How to Change the Layout on the Frontpage

Written by James Hafner | November 02, 2009 | (4)

A question that comes up often of new users is "How do I change the layout of the content on my frontpage?". To be more specific, the question is often about how to change the content layout from Joomla!'s default 1 column leading / 2 column intro / links layout. Fortunately, Joomla! makes this really easy to do.

It's Really a Component

What most new users don't realize is that when they're looking at the frontpage of their brand-new Joomla site, they're not looking at a bunch of articles randomly placed there. They're looking at Joomla's content component, whic is intelligently pulling those articles in and placing them in a specific, logical arrangement. Changing this arrangement happens to be a piece of cake:

1. Log into your site's administrator. (www.yoursite.com/administrator)
2. In the main administrator menu, go to 'Menus' > 'Main Menu'.
3. Click on the menu item titled "Home".
4. On the right, you'll see the "Parameters (Basic)" panel. In here you'll see numbers that relate to how your page is laid out. Change these numbers to shuffle your page layout around.

The first parameter is "# Leading", which determines the number of leading articles that are displayed on the frontpage view. The second parameter is "# Intro", which determines the number of articles that are displayed on the frontpage view with their introductory text. The third parameter is "Columns", which is the number of columns in which the intro articles are displayed. The last basic parameter is the "# Links", which determines the number of links that are displayed in a list of article title links after the intro articles.

The default layout is like the diagram at the top of this how-to, but you can change it to whatever you want. You can even set values to "0". For example, you can change the "# Leading" to "0", which will bump your two-columns of intro articles up to the top. Or you can set your "# Leading" to "0", "# Intro" to "10", and your "Columns" to "1" to create a more standard blog layout.

You can actually do a whole lot to change the look of the frontpage component on your home page. Play with the numbers in the "Parameters (Basic)" to see if you can come up with a layout that works better for your website.

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Thank you
written by hakem, November 04, 2009

Thank you for these useful notes. It saved me time and helped me create a two column front page pretty easily !

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written by Kate Vickers, November 05, 2009

Thanks for posting this! While I'm really just a project manager and I don't need to do any of the development myself - occassionally the need does arise (developer unavailable, on another project, sick...). I'm also slowly developing my own personal Joomla! site outside of my place of work. I was just starting to get really frustrated with my front page and was ready to reinvent the wheel to get it the way that I want. Stuff like this is really helpful. I'll have to remember to check here often, not just on the Joomla Forum (which I also really like going to...). Thanks for putting the time and effort in!

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written by James Hafner, November 05, 2009

@hakem - Great! Glad it came in handy.

@Kate Vickers - I admire you not giving up and actually building your own site on the side! I've talked to countless people who haven't gotten as far as you have. Keep up the good work!

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Great stuff
written by Chris Tucci, December 17, 2009

I really appreciate your effort in this site - I have used Joomla! for a bit now and it is great to see support resources like this one available for those of us feeling out in the woods at times with Joomla! incredible possibilities.

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