Jan 10
Designer meets brand new CMS
2005 at 02.49 am posted by Veerle
A few months ago my first Expression Engine project* was born (update: at this moment the site is not available anymore). Looking back at it I can tell this was another challenge for me. This was actually the first dynamic business website I’ve built entirely by myself.
Scary stuff if you're just a designer and not a programmer. You see, I've always been eager to create a website powered by Expression Engine, but I thought I give it some time first and create something for myself to see how it goes, just to be on the safe side. But suddenly this opportunity came along and I thought, why not, what can go wrong? Well... not getting the job done properly? Or... unable to meet the client's deadline? Getting stuck on a problem?...
Building the template
And so I started on this project with big courage. Once the logo and the design was approved the next step for me was to convert my layout into an XHTML/CSS template. The few months of struggling with this standard code started to reward itself, I dealt with some of the pitfalls like it was almost my usual routine. The more experienced you've become, the better insight you get and less frustrated.
First brave steps
Implementing my templates into Expression Engine was pretty doable. In the beginning I was a bit confused since the approach is totally different from pMachine. There is no comparison between the 2. Expression Engine is very flexible, you have your website and you decide what should be dynamic and how. It basically comes down to implementing dynamic EE tags into templates. The tags will then pull the content out of the database and format it. These tags have many options allowing you a great deal of flexibility in how you want to show your content.
First I read parts of the user guide just to understand the basics of how EE works to get me started. Some basic tutorials can be found here. Although I must say I was more interested in the 'Converting a website' part which is unfortunately still under development.
Categories or multiple weblogs?
Secondly I got stuck on a basic question that is the most fundamental one to tackle: Should I use categories or multiple weblogs? My project consisted of a two level navigation. Each main section has a totally different content, so I thought that using one weblog for each section will give me the flexibility I need. Narrowing it down to only one could get me stuck. It's fundamental to analyze the situation well enough to make sure you made the right decision. Once this decision was made I started creating the different weblogs (which are the main sections) and the different categories (for the subsections). In the mean time I also analyzed my layout. Header, left, right and the 'related links' part were used as a nested template. If changes needed to be done there, modifying that single template is enough.
EE Forum and Photo Gallery
A surplus I really want to mention is that the people from pMachine are very helpful. If you got stuck on something and you post it on the forum, you'll always get a very quick response. Since my project, EE has reached another milestone. A lot of new advanced features have been added to the system. One of those being the Expression Engine Photo Gallery. The EE Photo Gallery supports advanced features like image watermarking, cropping, resizing, rotation, thumbnailing, nested categories, batch importing, multiple galleries, and more. You can even email your photos to the gallery.
CollyLogic is weblog that uses Expression Engine. He recently revised his photo library and implemented EE Photo Gallery module. Simon wrote an article about it that's worthwhile reading. Another blogger that recently dived into EE is Marc Boulton and he had this to say:
Expression Engine surpassed my expectations in almost every way. It's an extremely quick platform on which to develop and it's 'out-of-the-box' functionality is second-to-none.
Conclusion
Looking back know I realized that most of the time-consuming work went into the Flash part of the project and not in implementing the CMS, especially the drawing and animation of the thinker/logo in the top left corner. Of course if you consider the reading, learning and researching it might not, but then again this was my first project. Once I started to get the hang of it I was more and more convinced of the power of EE. EE might not be as well known as Movable Type but it sure is worth checking out. Think out of the blog box, it's much more powerful then that.
*This article is written only to express my experience on Expression Engine. It's not about the content or subject of this website. So the last thing I want is to start some discussion about intellectual property rights etc. So thank you for respecting this and for staying on the subject of EE or design matters.
UPDATE: the site is not available anymore.
26served
1
I really, really like Expression Engine, and that photo gallery feature looks brilliant! But my biggest problem with EE is that it’s not GPL’ed.
But I’m not judging them for that.
But I would love to see the gallery functionality in a Wordpress plug-in ;)
2
Another wordpress fan here. I think there are some gallery plugins but I don’t know how well they work though.
For me the gpl is important. The amount of things I can do with it (modify and customize the code, in WP I write my own plugins), who is behind the project, how it is developing, the support/user base etc.
3
Hi Veerle,
like i wrote earlier as a comment on the de-lurking post, your Blog inspired me to completely redesign & rework my own. i was also intrigued by EE, but since i’m a designer (not even a webdesigner, i do not know that much about xhtml etc), i did not make the switch, but stayed with Blogger, which is easy, but basic. i would definitely like to have a photoBlog, so i’m intrigued by the EE Photo Gallery. that’s why i really appreciate posts like this one. is there a possibility in writing an EE tutorial ?
THX, gMax.
4
@Koen: I think I have tried every single gallery plug-in for WP, but they usually don’t come close to the functionality offered by stand-alone gallery scripts. My favorite gallery system by far is 4images. But - as with many gallery-scripts - it’s almost impossible to have it output semantic mark-up (wthout hacking the core system, which I don’t want to do, because it makes upgrading a b*tch). Tables everywhere :(
@Veerle: Sorry for the offtopic-comment :)
5
Delighted you’ve taken the plunge!
I’ve never looked back. I loved pMachine, but EE is incredible. Event today, I’ve just built a ridiculously complex if/else-based set of photo galleries for a new site, which should’ve taken ages, but a few of EE’s ‘if’ tags based on URL segment conditionals and all is well!
C’mon everyone - ditch MT!
6
Thanks for the insight to EE Veerle…
I am a pMachine user as well, and have often wondered if it would be worth upgrading to EE. I have recently purchased a Nikon D70, and have been taking a lot of pictures that I’d like to share, but there’s no clean way (at least not that I’ve found) to impliment a gallery into pMachine. The Gallery option in EE looks intriguing.
Have you thought about moving this site to EE?
7
Shad - The Gallery module for EE is worth the price alone! If you’ve been running MT for six months or more you can buy EE for $99 (which isn’t that much when you consider the functionality)
As Colly said - Come on, ditch MT!
8
I love the dropdown navigation you made on this project. Any chance you will do a tutorial?
9
@Rogier and Koen: Maybe it’s me but I don’t see the trouble in EE not being GPL. You can modify everything to your liking but you’re not allowed to redistribute the modified EE. Personally I don’t see any benefit in doing that. The people of pMachine are trying to run a business and believe me $99 is a sweet deal for such a powerful tool.
@Silversurfer: For me it’s to early to write a tutorial about EE. I am only just discovering what EE is all about. But once I got the hang of it a tutorial is on my possible posts list.
@Colly: I’m glad too because I love working in EE, it’s such a different tool then pMachine. If I have similar projects in the future EE will be my tool of choice.
@Shad: yes I’ll move my blog to EE eventually but first our business site needs an urgent update. That project has been dragging on for almost a year now. Maybe you know how it is, clients always come first etc.
@Marc Boulton: Thanks for dropping by and congratz on the beautiful result of bringing your blog over to EE. It has a certain tranquility ;-)
@Jared Christensen: I’ll look into that and keep it in mind.
10
Hi - I came to this site originally because it was a pM site, which i was just starting to use. I learned form Veerle and others. I soon had my first simple pM site up. Dead easy. Then I wanted to do multiple “weblogs’ or different sections so I moved up to pM pro, and again the experience was easy. I agree with Veerle; the fellows at pM are super at providing responses to the forum postings! I have three licenses for pM. That is how much I like their product! They are worth the price of admission. But more to the point: for some time now I have been wanting to A) move one of my existing pM to EE, and B) wanting to start a new project in EE. This latter I will do soon now that Veerle has inspired us with her new project. As to moving an existing pM site to EE: anyone here have a tutorial/insights on how to proceed… Colly any tips you can share? Thx to all!
11
I know exactly what you’ve gone through Veerle; I too had started with blogs (wordpress/textpattern, both still in beta) to hold sites together, but needed something a lot more flexible for the next site.
I first tried Mambo, hacked right through it, but then I found out it wasn’t flexibel enough at all and really quite limited in a lot of basic things. I’m on Xaraya now. I now know it’ll be flexible enough, but that also makes it quite a bit harder.
However, once the first template is done it all becomes a lot easier & logical.
12
i missed your de-lurking day so consider me de-lurked for the moment.
i use ee on my blog and i adore it. i think initially it can be a touch overwhelming but once you just buckle down and can wrap your head around it all - you realize what a powerful tool it actually is and in my humble opinion - a lot easier to configure than movabletype.
13
Wow! i’m so happy to see other web designers working with EE!!
EE is an amazing tool that allows the designer to just focus on the design, by setting up all the templates and then let the client deal with the content. and the best part is is that the content management side of it is easy enough for the non-web guy to run without the ever so frequent call for help.
I can’t wait for the e-commerce plug-in for EE!!
14
Very interesting Veerle. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
I’m lookig for a cms with flexibility to do whole sites. EE sounds very promising. Are they really going to do an e-commerce module? That would be wonderful.
15
@Marilyn: Yes it is true an e-commerce module is on its way. According to this post the module is planned for this Spring. But remember with software release dates it often takes longer ;-)
16
Thanks Veerle for posting your EE experience. I’m still torn between pMachinepro, textpattern and wordpress. All have their strength and weaknesses. But it’s nice to hear you don’t have to be a PHP-monster to build a site with EE.
17
Hi, it;s always inspiring to read your blog. Make me want to redesign my own :). I’m using pMachine Free. Still don’t look into it so deep. Now I’m consider about the spam on my site. Still don’t have any idea how to make a preview before someone post a comment.
I think pMachine is a powerfull blog tool and also CMS. But after read your experience, I think EE is more powerfull :). But I’ll give it a try someday.
18
Hi again Veerle,
I did a search on the web and I couldnt find (or didnt know what to look for:)) any ifo how to do that little thinker logo(of my own) to appear as a logo (instead of stupid “E"xplorer) when someone adds a page to favorites, or just when someone opens my page for viewing.
Any help would be greately apretiated. Thanks!
19
By the way Veerle, you are very pretty…
Please excuse my farwardness.
:)
20
Veerle, perhaps an awkward question, but why did this client move to another developer so fast?
I really liked what you did with the site and EE…
Care to comment?
P.S. you have my e-mail so mail me off-list if you’d rather do that.
21
@Lauras thx 8-)
@e-man, EICTA, the organization behind Patents4innovation is not my direct client, the agency that handles the project is, and they are no longer in charge now. EICTA decided to work with another agency. I don’t know any details why. Now I have to work with that new agency. Apparently EICTA asked them certain specific requests (also design wise) where I have no saying in :-( One thing is for sure they totally ignore the new style I have built so far including the logo. I have no real idea why, as far as I know they even have promotional material with the logo on (like coffee mugs) so it is a bit of a waste also it looks much more dull now without the Flashes. Also it’s less stylish (IMHO) with the (ugly) blue colors… the pictures of the people look oversaturated (most faces/skin color look orange on my screen!)… there are also some layout errors (at least on Mac) here and there etc. And most of all… all standard XHTML/CSS code is ignored, so the site doesn’t validate on W3C anymore, old school tables layout code etc. :-(
22
patents4innovation is an evil site. darkest power operating in the most corrupt places… dont work for them…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICTA
23
DSF may uncovered something:
update: patents4innovation are now defunct.
24
How easy is it to pick EE up if youve had no experience of even blogging software and limited knowledge of php, etc?
I noted that someone mentioned he’d rather start on something he’s likely to stick with - rather than try one and move on to another… I’m of the same mind which is probably why I am yet to take the plunge.
To me there seems to be certain types that choose certain systems and I’m mindful of choosing the wrong one
25
Finbarr said:
I think it’s pretty doable if you are used to creating CSS based webpages and if you understand the basic concepts on how a dynamic website works. EE works like this: you have your static pages, all designed the way you want them to look and then you make them EE templates and turn the static parts of the page into dynamic ones using EE tags. These tags are a bit getting used to but you can look at/learn from the basic templates that come with EE. Most features are there and you can copy a lot from those templates. Most things are all explained in the manual as well. So, yes there is a learning curve, but it’s doable if you have a bit of an insight in this kind of stuff. And if you’re really stuck, than there is the pMachine forum which is very helpful. You see, I’m no programmer and yet I’ve been able to implement my blog in a reasonable short time. I have never tried another blog system before, except for pMachine Pro, which works differently. I’m planning on sticking with EE, I’m happy with it, I see no point in trying some other system.
26
thanks Veerle,
I realised just after I’d posted that I was kind of digging up an old thread!!
EE as it happens is the forerunner now… Ive spoken to pmachine and they were more than helpful