How to create a custom Homepage

HI Folks,

I'm wanting to create a custom homepage for my ELGG site, I've dug up a few different ways to do this online, but I'm wondering what the best approach is?   I'm not a PHP programmer, so utilizing a plugin would be my first choice.   Right now the site is ELGG 1.8.19, but I would like to upgrade to 1.9 soon.   So one obvious question is should I do this before or after the upgrade?

Thanks for any pointers,

Chris

 

  • It depends how customized the homepage is supposed to be. If you want a homepage in the way it's provided by the bundled custom_index plugin but only with additional widgets that shows new content from other plugins, you can use the Widget Manager plugin (https://community.elgg.org/plugins/384604). If you use additonally the Homepage CMS plugin (https://community.elgg.org/plugins/968182) you can customize the homepage a bit more freely. Both of these plugins have not yet been updated for Elgg 1.9. The Widget Manager plugin needs to be upgraded in any case as the version for Elgg 1.8 won't work on Elgg 1.9. I don't know if the Homepage CMS plugin also needs to be upgraded for Elgg 1.9 but most likely it's necessary. I know that Coldtrick already works on a new version of the Widget Manager plugin for Elgg 1.9. I don't know if Matt intends to release a new version of Homepage CMS for Elgg 1.9 in the recent future though. So, using these plugins would currently make sense only on Elgg 1.8.

    If you want to customize your homepage completely free though, it's quite unlikely that you find a plugin that offers exactly what you have in mind. In this case it's necessary for you to create your own plugin to get the desired results. You could still use the custom_index plugin in this case as a starting point. But some basic knowledge of html and php coding would still be mandatory. Depending on how it should look it might also be better to make some customizations rather in your site's theme for the homepage to fit better with the rest of the site.

  •  

    To be honest, I would be happy with creating a plain and boring page that links to other pages and having that be my home page.  It doesn't need to be that customized, I just need to be able to type some text into it and link to other pages.   So for that matter, maybe I can ask the question this way:

    Is there a way to create a page in the ELGG site and then hard-wire the site to resolve to that page when someone logs in? 

    I will learn the PHP if I need to, but since this is such a simple thing I want to do I cannot help but think there is a way to do it...

    Thank you iionly for your response.

     

    best,

    Chris

     

  •  

    Thank you @dranii, I see how this will help me to make an arbitrary page, but that still leaves me the question of how to load that as the homepage.   Maybe I just need to work through some of the tutorials I have found...

     

  • If you only want a simply homepage it might be best to take a look at the Widget Manager plugin I've linked in my previous post. The update for Elgg 1.9 is already almost finished (available on the github repo linked on the plugin page) and it's fully working for Elgg 1.8.

    Making an arbitrary page the homepage / landing page isn't possible with the Anypage plugin alone. There would be some coding necessary - not complicated but still coding...

    There's a plugin available for redirect a user after login (https://community.elgg.org/plugins/384766). But this will only work when a user logs in and does not change anything for visitors who are not logged in.

  • @iionly: Thanks for the pointer, this is what I shall do.  I'll get this working and stay at ELGG 1.8 until the plugin is fully updated.

    best,

    Chris

  • I know there are so many things to do and so little time, it might be nice if the "Homepage CMS plugin (https://community.elgg.org/plugins/968182) you can customize the homepage a bit more freely. Both of these plugins have not yet been updated for Elgg 1.9." was updated.

    If not I understand.

    Dan

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