Showing something on the homepage only in Magento

Sometimes when building a Magento theme you may need to show something on the homepage only. This may be the welcome message in the header, or anything else for that matter which is in a PHTML file. PHTML files which are used site wide like the header or footer will by default appear throughout your Magento site.

In this example we will add some code to only show the welcome message on the homepage. We will do this using PHP. This example can be applied to any element in a PHTML file.

The default welcome message appears on the website using PHP in the header.phtml file. The actual text for the message itself is located in the Magento admin panel. (System > Configuration > Design).

In your theme folder you will need to make sure you have the header.phtml file. This will be located in theme name > template > page > html

Open up the file and look for:

 <p class="welcome-msg"><?php echo $this->getWelcome()?></p>

This is the code which pulls the text from the Magento admin panel and displays it on the website.

Now to add the PHP to show this on the homepage only:

<?php if ($this->getIsHomePage()):?>
<p class="welcome-msg"><?php echo $this->getWelcome()?></p>
<?php endif?>

Wrapping any code within a PHTML file in these PHP if tags will show up on the homepage only.