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For some, CakePHP's default routing works well enough. Developers who are sensitive to user-friendliness and general search engine compatibility will appreciate the way that CakePHP's URLs map to specific actions. So we'll just make a quick change to routes in this tutorial.

For more information on advanced routing techniques, see "Routes Configuration".

By default, CakePHP responds to a request for the root of your site (i.e. http://www.example.com) using its PagesController, rendering a view called "home". Instead, we'll replace this with our PostsController by creating a routing rule.

Cake's routing is found in /app/config/routes.php. You'll want to comment out or remove the line that defines the default root route. It looks like this:

Router::connect ('/', array('controller'=>'pages', 'action'=>'display', 'home'));

1. Router::connect ('/', array('controller'=>'pages', 'action'=>'display', 'home'));

This line connects the URL '/' with the default CakePHP home page. We want it to connect with our own controller, so add a line that looks like this:

Router::connect ('/', array('controller'=>'posts', 'action'=>'index'));

1. Router::connect ('/', array('controller'=>'posts', 'action'=>'index'));

This should connect users requesting '/' to the index() action of our soon-to-be-created PostsController.

CakePHP also makes use of 'reverse routing' - if with the above route defined you pass array('controller'=>'posts', 'action'=>'index') to a function expecting an array, the resultant url used will be '/'. It's therefore a good idea to always use arrays for urls as this means your routes define where a url goes, and also ensures that links point to the same place too.