Hi all,

First I think and hope that EE will provide the foundation I need for creating and maintaining a successfull dynamic and interactive website.  Now here’s what I’m attempting to do and trying to come up with a viable solution.  I am hoping to get some insight from the experts.  Here goes:

I am going to have a site that has multiple “sub sites” with varying features and functionality.  My thoughts are to have the main site with the usual content and feature and then have several template groups which will contain my various “private sites.”  From this I will have a member group associated with each of these sub sites from which I will check member rights.  If they are group members, if not, they get a message page denying access and then get redirected back to the main site.  The main site menu will check members rights and create the menu links on the fly for places they are allowed to access.  This is the general theory I am using and I think EE fits in nicely.  Any comments?

Now I’m having a couple of problems here:
css switcher:  I have a css switcher that I want to use on several of the sub sites.  Currently the css are not in the template groups yet and I am unsure of how to create some sort of library for the css switching stuff that I can just add in to any of the templates in any of the template groups that I create.  Is there a way to do this gracefully?  If so, how?  If not, what’s the best approach to acheive what I want?

urls: I know this is simple but I’m new to EE and I don’t quite fully understand how they work.  On my menu I need to add various links to other templates.  Do these links need to use the following format:
http://www.mysite.com/index.php/templategroup1/template1/  ?
If so I have tried that but it doesn’t seem to be operating properly.  The template never shows up.

Thank you in advance, I know this is alot to digest.  I’ll work on keeping my future posts shorter if possible.

Thanks!
Dan

I asked some what similar to all this We both are in the same boat!

Also,  When editing templates and pressing the “View Rendered Template” button, I ALWAYS get a blank page.  So I must be doing something not quite right.  Any ideas?

Ok, you can certainly have links that are shown to only specific member groups, but I’m not sure about creating these “on the fly”.  That might take some php work. =)

With the CSS switcher you could make a template group called “css” and put all your designs in there.  Then just use the css calls for them, like this:

<link rel=‘stylesheet’ type=‘text/css’ media=‘all’ href=’{stylesheet=css/weblog_css}’ title=“domination” />
<link rel=‘alternate stylesheet’ type=‘text/css’ media=‘all’ href=’{stylesheet=css/dem_css}’ title=“dem” />

for the URL - yes, that’s right.  I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work - I’d need a lot more details such as what’s the template group, what’s the template name (case sensitivity at nd all) what’s the URL to the site, whats in the template, etc.

D_Wiillis, the last paragraph also pertains to you.  If you’re having problems with this though, so that we can keep this clean, organized and on-topic, it might be best for you to submit a post in the technical forum detailing all that information. =)

D_Willis, without seeing what you have in your templates, it’s hard to troubleshoot them.

Occasionally, a blank template is caused by missing tags.

If you create a test template with the words “Testing” in it with nothing else, does that work?

As far as links go, here’s a real world example:

<div class=“menu”>
<a href=“http://www.orangecountyaccidentlawyers.com/”>Home<br></a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}carprocess/”>Car Accident<br />Legal Process<br />Explained</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}free/”>Free Consultation</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}appointment/”>How Do I Schedule An Appointment?</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}faq/”>Firm FAQ</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}testimonials/”>Testimonials</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}aboutme/”>Meet Maurice</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}confstatement/”>Confidentiality Statement</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}contactus/”>Contact Us</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}important/”>Important Information</a>
<a href=”{oclaw_base}terms/”>Terms of Use</a>
</div>

I have a global variable called {oclaw_base} that has in it:

http://www.orangecountyaccidentlawyers.com/index.php/oclaw/

oclaw is my template group, and faq, aboutme, terms, etc. are all templates off of oclaw.

I create a single entry for each of these “pages”, (except for the faq) and hard code in the entry_id.

<? $title = “About Maurice”;
    $entry_id = 9;
    $weblog = “oclaw”;

?>

About Maurice

The menu listed above is in a templategroup/template called oclaw/leftnav.

With the newer version of EE, I wouldn’t have to use the php code listed at the top of this entry.

Does that help at all?

Thanks for the prompt reply.  I’m looking into the links a little more and if necessary, I’ll post in the technical forum.

Ok, you can certainly have links that are shown to only specific member groups, but I’m not sure about creating these “on the fly”. That might take some php work. =)

What I found is that I created a template called “menu” and embedded it in all my other templates.  In that template I have my menu list, but what I do is this:

This works pretty well I found.  I’ll take a stab at the css switcher now and see how it works out.  I’ll keep you posted.  I also need to remember the last selected stylesheet so it might get a little complicated, but we’ll see.  One thing at a time.

Thanks!

That’s what I do, D_Willist, with several different embeds.  But I don’t call that on the fly, I call that hardcoded if statements with links in them *grins*  That’s why I was a bit confused by that.

Ok, I got the url stuff all sorts of messed up.  LOL.  EE is running on Win 2k3 server.  I think I need to use the FORCE Query Strings.  Am I correct in this observation?  If so, I thought I could enable it in the admin panel under Output Prefrences, but when I turn on the Force query strings It never updates the option, meaning that it looks like Force query never gets turned on.

I’m working with Paul’s css switcher trying to get all my skins up and running properly and being able to switch between them all on the fly, but I just can’t seem to get it to work.

Any suggestions?

Figured you were on a Windows server. You’ll either need to modify the config.php file manually, or set the permissions on the server. I found it easier to just edit the config.php file by hand.

For the CSS switching, have you looked at the existing CSS Switcher Plugin?

As for the URL structure, you might want to check out this entry in the Knowledge-Blog.

For the CSS switching, have you looked at the existing CSS Switcher Plugin?

Yup, been reading intently.  LOL.  the more I look though the more it might be the url issues I’m having.  We’ll see what happens now.

As for the URL structure, you might want to check out this entry in the Knowledge-Blog.

I didn’t see this before.  very good read.  I changed the config.php to force the query paths, and now the template preview is working.  I also began changing around my urls and they are slowly beginning to work.

Ok,  Looking deeper I think I finally have the url stuff understood.  I also believe I have the problem discovered with the CSS switcher.  I think the problem lies in the links I have for it because I have all my CSS stuff in a template group called css.  as a result to properly display the css I must use the method Lisa posted earlier.

The {stylesheet=css/weblog_css} is what is causing the errors.  I just need to figure out what the proper string structure needs to be for it to function properly.