How To? Landing and/or Splash Page

[hotchops]

This may be a simple question but I don't know how to make a splash or landing page that site visitors land on when they initially come to the url and then click through to go my 68 classifieds site. What do I call that page so it comes up before the 68 classifieds template?

[Lhotch]

Your web server is configured to to display certain files when one is not specified in the request. The name is usually index and can often have one of many extensions like htm, html, php etc. The order is specific in thye apache config file and the first one in the list that is found will be displayed first.

If your sever is ocnfigured to look for index.htm, index.html, index.php it will look for them in that order and when one is found thats what will be displayed. Often times you will not be able to alter this so what most people do is install their classifieds in a subdirectory of their web server root and then create the splash page in the root with links to the classifieds.

[darkqueen]

i saw splash page script on dynamic drive here is the link Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts- Splash Page script, may be it will work.

[seymourjames]

There is nothing to stop you making your index.php page a splash page with or without the layout.tpl . Just remember your home page (index.php) is now the so called splash page in terms of links to it. You then might decide to redesign the search page (search.tpl file and put some more contents on it) and effectively make it your site 'home' page. Its only naming at the end of the day on links. This also has a nice advantage in that the users perceived home page will have search on it. Taking links off your site to index.php means they can't get back to the splash page through site navigation either.

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Please post your 68 Classifieds type (Designer, Developer), version (4.0.x, 4.1.x) and template in your postings asking for help. This information will help you get better answers for your posts. A great place to do this is in your signature!

If you have the developers version this can be done by simply making a copy of the layout.tpl file and save it as example, layout2.tpl. Then in your index.php file at the end change display call to:
$class_tpl->display('layout2.tpl','index');

[seymourjames]

Thats a good suggestion as well and it nicely opens up the possibility of having a dynamic template which changes according to different pages (not sure how worthwhile that is).

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Depending on the type of content that the site has, it can be very worthwhile. For instance with my community website, I have done this and all admin created pages and the home page uses the layout2.tpl page which has a completely different menu (eg: all admin created pages and different display ad zones) All other pages uses the standard layout.tpl file which has the categories as the menu, etc.

[seymourjames]

Sounds good Mike (being serious)

I will make 15 different layouts and in different colours then assign them randomly to each page as it turns up - that will confuse people nicely - great fro an adsense loaded site - LOL

[Eric Barnes]

I am not sure if this is related to this topic or not. I haven't read it fully but here is a great article talking about banner advertising and landing pages:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/...h-banners-ads/

Also a good thing to use is Google Website Optimizer.