How to attach stories apphook to the home page¶

Attaching the stories apphook to the home page turns your site’s root URL into a blog or news feed — visitors land directly on the latest posts instead of a static page. This works well for content-driven sites, but requires one small configuration tweak to avoid URL conflicts.

Why a tweak is needed¶

When an apphook is attached to a page, django CMS routes all URLs beneath that page through the apphook’s urlconf. For most pages this is fine, but the home page is the parent of every other page in the tree. If the stories urlconf includes a catch-all slug pattern (<str:slug>/), it will swallow URLs meant for child pages like /about/ or /contact/.

The fix is straightforward: remove the slug-only permalink style so that post URLs always contain a date or category prefix, leaving bare slugs free for CMS pages.

Step 1: Restrict permalink styles¶

Add the following to your project settings to remove the slug-only option:

STORIES_AVAILABLE_PERMALINK_STYLES = (
    ('full_date', _('Full date')),
    ('short_date', _('Year /  Month')),
    ('category', _('Category')),
)
STORIES_PERMALINK_URLS = {
    "full_date": "<int:year>/<int:month>/<int:day>/<str:slug>/",
    "short_date": "<int:year>/<int:month>/<str:slug>/",
    "category": "<str:category>/<str:slug>/",
}

With these settings, post URLs will always start with a date or category segment, and CMS pages beneath the home page will resolve normally.

Then open the StoriesConfig admin and pick one of the three remaining permalink styles in the Layout section.

Step 2: Attach the apphook¶

Open the home page in the django CMS admin, go to Page settings, select Stories from the Application dropdown, and choose your configuration. Publish the page — your home page is now a stories listing.