The Home Page

As you start setting up your site, obviously the home page is very important. You have a couple of different options for constructing the public home page.

The Home Page as a Content Page

By default for a new installation, a very basic home page is set up for you as a content page. You can see it from the main Content Pages grid:

Click into this record to add content and other elements to the home page. For full details on how to set up content pages, please visit the Content Pages and Content Blocks document.

The Home Page as a Category Page

It is also possible to set up the home page as a category page. This can be very useful if you wish to feature products on it. You can assign the products to it and set it up like any other category page.

To set up the home page as category page, you must add a category whose code is "_home". (Note the underscore.) The system looks for this code specifically and treats it as the home page for navigation purposes. For full details on how to set up a category, please visit the Categories and the Category Tree document.

When you add the category, just remember to use "_home" for the code field.

If there is no category with a code of "_home", the system next looks for a content page with that code. As explained above, this content page is generated for you for new installations. If for whatever reason there is no category or content page with that specific code, it falls back to showing a very basic home page.

Displaying the Category Tree's Top-Level Categories on the Home Page

If your home page is set up as a either a content page or a category, you have the option to show the list of top-level categories on the page. Think of this as replacing the Subpages or Subcategories that would normally be shown, with the top-level categories of the category tree. To enable this feature, set the "Display Categories on Home Screen" setting to true on the Advanced Display Settings screen.

If you don't enable this feature, it falls back to the regular functionality of content pages and categories. In other words, you can display the subpages or subcategories assigned to it instead.