I am creating a theme at the moment, where the landing page is not the blog. However I can’t see anywhere in the Admin section to change this.
System -> Settings -> General Options -> Home Page Displays:Choose the latest blog entries or a page.
Curt
No that is not what I mean Curt.
If I change the index.cfm to be a landing page with information, then when I hit the blog it runs the landing page again. What this means is that the default layout is always blog and the view is always index, and one can’t change this. It makes changing themes a bit of a problem especially if one landing page is about information only, or say something like this.
http://demo.studiopress.com/agentpress/
Where the landing page is an intro to the site, but when you hit blog on this site it goes to blog. If one tries to do something like this with ContentBox then blog tries to load the landing page again, so in essence one can’t create a template like the above site.
I hope that makes the situation a little clearer now.
Yes, that is the setting you want to change to accomplish what you are looking to do.
Lets say you create a page with a slug of home, then change that setting to point to that page, then the routes / and /home will both point to that page, as you indicate you would like, then /blog still runs the blog and not the landing page (home).
Curt
But Curt you don’t see the problem.
Lets say I create a theme, and it uses something like the provided link. And I want to change the theme to something else that doesn’t have a landing page. Then that option in the Admin will fall over or will break the site, because it may not even exist in the new theme.
Then what?
By all definition ContentBox is actually backwards here, considering it is marketed (and correct me if I am wrong) a CMS and not a Blog Application? Then the default index should indeed not be the blog page, but what ever is defined in the index.cfm. In the example themes this just happens to be a blog.
And I am guessing you have not used this feature in the Admin section either, I just discovered it doesn’t even work. Secondly even if it did then switching themes will break the theme if that page doesn’t exist for example.
In other words, let say I create a theme that is to be a portfolio for photographers. And the theme has a special landing page that is it display features or new content of images. If I then switch the admin to use that page, then switch themes to a standard blog what will happen?
I think the first landing page, called home should be a given. And the index page should be set up to do what ever that page is programmed to do, if it is a portfolio then so be it, if it is a blog then so be it.
Does that make what I am asking or saying a bit clearer now. For an Application that is going to be market as a CMS and not a Blog Application, don’t you think this current behaviour is wrong?
In other words the less one has to do manually the better.
I actually use it on EVERY contentbox site I have running, and yes it does work, it won’t break in other themes as you are just pointing it to a content page with isn’t theme specific. Now, if that page you point to uses a layout that doesn’t exist in your theme you switch to, then yes, there is a problem. And yes, I tend to agree that I don’t love the blog as the default as I change it on every site I have created. (which yes, isn’t many yet, but I do have some in production)
Curt
And it does break, and I quote the Application
“You can disable the Blog in this entire ContentBox. This does not delete data, it just disables blog features. Also remember to change the above to a real page and not the blog.”
However if you turn the blog off, it throws a 404 error. Even if I switch it as the wording says. Secondly ContentBox is assuming that I want a CMS page to be the landing page, this is not the case and goes back to my original question.
How do I tell ContentBox to use the Custom Landing page?
Hmm, sure enough ,there is a bug if you disable the blog. If you don’t disable the blog, it switching the home page works fine. I will create a ticket to fix this.
To answer your question, then you create a custom CMS page that uses a custom layout. This is the only way as of now that I know of.
Curt
Ok, looks like I will have to make changes to ContentBox to allow this then. As it is something I need now.
Done, damn ColdBox and its ease to make things like this happen so easily.