How Can I Create a Front Page Based on Blocks?

Question

I am building a front page that comprises a number of Views-based blocks. How can I create a front page that has no actual "content" (besides these blocks) without getting a "Page not found error"?

The best I have been able to do is create a Views page and set a filter that will never return a result e.g. nid < 0. I set the path to the front page and the title to none. This seems like unnecessary overhead.

Surely, there must be a better way?

Answer 1

If it was me, I would create a custom page-front.tpl. I'd omit the $content region and probably create a few custom regions for the homepage. I can then place my blocks into the regions.

D6 create page-front.tpl.php
D7 create page--front.tpl.php

Cheers.

Answer 2

Consider using Panels and Ctools Page Manager to create a page and populate it with blocks or other content. You can use one of the built-in layouts, create your own, or use one from Panels Extra Layouts

Once you've built your page, you can then assign its path to the site's front page.

Answer 3

Front Page module is supposed to solve problems like yours:

The Front Page module allows for customised home pages dependant on role. The pages can be of the following types:

• Alias (only 2.x branch) - Allows for another Drupal path to be shown as the home page without redirecting the user.
• Redirect - Allows you to redirect users to a local or remote URL.
• Themed - Allows you to enter some static text that will be placed into the content area of a standard Drupal page.
• Full - Allows for static content to be displayed to the screen as is. This method does not pass through Drupal's theming system.

Alias should be most interesting for you.

Answer 4

Here's what I would do:

• Create a new content type called "Homepage"
• Edit the default display of the content type to hide what you want (e.g. Body).
• Create a Homepage node and point front page to it in admin settings.
• Add blocks to their respective regions (you could also use a grid system like Zen Grids which comes with Zen, this is what I do¹)
• You can override page--node--homepage.tpl.php to do stuff like removing the title, or any extra control you want over it.

---

_{¹ A grid system is a really nice way to control the position of elements on your site. Generally I use regions to control the vertical order of elements, and then the grid to position horizontally.}