So…just curious. Did you look at the link I posted to the “Building an ExpressionEngine Site” series on my blog, or is it not what you were looking for?
I’m really trying to put out content that will help people get familiar with EE, so am always looking for feedback on what I’ve done so far.
Hi Michael,
I located your blog and will be reading through it. It looks very helpful, though I am not sure it goes as in-depth into the relational handling (relationship feature) as I might need. However, I have just gone through it very quickly, and will give it a detail read today.
Thanks Sue and Michael for the links. I will be working through the information today and tomorrow. I am sure that once I sit down and begin working on examples, the capabilities and limitations of weblog relationship definition will become more clear. However, it is obvious that the capability is very powerful and missing from most of the CMSs that I have looked at so far.
Building an ExpressionEngine Site - Small Business on Boyink.com. In addition to the category page there are links at the bottom of each post to the previous and next posts in the series. Commenting here is open.
Well, this part is exactly what I don’t get -
part of it is on site “A”, part on site “B”, part in a book “C” and so on. In order to find out about “A”, “B”, “C”,...,“Z”, you have to register on this forum and search threads or start your own thread. Or do Google. I mean whatever except going to a single source where I can find all of it.
I understand that you don’t have manpower, but someone has time to keep their own blogs about this topic. Why don’t you just co-operate and create one great resource?
So…just curious. Did you look at the link I posted to the “Building an ExpressionEngine Site” series on my blog, or is it not what you were looking for?
I’m really trying to put out content that will help people get familiar with EE, so am always looking for feedback on what I’ve done so far.
Hi Michael,
I located your blog and will be reading through it. It looks very helpful, though I am not sure it goes as in-depth into the relational handling (relationship feature) as I might need. However, I have just gone through it very quickly, and will give it a detail read today.
Thanks very much for your helpful blog.
Rich
As I stated previously - I didn’t cover relationships in the small business series as it was intended to be more of a beginner tutorial. Relationships come naturally to us ex-database guys but are a more advanced concept for those coming to EE from the more traditional designer/web developer roles.
Building an ExpressionEngine Site - Small Business on Boyink.com. In addition to the category page there are links at the bottom of each post to the previous and next posts in the series. Commenting here is open.
Well, this part is exactly what I don’t get -
part of it is on site “A”, part on site “B”, part in a book “C” and so on. In order to find out about “A”, “B”, “C”,...,“Z”, you have to register on this forum and search threads or start your own thread. Or do Google. I mean whatever except going to a single source where I can find all of it.
I understand that you don’t have manpower, but someone has time to keep their own blogs about this topic. Why don’t you just co-operate and create one great resource?
The small business series is entirely on Boyink.com. At the end I had a number of requests for it compiled into a book, so did that while keeping the blog series available for free. Between needing a place to offer the book and also wanting to offer additional EE training I needed a more focused site - so launched Train-ee.com. The church series - and any EE tutorials I write in the future - will be entirely on Train-ee.com.
Just to be clear - I’m a part-time employee of EllisLab and my role is to build a system/plan to test future versions of EE before release. I still run Boyink Interactive and now Train-ee on my own and the time I’ve spent writing the tutorials is completely on my own dime.
I understand your frustration - but for me it was entirely a question of the quickest way to get from point A to point B.
As I stated previously - I didn’t cover relationships in the small business series as it was intended to be more of a beginner tutorial. Relationships come naturally to us ex-database guys but are a more advanced concept for those coming to EE from the more traditional designer/web developer roles.
Understand entirely. Thanks again for all of your very helpful information.
I understand your frustration - but for me it was entirely a question of the quickest way to get from point A to point B.
Michael, thanks. I do appreciate that you do it. And I hope that I don’t sound like a jerk, ‘cause I am not. As I said, I really hoped (and still do) to find a simple and powerful CMS platform and laid my eye on EE but since I started trying to use it, I got frustrated - if I had more time or patience then I would be okay, I am a PHP/MySQL programmer originally even though I don’t do it too much lately, so I know EE is not a rocket science in the end of the day, and as originally posted my frustration is with documentation and lack of real life examples.
Anyway, if anyone could implement EE on one of my sites for a fair compensation then please let me know.
And I hope that I don’t sound like a jerk, ‘cause I am not.
Nope…not at all. And just know that I agree in the area of training and education there is a lot of room for improvement. For my part I had a window of time in which to get something out there, so hope in the end that the approach I’ve taken provides value rather than further muddying the waters.
magnitofon - 04 May 2008 09:56 AM
Anyway, if anyone could implement EE on one of my sites for a fair compensation then please let me know.
For this I’d recommend investigating using the EE Job Board.
Good luck with the project no matter which way you end up going with it.
I’d like to echo the sentiment of the original post. Learning EE has been, without doubt, the hardest computer-related self-education experience I’ve ever had - and I’ve been in IT since it was called DP. (Since 1973, to be exact.) And I don’t think it’s because it’s inherently more difficult than, say, IBM’s IMS and CICS way back when, or any of the countless PC programs/systems I’ve worked with in the last twenty years.
The problem, I think, is that EE has a particular way of dealing with things that’s inherently hard to grasp. I’ve read several posts that relate the “Aha!” moment when it all becomes clear. A month in, and I still haven’t had that moment. (I have had a few minor ahs.) The examples, the Boyink stuff (no offense intended), everything else I’ve read don’t really address this, and these past weeks have been trial and error extravaganzas. There’s no big picture document that explains where everything fits in. The template and tag sections of the manual are a start, but they don’t do say enough. (And that’s not where I would put such an explanation anyway.)
For instance, there’s stuff scattered around that tells how the template group and template name get into the URL, or the entry name for a single entry; but it kind of exists in a void. Similarly with related entries and reverse related entries. I read the user docs over and over to get them going, tried many things that didn’t work, finally succeeded, but I still don’t have them cemented in my head.
The docs themselves are okay, but I think they too could use improvement. For example (be gentle if I missed it) I looked all over for where you specify the number of listings per page when you paginate, before finally stumbling over it where the limit parameter is explained, and it says, “If you are using pagination then this will determine the number of entries shown per page.” (By the way, the link to pagination in that sentence doesn’t work.) Well, hell, I already knew about the limit parameter; why would I be looking there for that info?
Don’t get me wrong; I love EE and am eventually getting it to do everything I want it too. But it just seems like the learning process could have been easier if there were a good roadmap.
I agree that the documentation is a weak point with EE, but these forums have been invaluable with extremely fast turnaround time with spot-on responses. This thread does point out a place for improvement for EllisLab. I assume the documentation will be getting a big overhaul with the release of 2.0 of the software, so timing for this discussion might be perfect.
I think the more preconceived notions one has, or experience with other CMSs (enterprise/other), blogging tools, or databases, the more trouble one has grokking EE. I know it caused me major problems way back when. I basically gave up, returned a couple weeks later, zoned out previous knowledge and had it pretty much figured out by the end of the week. In a lot of cases I had been over-thinking everything.
I think the more preconceived notions one has, or experience with other CMSs (enterprise/other), blogging tools, or databases, the more trouble one has grokking EE. I know it caused me major problems way back when. I basically gave up, returned a couple weeks later, zoned out previous knowledge and had it pretty much figured out by the end of the week. In a lot of cases I had been over-thinking everything.
I’m absolutely not discounting what you’re saying ... but I’ve never worked with a CMS before and my experience with blogging tools is limited to a bit of exposure to Wordpress. And most of my database experience was back in the pre-PC days.
So it may well be that dumping your preconceived notions is a good, uh, notion for those who have them to dump. Good, sound advice from someone who’s been in that position.
But I came in with a knowledge of CMSs that was basically, you put all your stuff up there in a database and tell the system where you want it all to appear, and it magically happens. And the telling the system part has just been way harder than I expected it to be.
I remember when I first got the skeleton of my various entry listings and single-entry page working. I looked at the amount of code that was involved, and was impressed by how little there was. And depressed by how long it took me to figure it out. And then I went back and looked at the docs again and saw how the info was all there, but it wasn’t in a form that really helped me.
I know, there’s a ton of stuff in the forum and the wiki, and some of that stuff was invaluable to me. But I can’t even estimate how many hours I spent looking through those resources, trying to figure out which magic combination of keywords would give me the one forum entry or wiki article that would prove the key to my latest puzzle.
I just wonder if everyone who’s involved in documentation is too close to the product, and while they may do their best to come at it from a fresh recruit’s perspective, it’s just not happening.
Or maybe I’m an idiot. Maybe this stuff is a whole lot easier than I’m experiencing it as, and the fact that I’m a month and a half from being able to take money out of my retirement accounts without penalty means I just don’t pick stuff up as quickly as I used to.
So far I haven’t found any system that does that. Sure wish they would :-)
I looked at the amount of code that was involved, and was impressed by how little there was
The method I used (and still recommend) was looked at the base templates that were installed. Found there really weren’t that many tags, went to the docs, reviewed them one at a time, going back-n-forth to the templates changing things to see what happened with each change. One of the keys was figuring out that the URLs passed a lot of info.
I just wonder if everyone who’s involved in documentation is too close to the product
Not sure that’s it. I’ve often thought about how it could be rearranged but the more I know about the system the more the docs make sense or I find less daunting. I think there probably just needs to be some more unified “getting started” resources.
trying to figure out which magic combination of keywords would give me the one forum entry or wiki article that would prove the key to my latest puzzle
I feel your pain. I’ve never found searching the forums that worthwhile as everything returns just too many entries to weed through. If I hadn’t bookmarked a lot of threads I’d be lost. Searching the docs works well but not the forums.
Or maybe I’m an idiot.
I doubt that.
Maybe this stuff is a whole lot easier than I’m experiencing it as
Once the light bulb moment comes, it all does seem pretty simple, at least all the basics. But, over the time I’ve been in the forums I’ve seen some get it in as little as a day or two and others take a long time. I was somewhere in the middle. I’ve never discerned what the difference between us all is though. There is a magic moment though.
EE’s documentation (Knowledge Base and wiki) are a mess.
I am pretty new to EE too and have to agree on this point a 100%. I tryed to figure out a structure of those resouces (wiki, KB..) but really could not in reasonable time.
Coming originally from Textpattern and knowing WP + a homegrown CMS of a big client, my learningcurve is not that steep as it might be for a newbie on CMs in general. Still all those (blog)CMS are different and one has to get into them step by step. Michael Boyink´s tutorial was/is of great help to me. Thanks for that Mr. Boyink.
I did not dive deeply into EE yet but from my knowledge right now i would always advice people who mainly wanna blog using WP or TXP. For small company sites, TXP is really sufficient.
What surprises me often is that on all different CMS forums you can read: this is the greatest CMS on earth… That falsly implicates YOU need exactly this CMS.
Truth is, this is mainly written by people who do not know anyother ones. For different needs, there are different CMSs available. Each has it advantages and drawbacks. In the end, it boils down to: what do you really need.
I think the documentation is what sets EE apart from other CMS Frameworks such as ModX (and maybe silverstripe). ModX has a somewhat easier to handle backend than the current EE version. Furthermore, ModX seems to be very flexible and powerful aswell. However, it lacks a good documentation and support. I personally don’t care how powerful a framework can theoretically be if I have to guess how to use it. Most of ModX Tags, Snippets, etc isn’t documented (yet). EE however tries to offer a good documentation and they should continue doing so as this is one of the reasons whay ppl keep buying EE.
I figured out EE by dissecting the default templates and reading the documentation. There have been moments of frustration, but by and large I don’t consider EE to have that steep a learning curve. The drawback of this learning methodology is that some advanced and rather powerful features escape notice and it’s there where some in-depth examples would go a long way.
I have a lot more problems with Solspace’s modules. Their documentation is purely a reference and without working examples I picked up from friend’s sites, I would have been stumped. Having said that, I still haven’t made the time to figure out how to use their Favorites module with all of jquery’s AJAXy goodness.
Writing documentation is hard and time-consuming. Good coders are not necessarily good documentation authors and good authors usually face a learning curve themselves to grasp their subject. Until such time as EL hires somebody to document, it’ll be up to the community to fill the gap.
I figured out EE by dissecting the default templates and reading the documentation. There have been moments of frustration, but by and large I don’t consider EE to have that steep a learning curve.
One thing to note, different “standard” template themes implement different features. All have the basic blog but some go slightly further. I recommend studying the templates for features rather than style. Most design their own so the base is just a starting point.
The drawback of this learning methodology is that some advanced and rather powerful features escape notice and it’s there where some in-depth examples would go a long way.
The flip is that if they had the more advanced features it would make it more difficult to dissect and understand. One really, really needs to thoroughly understand the basics to move forward.
An observation - many try to dive right into creating an actual site, their site, often under deadlines and that site requires advanced features. I think this delays the learning/understanding. Many then rely on the forum participants to implement everything (copy/paste - next) without really having the basic EE knowledge. Taking the time to just “play” with the basic templates is time well spent.
