This is a really newbie / homer kinda question but I am neither a blogger or a CMS user - Apologies. Although that’s what I want to do - use EE as a CMS to run a complex and dynamic portal site.
I’m unable to gleen from my page/document/forum surfin’ if EE lets the admin allow specific “users” to update/edit/publish content remotely from a browser, in specific places or pages on the EE powered site.
Can EE do this?
Any details / insights would be welcome.
FYI - I’m trying to use EE to revamp my Coastal Web Portal - updating using Dreamweaver and / or raw HTML is driving me insane!
Should be able to do what you want, no problems. Basically, you want to set up some <a href=http://expressionengine.com/docs/cp/admin/members_and_groups/index.html>Member Groups</a> and you can grant different groups different permissions. You can decide whether a group can publish entries, and if so, in which weblogs (and a lot more). Folks publish using basically the same control panel interface you see- though you can set it up so a member group ONLY sees the weblogs they have access to post in and only the articles they have posted. Lots of ways to customize what a member can do- LOTS. Then you just assign folks to whatever group you want them to be in.
There’s also a way to hide the main system directory, if you’re worried about that.
1. Create an appropriate Member Group that has the permissions you want
2. Assign one or more users to that Member Group
3. Send the login and other information to the user(s)
I figured that member groups was the way to go but was unsure of how much control one had.
Not being a blogger I might miss some of the points on jargon - from a “web-portal” POV I take it each of the “weblogs” or more specifically “weblog categories” are each one webpage - and then each of these pages / weblogs / categories can be opened or closed to publishing by members?
Sounds like I need to sign up for the $10 demo and try a few things out?
One thing seems clear - forum customer support is a STRONG feature!
Yes, I would encourage you to try out the Trial version; either the Hosted Trial or the downloadable Trial (if you have a suitable server to test it on). I’ve always found that being able to actually play around with things is the best way to learn about something.
That is EXACTLY what I am doing at the moment-$10 Hosted trial.
What is frustrating me at the moment is that to have what I would consider a typical “multi-page news” site you SEEM to have to do alot of tweaking? I ignorantly thought this would work off the shelf?
For example I want your typical “summaries” linked to deeper full articles. I know you can do this and more - from the knowledge-blog - but it seems a bit cryptic to me at the moment and my links are a bit screw-ball.
I also need to sort out in my head how my multi-page site, organized by a category per page, translates to either EE “categories” or separate “weblogs”. I suppose that if I need to have certain “privledged” member posting to specific category pages then I’ll have to abandon EE “categories” and stick with a “weblog per page” design?
Still a bit lost.
But hey the censoring stuff works a treat! Great stuff! I can finally consider allowing the general public the ability to post to the site!
Thanks for your support! I hope I can get EE to work for me. I certainly want to work through these issues and find solutions.
The end of this 6 month journey of a thread by some obviously super sharp and dedicated guys/gals whom seem to want to do the same things I do with EE ( including the question from Pavia which did not seem to get resolved ) has deflated my inital joy at discovering EE.
I’ve posted a reply at the end of the above thread . . .
as I said I think EE is a great product and a product to be proud of but I wonder what comments pMachine folks might have about Shanes “journey” in general, Pavia’s question, and the overall question regarding the future development of EE in terms of CMS as opposed to Blog.
The support here is great - no disrespect intended.
I think pavia‘s post/comment basically came down to the fact that he’d like the be able to assign permissions at a category-level in addition to a weblog-level. There’s an existing Feature Request (probably more than one, in fact) on that subject. If you’re interested in that then I’d suggest finding the FR and adding your support.
I’m still on the $10 demo plan-o-rama so can’t post there . . . it DOES seem a CRITICAL issue for all those who wish to run EE as a “typical” CMS
My head is imploding less this morning and I’m back at it trying to make EE do what I want.
There is a wealth of knowledge out there on the forums and elsewhere . . . just struggle with filtering the “blog-speak” - not to mention my almost complete lack of knowledge of PHP. I’ve got more questions this morning but might start a new thread.
Just to give support for this thread…I too am trying to find a way to make EE work for a new site more as a CMS site and less of a BLOG. I too am not a PHP user, but am coming from a Cold Fusion background. I understand dynamic websites and HTML, CSS, SQL db driven sites. But I too find all this blog-speak interfering and confusing. I find the EE UserManual too brief and hardly useful. It gives a few basics but there seems to be a lot of holes.
But back to the topic here, I think there needs to be a high level “usage” manual written about how EE can be managed for CMS sites. How do weblogs, template groups, and categories all play together to create a CMS site and how do you control content providers. These are the questions I’m wrestling with and finding precsion little on it yet. Take categories…I have yet to find anything on them of use. I had to ask someone directly on the Support staff (creatively-devious Lisa) for answers.
Maybe someone can contribute CMS template set or something to get us started. I’d love to see tutorials on this type of topics.
In general your comments ring true with my *VERY LIMITED* EE experience and efforts.
However I am more and more convinced EE can be used as, forgive the can of somantic worms related to these definitions, a “CMS” as well as for a “BLOG”.
I have found the community and staff support empowering. It makes me feel that pMachine CARES about its products and its customers.
I’m very close to purchase.
I do agree that more “CMS” resources would help the punters get on with their jobs at hand and pM sell more product. I found / find it VERY hard to grasp concepts simply because I can’t relate to the jargon and terminology. . . . and every programer knows there is nothing like a good solid example to digest and tweak.
In my ignorant / humble way I am trying to create a “tutorial-in-progress” on the forums.
Check it out [url=http://www.pmachine.com/forum/threads.php?id=19938_0_19_0_C] HERE[url]
I already have learned alot thanks to Nevin’s comments therein. I encourage you and everybody to read the “hypothetical task” and, if you think it is a useful effort and are interested, to contribue to mocking up a solution, parts of a solution, comments, or questions as to why I’m trying to do such-and-such silly thing.
As far as tutorials… I haven’t used EE for a CMS and the various ways to use it for such are fairly divergent, so a tutorial might be rather difficult. But I’ll give some thought on this and try to produce at least a very basic one. At the least I’ll try to write up some more about categories since someone without the “weblog” background mightn’t understand them. =)
I think I’m understanding categories tonight. What helped me was relating it to what I already know with database driven dynamic web sites. When I realize that while EE masks it, each weblog is basically a database DSN with a set of tables containing pre-defined columns and the option to add more columns. Given that a weblog is another DSN db, then categories become clear. The categories relate to the database content where the entries are stored. It’s a way to group the content. It apparently relates to website page hierarchy indirectly in that you can specify query parameters using a URL path addition such as /C18 for category 18, for example. But it’s like passing a URL parameter to a db DSN on a dynamic website query. It’s not a directory in a file structure on the server, which is what I originally was trying to relate it to. That is done with template groups from what I can tell, however it gives you only one level.
If I still have it wrong, let me know. But this is what my current understanding is and it makes sense to me. Hope it helps others who are coming from dynamic or even static web site creation environment and not used to blogging.
I’ve tried to outline ONE SIMPLE way of doing things over at the post linked above.
It is OFTEN the case in CMS that multiple non-skilled users need to update different sections of the site. I’m not sure categories are useful for this ( no member controls ? ) - instead it seems to me you need to use different weblogs to separate out the content for various LSP’s (Low Skill Publishers )
Anyway - if you are interested would love your input over HERE
