I think I am about ready to buy Expression Engine, but I do have one last question about templates. 

I am a member of Cincinnati’s Independent Media Network, and I am trying to establish a web space for a collaborative effort between local political bloggers and non-professional, non-corporate journalists.

I do not want the site to look like a blog, with a chronological stack of entries.  Instead, I imagine “blocks” (for lack of a better word) defined by category.  So, for example, near the top would be “Headlines.”  Then, maybe below that, in smaller, side-by-side blocks, could be different categories — like “Local Politics,” and “Media.”

Each block would feature the headline and description of the most recent addition to the category.  The bottom would feature links to the past three or four entries in that category, with a link to the archive.  Each article would have commenting, and a comment count on the front page.

That is my vision anyway, to push for more non-corporate, independent news perspectives in my Midwestern hometown.

The problem?  All of us do this for free, and we are broke and not too tech savvy with designing this stuff.

So my question:  Does anyone out there have a news or magazine template of this sort they would be willing to share, to help us Cincinnati folk start our media revolution?

Thanks!

ExpressionEngine can certainly be used for this, without any problems.  However, as far as I’m aware, there are no templates that accomplish this - you have some pretty specific goals.  There are sites that probably display information the way you want, but they are designed within the organization. =)

I don’t know how many people read this forum compared to the General Discussion forums  I think there would be someone willing to provide a simple newspaper or ezine template to get you going.  I have always been puzzled that most of the templates in the template library are blog based.  I think a lot of people thinking of EE would benefit if there were a greater variety of templates—- i.e. ezines, newspapers, etc.

Good luck, Dean.  Cool ideas.  I hope someone steps up to help.

What does “within the organization =)” mean?

In house, as in they have their own designers build the sites - they aren’t publicly available templates. =)

Really, you’ve got two things going on.  Making it functional and making it pretty.  With the help of the forum, we should be able to get you squared away on the functional bits.  That’s figuring out how you want to structure things- should different sections be weblogs or categories or ‘static’ pages (and how to handle those).  How to work access levels into the whole thing.

Part of that will come with just playing around with the software for a little bit.  Also- lay out the way you want the site to work on paper if it helps.  The different pages you expect to have, the navigation.  You can handle that- you just need to dive in and get a feel- and ask questions.  Folks will help out.

The other end of things is ‘making it pretty’- and if you don’t have the time/inclination/expertise to diys, and you don’t have the money to hire it done, surf around for free/cheap templates.  Someone posted a link to http://www.oswd.org/ the other day, and I’ve been surfing through checking out the designs.  Really nice stuff- and it’s all open source.

Anyway- expect a bit of a learning curve, but EE will be a good fit for your project.  Play with the trial, make sure you have a clear vision of how things should work, and ask questions when you need to.  It should be doable, even on a budget.

The problem with pre-made newspaper-type templates (which I found out the hard way) is that there needs to be too much customization.

Most of the ready-made EE templates are made with the default installation if EE in mind.  The default installation consists of one weblog, one category group with 3 categories, and one template group.

I started working on a template (which is almost done) that I plan to release, trying not to make it too “bloggy”, but in the end, it still looks like a normal blog because everything non-blog I wanted to do with it would require users to setup multiple blogs and custom fields.  I also found that because of the default paths for comments, trackbacks, etc when first installing EE, I couldn’t even use the template structure I wanted to.  I wanted to use a template called “entry” instead of “comments” for the main permalink page with a separate “comments” template for comments only.  This, of course, worked fine and dandy at first glance…until I tracked back something…because the default path to trackbacks was weblog/comments.  So any trackbacks from that site were linking to the comments template.

When putting this template together, I had to weigh whether it would be easier to have it work with any default EE install, or to specify that the user must setup X blogs, X category groups, change X paths for each weblog, etc., etc., etc.  Guess which one won out? 

Someone posted a link to http://www.oswd.org/ the other day, and I’ve been surfing through checking out the designs.  Really nice stuff- and it’s all open source.

Be a little careful, I looked at about half those designs and found more than a few weren’t cross-browser compatible (broken in Safari and Firefox).

Yea- I spotted a couple of broken ones off the bat- but I liked Andreas’ stuff - I think I’m going to try his number 7 out.  I want to get an EE/Tech site up and I stink at design.  Be a quick and dirty way to get something up.  Another one I really liked was Fractal 1 over on http://openwebdesign.org/.  I’m not so into orange, but I just really liked the look of it.

Neither is really what The Dean is looking for, but I spotted a couple that might do.  Worth browsing, anyway.  Well, for folks like me who stink at design!

http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2334
http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2296
http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2272
http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2199

A few of my suggestions there are thousands on there and I didnt go through all of them but those are the ones I feel are good for your cause.

I thought i would post this before I left town for the day, http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/28940/ its a template I started making that I thought you would like, i just started it when I read this thread about how you were lookin for a good template, its going to be finished tonight, Ill log into my computers at the office and download it to my computers at home and finish it for you

Have a nice day and hope you like it.

I am definately going to buy EE—these forums are great!  I really appreciate all the support!  I look forward to seeing your final design, iNet-Logic!