Add Static Home Page Setting

[sscovil]

One fairly simple feature to add is a setting that allows use of a static home page, instead of defaulting to index.hbs. This is a standard feature of other blogging platforms and has been discussed here: https://ghost.org/forum/using-ghost/4647-static-front-page/. I have written code and will submit a pull request shortly...

[ErisDS]

Hi @sscovil welcome to Ghost's GitHub repo.

A feature being simple to add isn't the only consideration for whether it should be in Ghost core or not. Our contributing guidelines ask that when raising feature requests you take some time to explain why a feature deserves to be added.

Additionally, we have a set of guidelines which determine which features should be in core:
https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/wiki/Planned-Features#what-makes-it-into-ghost-core

Personally I don't think this feature fits with Ghost at all. Ghost is a blog - if you're not putting your blog on your homepage then you're building a website, not a blog?

[sscovil]

Hi @ErisDS,

Thanks for the quick response. Honestly, it never occurred to me that this feature would be unwanted. I've never drawn a line in the sand between blogs and websites, since many of the websites I have built include a blog. It only makes sense that both the website and the blog should be managed with the same CMS.

Does Ghost take a hard line against being used as a website platform?

[JohnONolan]

Have you seen the tagline? :)

[ErisDS]

The hard line is not drawn in how people use the software, users can do whatever they like. However, we do stand firmly by being just a blog when it comes to the core code base. We don't want to build a CMS, or an ever-expanding, sprawling core.

The app platform, when it finally lands, will allow users to make this sort of customisation, and if they want, use Ghost as a CMS, as an e-commerce platform, or use it to power a space shuttle... if they really want to :)

[sscovil]

Fair enough. I respect wanting to keep it lean and focused, and not paving the cow path like WordPress has done. I am excited to start building apps, but it appears that is not a viable option just yet...maybe I'll see if there is anything I can do to help on that front.

[sscovil]

I would, however, encourage you to consider giving theme developers the option to create a home.hbs template at the very least. Developing themes without the ability to distinguish between the front page and the default index seems like an unnecessary restriction.

Would you consider a PR for that feature?

[ErisDS]

That sounds like a pretty interesting and useful idea 👍 We've been having a lot of discussions recently about the concept of 'context' in relation to themes and apps, context meaning 'where on the blog are you?'

The result is pretty much this wiki document: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/wiki/Context-aware-Filters-and-Helpers

But the idea is that we're going to clean up a tonne of stuff around body classes, templates, the data a template receives, add an {{#is}} helper for determining your current context, and a few other really cool bits and pieces.

The main thing the core devs are working on now is improving the data API that everything relies on, which is the 'what data is available' part, and will lead to even more advancements in terms of being able to fetch data in a theme etc.

After adding a home.hbs, perhaps helping out with some of the other context related changes would be something you'd like to get involved with? The team hangs out in #ghost on freenode btw 😉

[sscovil]

Cool. I'd like to get involved, for sure. I really like what you guys are doing here and my experience writing a REST API might be useful.

Right now I'm focused on bending Ghost into a shape that I can use for documenting my own API (for work). Our goal is to easily be able to publish pages with the same basic format (one for each REST resource), and doing it in the theme alone is quite a challenge...which is what lead me to start poking around with core.

Thanks again for the feedback...see you around!

[ErisDS]

Closed in favour of #3409

[zeroby0]

Could you guys give us a workaround? It might not be needed in Ghost, but I need it in my ghost blog.. Any help in setting a static html file or a .hbs as home page and blog in /blog is highly appreciated
Thanks :)

[rawsh]

@zeroby0 What you can do is change the index.hbs file with what you want. If you want the post loop on another page enable the public api and use the get helper.
Here's one I did from a while ago, the custom home page is on index.hbs and the post loop is on page-portfolio.hbs https://github.com/rawsh/Portfolio-Ghost