XF 1.5 [Solved] How to achieve a external home page?

[chickenputty]

I've read a dozen threads about deceiving something close to this, but I can't get it to work for my exact circumstances.

I'm trying to have a external page for the index of my forum without having to put my forum into a folder. So, the desired URLs would be...

http://www.myforum.com/ = Custom external portal.php page
http://www.myforum.com/forums/ = Default Xenforo page node page view
http://www.myforum.com/members/ = Default Xenforo member page view
etc.

Right now, I've got it so I have a home button that goes to my external portal page, but it's not the index of the site so when you go to http://www.myforum.com/ you have to click home to go to the portal, which is not desired.

How can I achieve this?

EDIT: Just found https://xenforo.com/community/threads/change-index-php-to-another-url.54534/
I assume this isn't possible then with XF 1.5?

EDIT 2: https://xenforo.com/help/set-index-page/
That article makes me think this is possible, but setting the "Index Page Route" to an external page isn't working.

 

[chickenputty]

Figured it out!

Made a Link Forum to called "Portal Page" with the "Link URL" to /portal

Made a Route Filter to direct link-forums/portal-page.3/ to portal/

Set my "Index Page Route" to portal/
Set my "Home Page URL" to /

Added a .htaccess rewrite rule: RewriteRule ^portal/?$ portal.php [NC]

Now when they go to http://www.myforum.com/ they see my custom page http://www.myforum.com/portal/ and they can then click on my link to enter the forums http://www.myforum.com/forums/

Seems like a roundabout way to do this, but I think it's the only way that works.