Drupal static homepage not working

Question

First off, I'm completely new to Drupal, so I could be making a ridiculously simple mistake...

I'm using Drupal 7.9, and trying to use an HTML homepage that I've already created, that does not follow the Theme...

I've tried using the page-front.tpl.php file, but it is completely ignored. I then found that in Drupal 7 I should be using page--front.tpl.php, but that is ignored as well.

I've looked through many different tutorial and FAQs, but to no avail. Can someone possibly point out what I'm doing wrong? I've even added some test text to the page.tpl.php file, just to make sure that it's loading that one instead; which it is. Is there some setting that I'm missing that tells Drupal to use the page--front.tpl.php file?

Here's the server setup... Windows Server 8; IIS 7; MySQL 5 PHP 5

I know, we should be using Linux and Apache... I'm still working on getting our Windows happy VP to let me make the switch...:)

Thanks for any help, I'm at a loss here...

--Charles

Answer 1

Drupal manages all pages dynamically and stores content in the database. You will be able to designate a specific page as your home page and render it differently than other pages if you wish. Drupal is extremely flexible and capable of almost anything by using the many expansion modules that are available for it. Having said that, you should also know that there is a 'learning curve' to Drupal so don't expect good results right off the bat. If this is a one-off project, you may want to look at other alternatives as well.