Tutorial : How to Make a Custom Front Page in Drupal

Custom Front Page with a Node

In Drupal 5 you can set a custom front page on your Site Information page found at http://example.com/admin/settings/site-information. At the bottom of that page you will see the following option:

To make a custom front page, just create a new node and then enter the path to that new node in the "Default front page" settings.

For example, if you build a front page on a node at http://example.com/new-front-page, then just enter new-front-page into the "Default front page" settings.

The main SEO issue to be aware of when doing this is that it creates a duplicate front page URL: http://example.com/new-front-page will show the same content as http://example.com/. Possible fixes for that problem are either to:

1. Block off the duplicate URL with robots.txt, e.g., Disallow: /new-front-page$
2. or install the Global Redirect Module which will automatically 301 redirect your front page node to the actual front page (http://example.com/).

Custom Front Page with the Front Module

For more control over your front page, for example to completely override your theme, you could install the Front Page Module. The Front Page Module allows you to set different front pages by user role, as well as include PHP snippets in the front page.

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Courtesy : Drupalzilla.com