php } ?>

Answer 2

You can display code on a page set as the front page of your site using 'is_front_page' instead of 'is_home'. Any page set as the front page under Settings->Reading->Front page displays will then show the content within the query, instead of relying on a specific page slug.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_front_page