While developing this blog I wanted to have index.html page that, instead of showing list of articles (which will be shown on archives page linked from main menu).

I found following howto guide but it involved writing custom jinja2 filter, which seemed to be some maintenance burden (and according to my slogan [1], I need this blog to be maintenance free).

So here is simpler solution:

• Create page-content.html template that contains only contents of a page (that is: it's header contents and any footer you need). Usually just copy-paste contents of page.html

• {% include "page-content.html" %} in page.html.

• Create index page (set :slug: index), and set it's status to hidden: :status: hidden.

• In case of my template (copied from simple template built in pelican) category.html did inherit from index.html, so I just copied index.html to category.html.

• Replace index.html contents with:

   {% for hidden_page in hidden_pages %}
      {% if hidden_page.slug == 'index' %}
          {% with page = hidden_page %}
              {% include "page-content.html" %}
          {% endwith %}
      {% endif %}
  {% else %}
      <strong>Please add hidden page (:status: hidden) with slug <i>'index'</i></strong>
  {% endfor %}
  

[1]	Which can be: "Make it as simple as possible but not simpler".