Greetings everyone,

I have been researching various CMS and/or blog systems lately for some future projects.  My main goal is to find a search-engine friendly CMS system with the capabilities of a blog.  Most blog solutions are too “bloggy” and many CMS solutions create convoluted code.  Right now it looks like Expression Engine may be the perfect solution; it is extremely robust and sites like ilounge.com really appear more like an online magazine than a blog (which is exactly my goal).  I do have a couple questions that I’m hoping you might be able to help me with.

One of our potential projects is the creation of a community site that will embrace a wide spread of interests and hobbies.  The closest and most accurate comparison I could make is that this site will be similar to a blog network, whereby an assortment of varied blogs will be routed through a central hub.  The main difference is I do NOT want multiple domains or installations - this should be one community with a shared membership database.

An example of I’d like to achieve is here:  http://www.aboutweblogs.com/.  That’s a blog network that features multiple blogs on various topics.  If you click on some of the blogs in the network listed in the right column you’ll notice that each blog is a subdirectory of the main site, and each blog contains its own unique appearance.

I know that EE allows for the creation of unlimited weblogs/site sections, which would work perfectly since I want one installation/database to control all the blogs.  Can each of these blogs also possess their own unique templates like the example above?  All the blogs will share the same membership database, but it’s important to me that each topic has its own unique template.

Since this will be more than just a blog network I will likely install forums for the subdirectories/topics that prove to be popular, and I’d like to use the EE forum module for this.  Since the topics would run a wide spread (i.e., one might be horses, another might be cars), each popular topic should have its own forum so as not to be a convoluted mess.  Would multiple forum module installations be a problem when attached to a single EE domain/installation?

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.

Jeffrey

Can each of these blogs also possess their own unique templates like the example above?

Certainly.  In EE terms, the most likely route you would take for this would be to create a separate “Template Group” for each ‘area’ of the site you want separate.  You could then have whatever Templates within that Template Group that you like.  (Remember, a “Template” in EE is basically analogous to a page or file and a “Template Group” is similar to a directory or folder.  Some systems use the term “Template” to refer to a theme or the look/style of a site; that isn’t the case in EE.)

Would multiple forum module installations be a problem when attached to a single EE domain/installation?

EE and the Discussion Forums module aren’t intended for multiple separate forum installations on the same EE installation.  You can, of course, set up separate individual forums or categories of forums (for example, on the pMachine.com forums, several EE-related forums are in a separate category from the pM Pro-related forums).

If we really wanted to separate the forums (have two or more) would it be possible to do this will minimal hacking?

It looks like we’re thinking in the same direction with our sites. I’m still in the phase of developing a businessmodel, so I haven’t installed/bought EE yet. Nevertheless I do have some experience with pMachine and I am looking in to EE’s possibilities.

The solution I came up with is this:
It seems to be possible to have multiple categories with multiple sub-forums. For each “weblog” I could make a categorie with a number of specific weblogs. Let’s say “Animals” which include the subforums “dogs”, “cats”, “horses”. From all the weblogs that are related to animals or one specific animal I would make a link to the forum-category “Animals”.

This way the user is directed to a specific forum he/she is interested in, but because of the ‘breadcrumbs’ he is able to surf to all categories as well.

This solution would work for me. BUT… i just noticed that there isn’t a link available for forum-categories. Maybe a question for the staff of EE: is it possible to create such a link? A real live example: can you create a link to “Announcements and Intros” from the EE-forums?
I know phpBB has this possibilitie, so if it’s not yet available can we make this a “Feature request”?

I’m a little fuzzy on what you’re trying to do.  However- re: can you link/display just a specific forum category?  Is this what you mean - http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewcategory/1/?  It’s a link to the Announcements & Intros forum- same as you’d get from the breadcrumb.  It just shows all the forums in that category.

Would that do the trick for what you want?

ETA- I really can format a proper link!

I ended up abandoning the idea and split the site into multiple domain names.  It wasn’t the ideal solution, but the physical divide was paramount.  It is the “Forum Home” that is the problem.  “Forum Home” signifies that all the forums are in a single tree and some of us need multiple trees.  Sharing a single member database would have been cool (and ideal), but we sacrified that to get the division we needed.

Ah- that does make sense.  I’ll admit- I was a bit lost.  As evidence by my lack of ability to post a link that I just noticed in my above reply.

Sigh.  Need more caffeine!

rob1 - 29 November 2005 08:22 AM

I’m a little fuzzy on what you’re trying to do.  However- re: can you link/display just a specific forum category?  Is this what you mean - http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewcategory/1/?  It’s a link to the Announcements & Intros forum- same as you’d get from the breadcrumb.  It just shows all the forums in that category.

Would that do the trick for what you want?

ETA- I really can format a proper link!

This would actually do the trick for me. I didn’t know it was possible in EE. In phpbb the forum-categories are hyperlinks, I didn’t see that in EE. Must have replied too soon… I should have known that EE would be able to do this as well. Thanx!

(sorry for my horrible english)