XF 1.3 Plain public front for a private site?

[StarRiver]

I'm just starting to set up a site using xenForo for my organization's internal discussions. There will be no public access and registration is all by invitation (i.e. done administratively). I would like the front page of this site to show the usual forum list to registered users who have set cookies for auto-login. For everyone else, I would like the front page to just have a simple message and a place to sign in.

I'm happy to modify templates to do this, but I thought I'd get the advice of xenForo staff and more experienced users as to the best way to approach this before plunging into code.

Thanks!

 

[Paul B]

Unless I am misunderstanding, set "View node" to Not Set (No) for guests.

You can create a Notice for the forum_list template specifically for guests to display the message.

 

[StarRiver]

Thanks for your quick response. When I do that, I get this:

What I'm aiming for is totally plain – no menus or links, no images, no styling – just plain static html for the message and then the login form.

Should I test for a register user and if not redirect to another page? Or perhaps effectively have the plain html page added to the forum_list template and selectively show that to anyone other than a logged in registered user?