Change the Welcome Page in Publishing template of SharePoint

To change the welcome page of a SharePoint site based on the publishing template to a custom aspx page,

1. Place your aspx page in the _layouts folder of the 12 hive of SharePoint
2. Navigate to the Site Settings page from the Site Actions menu of your site
3. Under the Look and feel section, click on the welcome page option
4. Type the url of the custom welcome page in the _layouts folder
5. Click ok