Unfortunately, no part of your site is going to work without the index file as the entire site is routed through it. However, you can add custom content to your index page manually (rather than through the AdminCP's pages) if you read through
this thread over here.
Hopefully you know some code? You should perhaps modify your page in such a way that a giant div covers the entire screen and your splash contents sits inside that, covering everything below -- but only if the person visiting is a visitor.
PHP Code:
if($usergroup == 6) {
/*show something for visitors only*/
$document->add(new Comment(" Only visitors will be able to see this!! ", FALSE));
}
These are the usergroups, by number:
1 - root admins
2 - admins
3 - registered users
4 - artists
5 - banned
6 - visitors
As for suggestions to further a splash page -- make a div that's 100% the width and height of the page, and then center some content vertically and horizontally to make it appealing:
HTML Code:
<div style='min-height: 100%; background-color: orange; position: relative;'>
<div style='position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); background-color: white; padding: 20px; border-radius:7px;'>
some content
</div>
</div>
You'll be putting the above inside the Comment shown in the php even higher up, where it says " Only visitors will be able to see this!! " -- in case you were wondering, yes, it still needs to be surrounded by quotes. When writing html inside this space, be sure to only use single quotes ( ' ) and not double quotes ( " ).
Also, for this trick to work you'll need some additional css. Make sure your stylesheet's css contains a rule that sets the height of the body/html to 100%:
Code:
body, html { height: 100%; }
You can see an example of the html I quickly put together
at this link.
I would be sure to include a way for you to log in in case you get yourself logged out. It'd be the "/login" page, of course! Or, if you can just remember that, you should have no problems.