Symphony.

Is there a way I could create a page that will be displayed for the first time a website author logs in? On this page I would like the author to be able to do the basic settings: name of website, email address, twitter account etc. Something similar to maintenance mode but that will run only for the first time the author logs in or it will run again if the author hasn't completed those steps at the beginning. This is similar to the step by step guide that you get when running a Mac computer for the first time.

You could try the Dashboard panel. Install the Dashboard extension, and then select "Dashboard" as the place to redirect an author when logging in. You then have a few options:

1. Use a Markdown panel type to type some instructions telling them to fill in the details.
2. Write your own panel type (as an extension) that either shows a panel alerting the user if it's their first login, or do some clever AJAX to pull in the entry form into the dashboard so that they can edit in-situ

Alternatively, you can write your own extension which:

• hooks into a page load delegate in the backend
• on each page load, look up the author ID in your extension's own database table to see whether they've logged in before
• if they have not, add a row to the table, so you don't process them in the future, then redirect them to the entry they need to edit

Thanks Nick for your detailed instructions. I may try the Dashboard solution. Sometime in the future when I know a little bit more PHP I may try and create an extension.