I am interested to know if EE can do the following:

With Multiple support on one domain does it allow teachers to have there own “site” in a folder under a EE instance:
www.domain.com/joedoe
www.domain.com/jandoe

Basically each teacher would have there own site to manage under a sub folder of domain. They would be able to login and only have access to change the content in there folder.

Hello rusty.richards,

Welcome to the ExpressionEngine forums! We are glad to have you.

Yes, this is one of the areas where ExpressionEngine really shines!

Each teacher can have their own “site” which can be located at www.domain.com/teachername. From a technical aspect, it’s not a sub folder, but from a conceptual stand point you can think of it that way.

Utilizing groups and permissions, you can then restrict each teacher’s access to just their own “site”.

I hope this helps, if you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to ask!

Cheers,

So because its not another domain I would only have to buy 1 licencee of EE and 1 - 3 pack of Multi-sites?

Hi Rusty,

In the example Shane makes, you wouldn’t need MSM to do this.

Think of each teacher’s site as a collection of data. ExpressionEngine can present each teacher’s data collection because that data can be attached to the teacher as its “author”.

You can further restrict access for editing or viewing based on who the author is, or who the logged in user is.

You can also allow this retracted access completely outside of the administrative Control Panel of ExpressionEngine. Your teachers would never have to see the backend of the site.

Cheers!

Would they be able to create pages under there folder?

www.domain.com/joedoe/homework
www.domain.com/joedoe/contact

Also what about design? Could they all have different designs?

Hi Rusty,

Indeed, that is all possible. ExpressionEngine uses templates to display data, and those templates can be designed and assigned however you like.

ExpressionEngine knows what data to retrieve by looking in the URL. You can use the URL to tell EE exactly what to content to retrieve.

The specifics of implementation are completely up to you! If you need assistance from ExpressionEngine experts on how to accomplish this, feel free to browse the Pro Network for a knowledgable consultant.

Cheers!

Hi Rusty,

ExpressionEngine can work with URLs up to 9 segments long, so the structure you are proposing is definitely possible and there are a number of ways it can be achieved.  A starting point would be the basic “template group/template” structure, which in your case would be something like www.domain.com/johndoe/contact and then using categories or other URL segment variables to achieve the desired outcome.

EE also includes the Pages module that can give you even more granular control over the URL structure for “static” type pages that need a specific URL, and there are also great third-party add-ons such as Structure that can help you with this too.

As for the design question, one of the great strengths of EE is that it makes no assumptions when it comes to design.  Every page of your site could have a different design if you so desired. Something to keep in mind though is that these designs are not like “themes” as you would find in Wordpress that can be switched instantly.  Instead EE uses standard HTML/CSS combined with its own tags to insert dynamic content from the database.

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the help!

Cheers!