I want people to see the stuff that is on the Home Page first with the login box on the side

I don't understand your question. I thought that is the page they see first. What do you think is the page that they see first?

Hi Helen -- welcome to the Help Forums -- one admin to another.

Your home page is the generally the 'landing page' for all – just give out the URL.

Sometimes webmasters want to create a different landing page for specific groups.

For example, let's say you have a list of teachers. You can create a special announcement just for teachers. Include all the information you want to share with those teachers, save it and "View" it to capture the URL, but don't make it active.

In an email to teachers, share the URL of that specific announcement.

actually, you cannot make custom ANNOUNCEMENTS (announcements can only be for "logged in", "logged out", or "all the time"). For a specific CUSTOM PAGE, you can follow John's directions and use one of your Edit Site Pages, Custom Pages to create a special page for the teachers then don't make that page ACTIVE, but send an e-mail to all the teachers and include the URL for the custom page.

I was wrong - you can make custom announcements, then use the VIEW button to view the home page with JUST THAT ANNOUNCEMENT, then copy the URL that the VIEW button put in the browser, send that URL to those you want to have the custom announcement and then anyone who uses that URL will only see the one announcement and the rest of the contents of the home page.

Hi Kyle, you are right. I logged out and ended up on a screen that shows nothing except the menu options on the left hand side and I got worried that my new visitors see only this.

Thanks for the additional recommendations

Thanks for the welcome and the recommendations.

I am looking forward to getting more advice from everyone, I know I will need it. I just got started last month

Regards