How do I get Drupal to use my themes page.tpl.php template for the front page? I'm writing a new Drupal theme. I have a html.tpl.php and a page.tpl.php (soon to add a set of node.tpl.php's for each different content type). I want my page.tpl.php to be used for every page, including the front page &mdash; every page is going to have exactly the same layout, so I don't need a page-front.tpl.php.

When I visit www.example.com/node/whatever, my page.tpl.php is applied.

When I visit www.example.com (the front page), my page.tpl.php is completely ignored &mdash; I'm assuming that Drupal is looking for page--front.tpl.php, not finding it, and then ignoring my page.tpl.php.

How do I get Drupal to use my themes page.tpl.php template for the front page?

edit:

Apparently my front page isn't even being counted as a node?!? The below code will die on any page except for the front page:

function cefmap_preprocess_page(&amp;$vars, $hook) {
    if (isset($vars['node'])) {
        die;
    }
}


How do I get my front page to be treated as a node like any other node?

edit:

Think I've worked this out, and it's really dumb of me. I set that node to "be the front page" through structure, menus, main menu and then set the path for the link to be "&lt;front&gt;".

Of course, that just changes the link in the menu to be "/", without changing the actual path of the node. So I don't actually have a node at "/", and so I don't get to have a page template or a node template applied.
It is page--front.tpl.php - note the double dashes. 

The cascading matches my understanding. page.tpl.php should be called if there are no higher priority page templates. You need devel themer to work this out http://drupal.org/project/devel_themer. It will print out on the screen the template matches.

Details are in the drupal theming guide. in this section:

page--[front|internal/path].tpl.php 
base template: page.tpl.php