Question

I have tried the following two methods in catalog/navigation/vert_nav.phtml to add or suppress content specific to the home page:

if($this->getUrl('') == $this->getUrl('*/*/*', array('_current'=>true, '_use_rewrite'=>true))):

or

if(
Mage::getSingleton('cms/page')->getIdentifier() == 'home'  &&
Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getRequest()->getRouteName() == 'cms' 
) :

Both work fine, however when BLOCK_HTML cache is turned on, it works at first, then after a while the home page starts displaying content that is intended only for other pages (after an else clause I use lower down). When I turn off the BLOCK_HTML, it behaves as expected.

Interestingly I’ve used the same code (the 1st one) in page/html/head.phtml (for home page specific javascript/css), and in page/html/header.phtml (for a header banner that should only appear on the home page), and these work fine even when BLOCK_HTML is ON.

(Magento 1.4.1.1)

Answer 1

The above answer is the best solution.

You could simply copy app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Nagivation.php

to:

app/code/local/Mage/Catalog/Block/Nagivation.php

and then change the getCacheKeyInfo() method as described above.

/**
 * Get Key pieces for caching block content
 *
 * @return array
 */
public function getCacheKeyInfo()
{
    $shortCacheId = array(
        'CATALOG_NAVIGATION',
        Mage::app()->getStore()->getId(),
        Mage::getDesign()->getPackageName(),
        Mage::getDesign()->getTheme('template'),
        Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->getCustomerGroupId(),
        'template' => $this->getTemplate(),
        'name' => $this->getNameInLayout(),
        $this->getCurrenCategoryKey(),
        // Your logic to make home/none home have different cache keys
        Mage::getSingleton('cms/page')->getIdentifier() == 'home' ? '1' : '0'
    );
    $cacheId = $shortCacheId;

    $shortCacheId = array_values($shortCacheId);
    $shortCacheId = implode('|', $shortCacheId);
    $shortCacheId = md5($shortCacheId);

    $cacheId['category_path'] = $this->getCurrenCategoryKey();
    $cacheId['short_cache_id'] = $shortCacheId;

    return $cacheId;
}

This will make the cache key different for homepage / none-homepage pages, which will cache two copies, rather than caching a single template copy for use on all pages.