This questions is a little theory, but really important for me none the less.  I’m creating a sort of news-reviews web site for a local not-for-profit and was wondering what would be the best way to set up my categories/templates.  The site has 5 or so major sections that will each have their own sub navigation.  In my past, using Movable Type, I would have created an index.php template and then five categories using a “sub-page” template.  Then any entry assigned to the homepage category would use the homepage template, and any entry assigned to another category would use the sub-page category.  The nice thing about the Movable Type method is I could archive based on category and get really nice URL’s that only showed “http://domain.com/category/entry/index.html”.

My problem is that I can’t seem to get this to work with Expression Engine.  So here’s my question: what would be the best way to organize my categories and achieve a different home/sub page?  Is there any way to get a truly friendly url, without “site” or “index.php” preceding everything?

Thanks, I am loving EE so far, but I just can’t get my mind around their templating.  It’s something about the “template groups” having to be in the URL that bothers me I guess.

- Mark

You could set up a separate template group for each category and in the weblog entries tag, pull up that specific category only.

For example if you have a main category called “News” which is category id #105, then create a template group called “news” and on the index template, call only category=“105”.

You could also use one template and have it load alternate CSS or act differently based on the segment info, but that would be considerably more difficult to put together.

Update:  As far as the site naming, the index.php can be renamed.  I prefer sites that do this, myself, since I think “index.php” preceding everything is ugly.

I’ve renamed my index.php to “x” so my site urls look like: domain.com/x/template_group/

There’s no easy way of getting around the index page (renamed or not) having to be part of the URL since that’s how EE pulls all its info. 

Basically you can just make it look better by renaming the index page.

Judging based off what you said, I think I’d personally go with different weblogs with their own subcategories. Have you read the wiki entry on categories vs weblogs?

Also, have a look at the recommended method for removing index.php.  Lots of people use it with a great deal of success.

i haven’t read the entry on “categroies vs. weblogs” do you know the url?

eewiki: Category or Weblog.

I know this is an old post, but that link doesn’t work.  What’s the correct link?

http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Category_or_Weblog, of course.