This article attempts to maintain a balance between user friendlyness and keeping to the line of a sane development pattern.

There is a point of automatizing and improving administration of repetitive content (like news articles, profiles, front page rotating banner images) , but to wire each spot on the landing page to a control in the admin panel is a waste of resources IMHO.

If you have a picture, a heading 1, a heading 2 , a green text and a larger red text, it's quite unlikely that the customer should ever need to change those from the admin panel from a control page with a
'Front Page Picture' control section
'Front Page Heading' control
'Front Page' Red text

etc... you get the idea

Rather than that, sooner or later the said customer will feel the urge to completely change the looks on his landing page. One approach would be to add font color controls for each element. And perhaps positioning controls. Where would this end?

For a total change of the front page that would require 1h of work you would spend hours trying to implement unneeded controls for each element. Something that can be accomplished with a few line of codes by a professional...