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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 replace that line with this one:

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 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.