Portal / Home Page Assistance please

[ExpertPixels.com]

Hey guys,

Firstly i will be online all day and monitoring this thread all day !! I would dearly love to get on top of this today so not to lose any more time on this... I am not sure of the extent or time required to complete this simple modification but i am open to paying a small fee in return for some help / coaching to build this.

I am struggling to wrap my head around this.. and also the method / script i was using previously is no longer working since 1.2.B1 so i am here on my knees begging for assistance.

Basically what i would like to do is this. XF to be installed in the root dir is a preference.

mysite.com/ <--- Custom Home Page within the XF wrapper
mysite.com/forums/ <--- Forums are here

Now i was using a script called "Kotomi" to allow me to create a custom front page / custom pages within the xf wrapper but since 1.2 beta1 this has stopped working when the index file of the kotomi script was placed outside of the xf installation directory.

XenPorta and other addons manage to re-route the forums to /forums/ to allow for the home tab / main page of XF to display custom content.. What i am not understanding is how this is achieved or where to start to begin to develop my own tiny / light weight addon that will allow me to add simply custom html/css to a home page within the xf wrapper.

Ive learnt a lot about xf in general the past week, but i am still a long way being where id like to be in terms of being able to create a addon.. I am very open to learning and have great html / css knowledge and am ok with php but certainly no coder by any means so i am beggnig for assistance with this.. I will also release this for free once complete to help others out.

Regards, Darren

 

[Chris D]

No add-ons or development are required for this in XenForo 1.2.

You can actually do this with a XenForo "page" now, quite easily.

If XenForo is in the root, you could have a set up like this:

1. Create a page with a URL portion of "home"
2. Add your page content
3. Set the index page route as pages/home (This can be done in Admin CP > Options > Basic Board Information)
4. Set the home page URL as http://mysite.com/home/ (This activates the Home tab)
5. Use route filters to filter pages/home to home (Admin CP > Route Filters)
6. http://mysite.com -> this automatically redirects to http://mysite.com/home/
7. http://mysite.com/forums -> Forums are here

So, the only draw back in all this is that your home page will redirect to http://mysite.com/home but as your site remains accessible at the root URL, I can't see this being a big problem, and it doesn't exactly look out of place. And home could be changed out with anything you like.

 

[ExpertPixels.com]

Thanks Chris...

I understand this can be done many different ways to the same thing.. my problem is that i am a SEO guru and really really really picky about my url structures and while i know it's not the end of the world or even a problem many others would lose sleep over lol.. but i really am trying to get super clean url's / a nice clean site structure.

mysite.com/ <-- That is what i am trying to make be my main page.. not /home/ etc etc.. I really didn't want to use redirects but if no one can point me in the right direction in terms of re-routing the forums to /forums/ so that the root / mysite.com becomes available for a custom page within the xf wrapper... then i will resort to this eventually.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, I know i am being picky but knowing it can be done is what is annoying me the most lol.. Like with the xenPorta addon (as much as i could use this, it's way to bloated for my needs).. I would just like to do as xenPorta has done and push the forums to /forums/ and have a nice clean custom home page within the xf wrapper that displays when someone visits mysite.com or mysite.com/index.php

Regards, Darren

 

[Chris D]

If home is the index controller you can probably rewrite that out anyway.

@Jake Bunce probably knows the answer.

 

[Paul B]

Already answered: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/broke-a-3rd-party-script-kotomi.53235/#post-569076

 

[ExpertPixels.com]

Still looking for a working solution to this.. Am willing to pay for this if need be... What i am after sounds quite simply and considering several addons have managed this i wouldn't of assumed this was that hard to achieve but i am not giving up just yet.. I think offering some $$$ might get some devs out to help.

The Kotomi script no longer works outside of the root installation.

Regards, Darren

 

[Chris D]

Any SEO expert knows that content is king and whether your home page is at /home or / really doesn't matter. So unless someone has a suggestion to rewrite that /home out of the URL, it's the best solution I can recommend right now.

 

[ExpertPixels.com]

Thanks Chris yes i am aware of this, just very picky lol anyways i have managed to set nice clean url's now as i asked for in my OP.. Thanks to everyone else who provided some assistance.

 

[DRE]

Thanks Chris yes i am aware of this, just very picky lol anyways i have managed to set nice clean url's now as i asked for in my OP.. Thanks to everyone else who provided some assistance.

How did you get .com/home to be just the .com main page?

 

[Mike Welsh]

Hi,

Managed to setup the home page OK.

Problem is, although I can now click on the Forums menu and see them and I click on the Home menu button and see my new page, the Home menu button does not display the path, it just shows the forums path.

Any ideas? Site here: students4chat.com

Thanks. Mike

 

[Admiral]

Does anyone have a simple solution for this in Version 1.3? I am looking to simply use a custom homepage.

Perhaps there is a better approach, like rebuilding the home template if xenforo uses such a thing, as you can tell I am very new. Also I have a 6 month old baby that will not let me read for more then 10 minutes at a time.