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This page explains some of the different ways to customize the front page of your store.
This is one of the most important pages in your site, and has some of its own variables. (You'll find the variables specific to the front page of your site by selecting Edit on your front page.)
The Page-title field gives you a way to control the title of your
front page. If you leave it blank, your store name will be used
as the title (a safe choice).
Yahoo! Store lets you add a specific title because page titles are
important for search engine matches. Don't go overboard in stuffing your page title
with keywords though: it looks amateurish.
(For other pages in your site, the title is taken from the item's Name
field.)
If you have an image on your front page, it will go on the
left side by default, and it will be resized, like images on
other pages, as determined by the variables Item-height
and Item-width (on the Variables page).
You have two other options for the way the main image
on your front page is displayed.
If you set Image-format
to Banner, the image will be allowed to stretch the full
width of your front page (if the original image was that
wide). This works best with images that are long and
thin. (To upload a logo banner to appear at the top of all your store pages, use the Name-image field on the Variables page.)
If you set Image-format to Unconstrained, then the
image on your front page won't be resized at all.
The buttons that appear on your front page are not controlled by
the Nav-Buttons variable, like the rest of your site. There is
a separate Buttons property on your front page, which lets you
have different buttons on your front page from the rest of
your site.
By default, your front page will have your store name at the top,
followed by an image on the left, with your text next to it.
If you put something in the Address-phone variable, that will
show up at the bottom of the page, followed by your Final-text,
if any.
By changing the Page-elements, you can
determine the order of these elements
on your page, and whether they appear at all.
If you try to change the Page-Elements, you'll notice that
one of the elements that's not included by default is
Contents.
Contents means the top level sections of your site:
the pages whose names (by default) appear in the buttons
down the side of your site's pages.
This lets you display the sections in the body of your page. This is especially useful if you're using Top Buttons instead of side.
For merchants experienced with image software like PhotoShop,
you can automatically create an imagemap on your front page using the Pack setting.
If you put the contents on the front page, then by
overriding the Contents-Format and setting it to Pack,
you can make a front page that looks like a single big
image, with different parts leading to different pages
of your site.
You'll want to set (or override) Page-Format to
Top-Buttons, and probably have nothing else in
your Page-Elements except Contents and perhaps
some of the text elements.
Use an image paint program to cut your image into sections, and upload these to your store sections using the Icon field. The pieces will be displayed as one image on the front page of your site.
(Warning: While this can be a sophisticated look, it's important to make sure you don't make the page too big. It's better to be simple and accessible than advanced and unusable.)
Another possible page element that's not included
by default is Search. By including this, you can have a search
box right on your front page.
If you put a search box on your front page, you may
want to get rid of the Search button. (Both do the
same search.)
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