Posted by
farhan khwaja
on
Saturday, July 28, 2012
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In Drupal the default home page looks like more kind of a blog
rather than a normal website. That is why usually developers try to change
those default home pages to a custom designed page. But this process is not very
simple as for Drupal. There are some different procedures to accomplish that
target. Here in this article we will discuss couple of convenient way to create
a Custom Home page in Drupal framework.
Procedure to create custom home page
There are basically two ways that can be used to accomplish it.
First we are going to discuss the comparatively simpler way to do it, then the
more complex one.
Custom Drupal Home Page (without using ‘View’)
This process is not very effective but obviously this is much simpler
and easier to do. But only static page can be created this way.
Create New Page
Create Content -> Page
Perform the above mentioned operation in Drupal Site Manager
Control Panel. Then Assign a name for the Page as ‘Home Page’
Then select the URL path setting option to change the URL option
and enter ‘home’ in the textbox provided in there. Then simply publish the
page.
Set new Front Page
Administer -> Site configuration -> Site information
This step is required to finalize the job. Under Site information
Change the ‘Default Home Page’ to ‘home’ (as mentioned in URL path). Then
simply save the newly created settings and preview the website.
The new Front Page will be landed against domain level request
as the Home Page or front Page.
Custom Drupal Home Page (with ‘View’)
This is much complicated method rather than the aforesaid
procedure. But this is completely useful for designing dynamic pages as well as
static pages. The steps are as follows:
Download View Module
The ‘View’ module can be downloaded from the Drupal website. The
installation is not very tough but requires special care and precision. Wrong
installation may leads to malfunction of the website.
New Page View
Administer -> Site building -> Views
This is starting step for creating a new ‘view’ that can be
transformed into new custom home page. The view creating option is available in
the Drupal Admin Panel. The name for this newly created view is required for
further referencing. The name should be unique and non-redundant. Then the URL
settings should be configures for controlling the actual file name for the
‘view’. The file name that is desired for the home page should be mentioned in
the URL settings textbox option. Then the view is ready for being Home Page.
Set View as Front Page
Administer -> Site configuration -> Site information
Under Site information the view name specified in the previous
step should be enter in the textbox and then the entire website configuration
settings should be saved. This process may take little bit of time depending
upon the server bandwidth. When the settings are save in databases and page
content, and then the Home Page will be changed to the newly created view.
Conclusion
This process is not only helpful to make a proper website construct
instead of blogging outlook, but also it is helpful for SEO, as usual blog home
page is not perfectly designed for easier crawling, but a custom generated Home
Page may contain several links to the website and thus can improve SEO
performances.