I have managed to get this to work before. But now I am using the frontpage module it's a little different. I've set the frontpage module default front page as "front_page". Also I have set the homepage to redirect to node/1 for anonymous users and /user for authenticated users. But I am now getting all the things I put in my page.tpl not to work. For example, I had a statement which said:
<?php if ( ! is_front ) ( ?>
<div id="left-column">
<?php echo $sidebar_left; ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>
This made the sidebar only show it's not the front page. This works when I had the default frontpage setting in the frontpage module set to "node/1" and also had the redirects on for authenticated users to goto "/user"
But now I have front_page set as default frontpage, the statment deosn't seem to be working and I'm getting the menu showing up all the time. I have tried
<?php if ( arg(0) != node/1){ ?>
<div id="left-column">
<?php echo $sidebar_left; ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>
This seems to make the menu disappear all the time. I have also lost the correct formatting for just the frontpage for anonymous users where I used a statement:
<div id="<?php print($is_front ? 'middle-column-frontpage' : 'middle-column'); ?>">
so that I could remove any left padding for the middle content only when it's the front page for anonymous users. I'm not sure how I can get these statements and the frontpage module to work together.