By j0k3z on

Im trying to create a highly customized front page. I dont even know where to begin. For starters, this is the look I have decided that I want to create:

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5449/frontpagenm3.gif

Im sure I can achive this with a combiniation of modules but I have no idea where to begin. I am completly lost. I thought I could use views and pages but things are just not turning out. Do I have to hard code this content into the page itself? Someone please help me through this.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

wmostrey’s picture

wmostrey commented

Hey there,

I created a site with a lay-out just about what you require:

http://www.f1journaal.be

It's really easy. You could do this with a bit of PHP knowledge in a PHPTemplate, you could try the views module, or the front page module: http://drupal.org/project/front

So yeah, there are plenty of ways to get the result you're expecting. Good luck!

WillieBHines’s picture

WillieBHines commented

I think the easiest way to do this would be with setting up a separate page-front.tpl.php file for your front page, and also setting up some custom regions that would appear on your front page. I'm assuming this front page is very different from how the rest of your site will look?

To set up separate page templates, check this out:
http://www.lullabot.com/articles/hacking_phptemplate

Then you'll have a page-front.tpl.php where you'll put all your html, including the ad tags for that banner ad.

A custom region would let you have a block that appears only on your front page. So you'd add a "recent_photos" region to your list of regions in template.php. Then you'd make a view that selected recent photos, and set that to be a block view. Then in administer->blocks you put that view into tyour "recent_photos" region. THEN in your page-front.tpl.php you put print $recent_photos whereever you want it to actually appear.

j0k3z’s picture

j0k3z commented

Thanks for the input!

The rest of the website will be normal, this will be the only modified page. I will take a look at the link you provided. Thanks

j0k3z’s picture

j0k3z commented

I really cant figure this out.

I followed the article you linked but Im got stuck.

I currently use flat forum and to use that I modified my template file with this call function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars and it goes on.

Now this new lullabot code wants to make a similar call and Im getting an error because I have it listed twice now. Is there a way to combine both functions in this one call?

Or is there another way to allow me to insert a new php/html page and just make it my home page?