The Frontpage Component

First of all, we will explain the concept of Home Page and the Frontpage Component in Joomla!, as many people easily confuse these two concepts.

Home page:

When a visitor types in the URL of your site, www.mysite.com (or when they navigate from another site), the Home Page is usually the first page they visit. The Home Page itself is the first published page located in the mainmenu section of the Menu Manager.

NOTE: Your Home Page is the same as your Front Page.

Even if the mainmenu Module is NOT published, your Home page will still display the Menu Item on top of the mainmenu list of Items.

Frontpage Component:

The Frontpage Component publishes content to your Home Page (as long as the Frontpage Component is the first Menu Item in your Main Menu). You can assign any Content Item to the Home page by checking the parameter Show on Frontpage within the Edit Content Item page (in the Back-end as in the Front-end of your site).

The default configuration sets the link to the Frontpage Component to the first published item in the mainmenu. But, as with any other component, it may be placed anywhere in your menus.

How to edit or create a link to the Frontpage Component in any menu:

There are 2 ways to create such a link:
Go to MenuManager -> [the-menu-you-want-to-edit].

1. Create a Component Menu Item and choose the Frontpage Component in the drop-down (See Chapter on Menus). Details and Parameters to edit are described below.
2. Create a Link-Component Item and choose the Frontage Component from the drop-down. It adds a link to the Frontpage Component that automatically reflects the parameters of the original as defined in the Component menu item. You may NOT edit parameters for this type of link.The Link - Component Item is useful if you want the Frontpage Component to appear in more than one menu and just want to change the Details parameters for that component while keeping the general parameters as defined in the Frontpage Component Menu Item. One aspect added to the Details function is the possibility of opening the link in a certain type of window.
   

If you have not defined Parameters for the Frontpage Component Menu Item, the default parameters will be used instead

To learn more about Menu Parameters,  click  this Help Screen link.

  Frontpage Component Menu Item

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Note:  If you have suggestions/corrections for this chapter, please visit the doc forum. 
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,59.0.html

Thank you!

Michelle Bisson
Documentation Team Co-Leader