Expression Engine - Is It Right For Me?
Posted: 19 November 2008 10:05 AM   [ Ignore ]  
Summer Student
Total Posts:  2
Joined  11-19-2008

Hi there,

I posted the following on the drupal site (http://drupal.org/node/336290) and rather than retyping, if you replace ‘Drupal’ with ‘EE’ it will be applicable!!

“Hi there,

I’ve been looking at the beginner’s guide to Drupal and there’s something I can’t really determine, so hopefully someone here will be able to shed some light.

I’m putting together a site for a client and they require some form of basic CMS. I will put together the site and lay it out as per the design with CSS - and they just want the ability to change aspects of the text and pictures over time. The client is a building firm, so they will have a couple of overview portfolio pages with 6 overviews per page, then 12 more detailed pages linking off those two.

They’ll need to be able to change the wording and images (but retain my CSS layout) over time for certain pages, as new projects get completed and they want to showcase them instead.

They also want a few kind of scratchpad pages where they can almost add anything they like, such as news, etc etc. For them I will just give them some blank pages with some CSS formatting pre-applied for a blank div or something.

I’d like to do all of this in a fairly lightweight fashion - i.e. I really don’t want a username and password field permanently on the site, maybe just an ‘admin’ link that will enable them to log in. When they do log in, ideally I don’t want 10000000000 options to appear as the client may be overwhelmed. I just want an intuitive way for them to edit areas I choose.

So far, I have been looking at Adobe InContext and it definitely fits the bill, but as well as charging a little extra on top to implement, I don’t want to them have to burden the client with further service costs going forward, so rapidly going off the idea! The other contender is CushyCMS, but to be honest I don’t fully trust that it’ll be around forever.

So then I look to the Open source options - and Drupal and Joomla! seem to be the one everyone’s talking about. With such community support and presence, I’m hoping what I’m trying to do is achievable with either?

Because content is stored in MySQL, does that mean I have to store all my content in there, regardless of whether it is to be editable or not? How does this fit in with tightly styled CSS layouts?

Can anyone advise as to whether what I want to achieve is possible at all please? Any advice will be really appreciated!!

I could post the proposed layout to show if that helps.

Many thanks.”

I also posted a couple of links to what my site needs to look like:

“Just to give people an idea, this is how to site needs to look.

I don’t want any extra menus, tabs, or anything else on the site whatsoever hinting that it’s anything other than a static website.

http://www.mnetuk.org/Page_8.pdf
http://www.mnetuk.org/Page_11.pdf

And all I want the user to be able to do is change the text and pictures inside the main content div, but not the layout.

This is why I like Adobe InContext. The user just views site normally and then presses a key-combo and it pops up a username / password box, then the areas I’ve marked as editable become just that. When happy they click save and the site returns to a normal looking website.

Is this kind of thing definitely achievable with Drupal?

Thanks.”

Is EE a viable option for me? Just seen Concrete5 and like the look of it also.

Any help appreciated. Cheers.

Profile
 
 
Posted: 19 November 2008 10:22 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
Lab Technician
Avatar
RankRankRankRank
Total Posts:  1477
Joined  09-16-2004

Looking at your comps, there’s nothing there that should pose a problem for EE.

Frankly, Drupal or Joomla! are complete overkill for the kind of basic site you’re designing here. I suggest you download the free Core version and have a play with it. Be prepared for a learning curve though smile
Good luck and welcome to the forums!

 Signature 

Peace, e-man.
stookstudio.com, websites built with care and web standards. LinkedIn profile

Profile
 
 
Posted: 19 November 2008 10:28 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
Summer Student
Total Posts:  2
Joined  11-19-2008

From what I know of those two, I totally agree with you.

If this works out to be what I want, my client will happily pay for the license, so that’s cool.

I’m going to play with EE and Concrete5 tonight.

Cheers.

Profile
 
 
   
 
 
‹‹ Image/File Upload      htaccess help! ››
Post Marker Legend
New Topic New posts Hot Topic Hot Topic with new posts New Poll New Poll Moved Topic Moved Topic Sticky Topic Sticky topic
Old Topic No new posts Hot Old Topic Hot Topic with no new posts Old Poll Old Poll Closed Topic Closed Topic Announcement Announcements
Theme
Change Theme
Visitor Statistics
The most visitors ever was 1149, on July 16, 2007 09:33 AM
Total Registered Members: 66388 Total Logged-in Users: 39
Total Topics: 84713 Total Anonymous Users: 19
Total Replies: 454686 Total Guests: 195
Total Posts: 539399    
Members ( View Memberlist )