Public homepage

What the public homepage does

The public homepage is the patient-facing front door for a lab company. It is reached through the lab website slug, such as /labs/{slug}, and it only renders when the website is marked as published. If the website is not published, Kashef returns a not found response so unfinished content is not visible to patients.

The homepage carries the lab name, logo, colors, contact details, service messaging, test catalogue links, patient portal link, and recent educational posts. It is connected to operational data, so public information can stay aligned with the real tests, prices, portal features, and blog content managed inside the Lab Panel.

Treat the homepage as an operational promise. If a service, turnaround time, home collection area, phone number, or price is visible to patients, the lab team should be ready to support it.

Publishing and website identity

The public website is controlled from Lab Settings, Website CMS, and Website Builder. Lab Settings stores the public slug that defines the URL path. Website CMS stores the published switch, website logo, contact phone, contact email, WhatsApp number, address, theme tokens, SEO title, SEO description, and the fallback home sections.

Theme tokens control the public site's primary color, accent color, surface color, and text color. These values are used by the public layout and the fallback homepage. The public layout also includes the language switcher, navigation to Home, Tests, and Blog, and a persistent Patient Portal button.

Before publishing, review both languages. English and Arabic have separate SEO titles and descriptions, and the homepage can show either English or Arabic content based on the current locale.

Builder homepage mode

When the visual page builder feature is enabled and the lab has a published home page, the public homepage renders the published builder HTML and CSS. This means the builder page becomes the source of truth for the first public screen. Kashef stores separate published HTML for English and Arabic, a shared published CSS payload, and a published timestamp.

The builder supports draft, publish, and revert flows. Saving a draft does not automatically change the public page. Publishing sanitizes the draft HTML and CSS, renders supported website widgets, and writes the published output. Revert copies the published state back into the draft so the team can recover from an experimental edit.

Builder content can include route placeholders for the tests page, blog, and patient portal. It can also include widgets for featured tests, latest blog posts, and the patient portal call to action. These widgets are rendered at publish time so the public page does not rely on hard-coded links or stale test lists.

Fallback homepage mode

If there is no published builder homepage, Kashef renders the structured fallback homepage. The fallback hero introduces the lab as a digital lab experience and includes buttons for Explore Tests and Open Patient Portal. The visible lab name comes from the lab company, and the logo comes from website settings or the lab company logo.

Below the hero, the fallback page can show enabled home sections from Website CMS. Each section has a key, enabled switch, sort order, English title/body, and Arabic title/body. These sections are useful for service promises, branch notes, home visit information, insurance messaging, operating hours, or other patient-facing explanations.

The fallback page also shows up to eight featured tests from the active catalogue and up to three published blog posts. Featured tests are taken from active tests belonging to the lab company. Blog posts appear only when they are published.

Navigation and patient actions

The public layout gives patients three main navigation choices: Home, Tests, and Blog. It also keeps the Patient Portal button visible in the header. The homepage hero repeats the main actions so patients can either browse the catalogue or sign in to the portal immediately.

These links should match what the lab can support. If the patient portal is enabled but results are not being released correctly, fix the result release workflow before promoting the portal. If the test catalogue has incomplete prices or sample instructions, correct the catalogue and pricing records before making the homepage the main patient entry point.

Content quality for patients

Homepage writing should be friendly, direct, and medically careful. Explain what the lab offers without making unsupported medical claims. Avoid promising urgent turnaround times unless the operational workflow and staffing can consistently meet them. Mention home collection only if the lab is ready to receive and dispatch home visit requests.

Keep the language patient-centered. Patients usually want to know what services are available, how to contact the lab, where to see their results, whether home visits exist, and how to find the right test. Internal phrases such as SLA, accessioning, QC gate, or pricing source should stay in the Lab Panel docs, not the public homepage.

Before publishing

Review the homepage in English and Arabic, on desktop and mobile. Confirm the logo displays correctly, the colors are readable, the patient portal link opens the correct lab website, and the tests link goes to the correct catalogue. Check that contact phone, email, WhatsApp, and address are correct for the lab company.

Then test the operational links: open the patient portal, search for a common test, open a blog post, and confirm the site is not exposing draft content. If the builder is used, preview the published state after publishing, not only the draft inside the builder.

Common issues

If the public homepage returns not found, check whether the website is published in Website CMS and whether the slug in the URL matches Lab Settings. If the builder content is missing, check that the visual builder feature is enabled and that the home page has actually been published. If the fallback sections are missing, check whether they are enabled and sorted in Website CMS.

If tests or prices look wrong, the fix is usually in the test catalogue or catalog pricing, not in the homepage. If blog posts do not appear, confirm the posts belong to the same lab company and are published. If the wrong logo appears, check Website CMS first, then the lab company logo.