[Guide] Override the home page on a NodeBB

[A Former User]

Woohoo! Is this a better option than an nginx rewrite?

Although I couldn't get the rewrite to work...it just led to a redirect loop. So will try this, despite no plugin creation experience.

[julian]

Prior to the prerequisite commit, it was actually impossible, so this is an improvement, albeit only a slight one.

You can override the / route, to show /recent, but it doesn't accept arguments yet, so it just loads that day's posts. Would be neat for it to be able to load /category/1, but that doesn't quite work. It works! See my edit.

There are two steps to it:

1. Overriding the route itself (in the app.load hook)
2. Overriding the custom mapping for ajaxification (non cold-loads)

Edit: Hm... actually, come to think of it, maybe there is a way...

Edit 2: Yep!

Above, I overwrote the / and /api/home routes. You can do the following to "fake" a parameter being passed in, as the home route doesn't normally provide parameters.

app.get('/', middleware.buildHeader,  function(req, res, next) {
	req.params.term = 'month';
	controllers.categories.recent.apply(controllers.categories.recent, arguments);
});
app.get('/api/home', function(req, res, next) {
	req.params.term = 'month';
	controllers.categories.recent.apply(controllers.categories.recent, arguments);
});

[A Former User]

I don't suppose the ACP will ever have a "select homepage" option? I'm guessing that would be complicated to do though, since this is already.

[trevor]

Hmm, interesting. Nice tutorial @julian !

[julian]

The Viridian theme (which is perpetually a work-in-progress theme) utilises this to have the recent topics as the primary page.

[A Former User]

@julian Hmmm, the name makes it sound like a Game of Thrones character. Interest piqued...

[julian]

Hahaha, actually, with the exception of vanilla, themes created by the NodeBB team follow a certain theme...

Lavender, Viridian, ...

I guess a sample size of 2 doesn't help

[psychobunny]

I don't suppose the ACP will ever have a "select homepage" option

I imagine it would be possible to do. It's something I've been wanting to do but haven't had the time for it yet

[limitx3m]

I'm guessing this is a little dated.

Is there a way I can create my own routes and decide what nodebb features are displayed on a page? I would like to make at least a splash page that's not separate from nodebb.

[sadmulwar]

Hi,

I am using NodeBB 0.6.0 and I tried above all steps but its not working. Can any one help me out ?

Actually instead of "Recent" page I want to show "category/2/general-discussion" as my home page.

Thanks in advance!!!

[julian]

@sadmulwar The guide is for an outdated version of NodeBB, you should just try assigning the / route against the router... @baris or @psychobunny can confirm, but in your listener for static:app.load:

plugin.init = function(data, callback) {
  data.router.get('/', function(req, res) {
    // ...
  });

callback();
});

[PitaJ]

@julian

I appears the custom homepage plugin doesn't work well with ajaxify. If you ajaxify to the / route, it just goes to the categories page. However, if you cold load to /, it goes to the custom homepage. Is there a way to fix this?

Is there a hook to add possible routes to the "Home Page Route" dropdown in the ACP?

[psychobunny]

I haven't updated that plugin yet iirc, and we haven't built a hook for the ACP dropdown just yet, but its a good idea. PR?

[PitaJ]

@psychobunny

You must code in your sleep, because the hook is definitely there already