How to create a customized front page in Drupal 7

#1

1. Log into your Drupal 7 dashboard

2. In the top menu, click Configuration

3. Under System click Site Information

4. Under FRONT PAGE, adjust the Default front page setting.


Be sure to pay attention to the following note if you want to disable this specific front page:
Optionally, specify a relative URL to display as the front page. Leave blank to display the default content feed.

5. Click the Save Configuration button at the bottom of the page to save these settings.

#2

In this blog, I briefly describe a procedure for creating a customized Drupal front page. It’s just a series of steps of what to do, not a detailed how-to.

1. Get into the theme directory: $Drupal7_Home/sites/all/themes/danland, where “danland” is the theme name.
2. Copy and paste page.tpl.php into the same directory as it already is.
3. Rename the copied file to page--front.tpl.php. Notice that there are two dashes.
4. Change whatever you’d like to do for your customization in the page--front.tpl.php. For example, for a testing purpose, I change the phrase “Theme by” at the bottom of the page to “Developed by”.
5. Clear Drupal caches:
   1. Open a web browser and point the address to your Drupal homepage such ashttp://localhost/drupal7
   2. Log into your Drupal homepage as administrator.
   3. Click on “Configuration”
   4. Then, under the “Development” section, click on “Performance”
   5. Finally, click on “Clear all caches”.
6. Refresh your Drupal homepage, the “Theme by” at the button of the homepage should be changed to “Developed by”.