Drupal® 7 Bible

Chapter 13. Managing the Front Page of Your Site

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Controlling the front-page layout

• Using a distinct template for the front page

• Publishing content on the front page

• Publishing module output on the front page

• Publishing blocks on the front page

You can take control of your Web site's front page by utilizing a combination of configurations, preferences, contributed modules, and template modifications. Drupal's flexibility really shines in this area, but related complexities can present challenges.

In this chapter, I review a number of ways that you can influence the look and feel of your front page, and I review a number of techniques for creating customized content views.

Controlling the Front-Page Layout

The front page of your site can serve many needs and may even call upon substitutes to fill in for special purposes. Drupal's default front page contains a stream of recently published content items organized in reverse chronological order. This approach is useful for blogs, but may not suit your specific needs.

Drupal's default themes utilize the same layout for the front page as they do for all other pages. In the next section, I discuss how you can create a distinct template for the front page of your site, but there are less aggressive means to placing unique content arrangements on your site's front page. For example, using Drupal's Blocks Manager tool, you can explicitly show or hide content blocks on your front page.

Note

See Chapter 7 to explore the Blocks Manager further ...