Add home page to a structure?

Question

I am using a structure for all of my site's pages (single pages and channel index pages). The structure settings are as follows:

URL for Top-Level Entries:
{slug}

URL for Nested Entries:
{parent.uri}/{slug}

Entry Template:
_pages/_entry.html

Additionally I set up multiple entry types for the structure to relate the pages with individual templates (basically as described in the FAQs). This is my _entry.html:

{% include '_pages/_types/' ~ entry.type %}

This all works great for me [*], but now I'd like to further improve the template setup by adding my site's home page to the structure, too. With a single section I can simply trigger the option "this is the home page" in the section's settings, but how can I tell an entry of my pages structure to be my home page?

_{[*]: I can generate my site's main navigation from this structure (nice!) and all channels' index pages have entry slugs now, which is incredibly helpful in a multi-lingual Craft setup, if you want to translate your slugs.}

Answer 1

This isn't documented, so it's subject to change:

When you set a Single to be the homepage, its slug is automatically set to __home__.

If you want your homepage to be part of a Structure, rather than a separate Single, you can set the slug of a Structure entry to __home__, which makes it act as the site's homepage and gives it that little Home icon in place of its slug in the structure view.

Answer 2

The "this is for the homepage" button available on single sections does two things for you, when you navigate to the home page's URL:

• it populates the entry variable with the single's entry model
• it loads the template spezified in the single's CP settings

.

Actually nothing you can't do manually with your home page's index.html:

{# Replace the default `entry` variable with the home page's entry model #}
{% set entry = craft.entries.section('pages').id('1').first() %}

{# Load the home page's template from the "pages" structure #}
{% include "_pages/_entry" %}

_pages/_entry.html further includes the template partial designed for the entry type I assigned my home page to:

{# Load the designed template for this entry's entry type #}
{% include '_pages/' ~ entry.type %}

This is all you need to replicate the "this is for the homepage" button behaviour for a structure entry. Additionally you might want to exclude the home page from your navigation menu for example. Again use the id or slug parameter on the ElementCriteriaModel:

{# Get top-level entries in pages structure (exclude home page)  #}
{% set pages = craft.entries.section('pages').id('not 1').level(1) %}

.

Thanks again to Marion, her answer pointed me in the right direction. I added this answer, because her configuration is a bit spezific and rather complicated.

Answer 3

I kludged this to work by creating a global whose value was the entry I wanted to use as the home page (everyPage.homePage), and then on _pages/_entry.html using twig to sort things out based on the entry:

• if no entry: 404 (this should never happen)
• if entry is everyPage.homePage: 404
• if entry is the Craft home page single: set entry to everyPage.homePage

Then proceed as normal.

{% if entry is not defined %}
  {% exit 404 %}
{% elseif entry.id == everyPage.homePage.first.id %}
  {% exit 404 %}
{% elseif entry.id == craft.entries.section('homePage').first().id %}
  {% set entry = everyPage.homePage.first %}
{% endif %}

This was using a channel (not a structure) for the pages, and the URL is simply {slug}

Answer 4

From an IA and content-modelling perspective, putting all your site's "pages" in a Structure is fraught with problems, and, in my opinion, does a terrible disservice to the future-friendly approach with which you should be building sites. I wrote about this at length recently: https://cld.agency/blog/content-utopia

To more directly answer the question:

1. stop mixing all your content types together in a single Structure (see article);
2. divorce your navigation from the content;
3. use a dedicated Channel or Structure for home page entries (note the plural - allows for A/B tests and seasonal variations, permanent storing of draft home pages etc), then load the most recent or first-structure-ordered entry manually in your home page template.