Setting the Front Page

What appears on the site's front page, the first page people see when visiting <your site domain>?

Many web sites, especially blogs, list a number of postings, articles, or other nodes on the front page, usually with the most recent node at top. If the nodes have short text, the page may display the title and whole text of the nodes. If the nodes have long text, the page may display the title and a short excerpt ("teaser"); visitors can click on a title, or a "Read more" link, to display the whole node as a page.

However, you don't have to go that route. You can instead have the front page built around a single node, or even some special page like the login form. Or like many sites, you could go for a busy and annoyin– er, colorful and exciting splash page.

It's up to you. You have several choices:

1. Set a specific node as the front page

Here's the setting to do this:

Navigation menu » Administer » Site configuration » Site information

At the bottom is the field 'Default front page'. Put in the path (without <your site domain>) of the node. For example, if you have a Story with the path node/43, then input node/43, and that'll become your front page. If it's a Page with the path greetings, then input greetings.

2. Set some other path as the front page

The path you enter into 'Default front page' doesn't need to be that of a single node. It could be a path for a page listing many nodes, such as a taxonomy-based list of nodes, a list of all Blog entries, or a list constructed from a View. (See Creating a Page from a List of Nodes for ideas.) Or it could be any other specific page on the site – say, the login page, if that's the first thing you want visitors to see. (See Logging In.)

It's up to you. If it has a path, you can enter it as your default front page.

3. Select specific nodes to appear on the front page

As mentioned under Creating a Page from a List of Nodes, Drupal offers a special way to fill your front page with nodes, a way that isn't available to other pages. The Edit form for nodes offers a 'Promoted to front page' checkbox under 'Publishing options'; check that, and blammo, the node will appear on the front page! That makes it easy to place multiple, utterly unrelated nodes willy-nilly into a list on the front page. See Create a Page Node for more details.

(For this to work, you don't want to specify a path under the 'Default front page' setting discussed above. Leave it blank, or simply input "node" and nothing else.)

This method offers a second way to achieve #1 above, a front page built around a single node. Just check 'Promoted to front page' for your chosen one node only; voila, a one-node front page. (You'll probably want to give it no teaser, so the title and full text of the node will appear on your front page.)

4. Use advanced front page settings

If your site has the Front Page module enabled, you'll have access to advanced settings at

Navigation menu » Administer » Site configuration » Advanced front page settings

The settings here allow all kinds of tricks: different front pages for each user role, special pages for users that haven't visited for a while, and more. There's a big pile of options to work through, but the instructions on the form are pretty self-explanatory.