Be part of JetBrains PHPverse 2026 on June 9 – a free online event bringing PHP devs worldwide together.

AdamEsterle's avatar

Where should home page url direct logged in users?

When should you show or not show the domain.com page for logged in users?

Is seeing the home page (that a non-logged in user sees) pointless when logged in?

Or should domain.com redirect to, say, domain.com/dashboard when logged in?

0 likes
7 replies
Snapey's avatar

it's up to you. it's your application, design it how you like.

it is very common to have the same default page whether you are logged in or not.

Like this site for instance...

AdamEsterle's avatar

I just was curious if there was any standards that I was missing on whether or not to do it.

Like what kind of site would the landing page be considered pointless after logged in

jlrdw's avatar

Redirect a logged-in user to the first page they would need to see as a logged in user. And of course that depends on the type of application.

AdamEsterle's avatar

@jlrdw Agreed. But I am talking about something different

EXAMPLE domain.com domain.com/dashboard - only for logged in users

When a logged in user goes to domain.com - should I just take them to domain.com/dashboard - i.e. they cannot access the landing page anymore?

Snapey's avatar

What's the point of preventing access to the landing page?

AdamEsterle's avatar

@Snapey

Nothing other than - some websites seem to do it (facebook.com)

I am getting some usability testing results too of people thinking the Logo in the navbar will take them to the dashboard even though it takes them to the landing page (dashboard navbar link right next to logo lol).

Maybe that is just a small bit of confusion after a user does that once and realizes the site layout

Snapey's avatar

Why can't clicking the logo do both depending if you are logged in or not

Sites that direct to a dashboard usually do it because they have one!

Not all sites that you have to log into need a user centric dashboard, and if that is actually somewhere to go to manage your account, and not to 'use' the site then it should be a secondary action.

I log into Amazon and see a tailored version of the homepage (offers for me) but I would not say it was my dashboard because that is in my account page. Amazon does not want me distracted into looking at previous bills etc when I came to the site to buy something.

If a lot of the content is available to users that are not logged in then often the logged in user still needs or wants to browse the landing page and all its content, only doing something user centric when they need to amend the content in some way, or enquire about a product (e.g. eBay)

On the other hand, something like Highrise (a CRM application), or Trello when I log in, the only thing I care about is my own dashboard with leads that I need to follow up etc.

So, it really does depend on your use case.

Please or to participate in this conversation.