the longest of times i've wished a CMS would have a separate homepage skin, i don't think i've worked on many sites who's homepage isn't completely different from the rest of the site.

example, the site im working on currently has the 3 column layout, with the 2 advanced areas, one from promo image top and one for footer.

the homepage requires a layout completely different, which means to the end user i can either use a frame (which doesn't scale for sub sites), or lock the page down so they cant edit it and put the html directly into the center column which just isn't practical. so i've had to go back and rearrange the homepage with them.

would it be that hard to specify a homepage.master in the layout folder, and if the file is missing use the default?