How can you test if you're on the homepage in Joomla?

Question

I'm working on a Joomla site, and I need the front page to look slightly different from the rest of the pages, but not enough to warrant the use of two themes (it's a pain to have to update two stylesheets and two sets of images every time I want to make a small change).

My thoughts are to throw in a little test in the index.php of the template: if we're at the homepage, serve X, otherwise, serve Y. However, I'm not entirely sure how to test this. I can't just use the URL because url.com/ and url.com/index.php and url.com/index.php? etc etc are all valid.

Does anyone know of a way to do what I'm trying to do? Like a $_JOOMLA['page'] variable or something convenient like that?

Thanks! --Mala

Answer 1

if(JRequest::getVar('view') == "frontpage" ) {
    //You are in!
}
else {
    //You are out!
}

Answer 2

To be shure that client is on homepage, you should test "is current page (Itemid) choosen as default menu item" like this code do (for Joomla 1.6, 1.7 and 2.5):

<?php
$menu = JFactory::getApplication()->getMenu();
if ($menu->getActive() == $menu->getDefault()) {
    echo 'This is the front page';
}
?>

To find code for Joomla 1.5, look to http://docs.joomla.org/How_to_determine_if_the_user_is_viewing_the_front_page