Edit the default front page

Question

One of my colleagues setup a Drupal front page for a website. He has left now. I was given access but I am not able to edit the front page. I can edit every other page, but not the front page.

I don't want to replace the front page with another page. I know how to do that by promoting the page. I want to edit the content of the front page I already have. It has some RSS feeds coming in, a presentation like thing and some pictures. I would like to edit those.

I googled but I cannot find anything substantial. Can anyone please help? I am a noob when it comes to Drupal, so apologies in advance!

Answer 1

Even if it is the front page is located at the default mysite.com/node, there are dozen's of way of populating it in Drupal with stuff that aren't nodes.

Have you looked if blocks are used to populate the front page? To check, navigate to Home » Administration » Structure » Blocks, and examine the configuration of the blocks that are enabled. The RSS feed, for instance, is probably a block. You can edit the content of blocks, or moving them to region - None - to disable.

One problem here is that we don't know whether you predecessor has done this the right way or his own way. For all we know, he may have hacked the core or theme template directly. Things also depends on version and theme. You haven't told us what version of Drupal you're running or what theme the site uses. To answer this question with more accuracy than this general answer, all this must be known by the person writing the answer.

Three things to try:

1. If you're using Drupal 6, navigate to Home › Administer › Site configuration › Site information. See if there is any contents on that page that account for material on the front page. If so, you may now edit it.

2. Change the site's theme. In particular, get rid of any sub-themes and revert to the default theme for the Drupal version you're running (depends on version). If you're already running the default, install the admin theme as default (depends on version). If the content on the front page disappear, it's in the theme templates. Update your question with this information, and ask how to fix it. I (and others) will then update our answers.

3. Back up your configuration (Important!) Upgrade Drupal to the newest major version of the branch you're at (depends on version). If it is already the latest major version, upgrade anyway. If the content on the front page disappear, your predecessor has hacked the core. Restore from backup, and hire a consultant.

Answer 2

Drupal comes with a default front page at /node that shows a list of the most recent content. There are a bunch of different ways this could have been overridden.

One place to look is whether there is a view set up to override the default list.

Another idea might be that the page has been created using some custom template in your theme. Look for a file called page-front.tpl.php in your theme folder.