Thread

I have a question, how many hours on average for me to learn expression engine and create a 50-page blog. I learn pretty quickly but I am not a developer. I am strongly considering of buying it, and have a strong desire to learn it, yet want to get my blog up and running and would like any input form you folks out there on how long it took you and maybe links to sites that you have built with expression engine.

Would love your help.

Kindest regards,

Miki

You sound like me when I first started with EE. I’m not a coder in the usual sense of the word. I don’t have a programming background and it took me a few months of reading and getting help here at the forums before I finally had a good enough grasp of EE to put together my first site. Some people just learn quicker than others and it’s hard to tell you how quickly you would learn. Best advise I have is to download the free Core version and give it a go. Now that I’ve been using EE for a few years I could get a blog up and running in no time assuming no custom design and we’re simply talking about a basic blog, but when I first started it took me a few months just to learn EE from testing and then another few (maybe five or so?) to actually get my blog running. That’s me though and you might learn much quicker.

As for my sites, check my signature. 😊

If you’re only interested in getting a blog up and running fast, why bother with tools like EE at all? Wordpress.com and other will get you started in minutes and you can focus on writing your 50 pages of content.

But if you’re heading for a more complete website, with a blog as a central component, with the ability to decide over all the bells and whissles, EE is a great choice. But it will definitely require learning time. You can start with a couple of blogish demo templates, but soon you will want to style your site according to your own intentions. You will wish to add new features, maybe use tags, and so on.

The more time you give yourself to test and learn, the more you’ll get out of EE. I don’t know about your HTML and CSS skills, neither do I know if you’re already familiar with the concept of tags, template groups and templates. Perhaps you are an experienced PHP programmer or MySQL guru - that could help to getting familiar with EE fast - but thus knowledge isn’t necessary to get great results with EE.

So, an estimate can’t be given - it depends on your knowledge, your requirements and so on. I’d start with EE Core installing some “test bed” requires an hour or so and you’ll have a first blog you can play with. Then, try to make changes to your will - and accept to start from scratch after some time- you’ll have learned so much that you want to! If you’re interested in getting results fast and look for a flexible, less blog-ish solution, you might have a look at eeSiteKit.com. It’s a new offer from Kurt Deutscher and to my knowledge, it works with EE Core as well. But eSiteKit will not style the site for you, “only” help you setting things up and getting consistent results and a dynamic navigation ... which is a lot.

Markus

As Markus said - build your first site with EECore - its free. Also it comes with a Blog style set of templates to set you off so in effect it does not take long to build your first blog - its when you start to customise your requirements i.e. page design that the learning needs to start. I started by having a rugby club site, Croydon RFC, that I needed to build so I had a lot of learning to do before I got the light bulb moment on how this all works. Fortunately for beginners now there are some very good training sites available and they are worth the frew hours spent reading. If you want an instant site you could use Blogger.

I have a question, how many hours on average for me to learn expression engine and create a 50-page blog. I learn pretty quickly but I am not a developer.

It’s a bit like asking, “How much does it cost to construct a building?” Or, “How long will it take to put up a building?”

The list of variables is substantial, so some qualifying is necessary to outline basic parameters. For example, do you know XHTML and CSS? If not, then it’s going to be a long day, as there’s likely no upfront understanding of EE’s tags, either. Maybe it’s just better to back up a few steps and determine exactly what you want. A blog? Does it need to be EE (plenty of aforementioned solutions are almost instant)? Do you require site expansion, customization, other bells and whistles (and, of course, what are they?)?

That said, the best advice is to try EE using Core. If the learning curve is too steep and the “light bulb” moment doesn’t arrive soon, then WP could be a good choice. With a little extra effort the ‘light bulb’ moment will arrive and truly demonstrate the difference between EE and other CMS apps.

First and foremost thank you kindly for your input from which I have just a few more questions.

1.  It is quite clear that I will have to get up to speed on HTML, XHTML and CSS. I have no experience at all in any coding so I will have to learn there. I truly do have a desire to learn and just wanted to know the proper track of learning for Expression Engine. I am looking to buy the book “Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML.” By Eric Freeman as first step.

2.  Over time, I wish to develop a deep understanding of building web pages using Expression Engine to build data based driven websites. Yet for now, would just like to have a nice looking blog online. I have an artist designing me about 15 drawings that I would like to upload and wondered if eeSiteKit would allow to do that, as I organize time to learn Expression Engine. The drawings are crucial to the theme of the blog and the writings/posts.

3.  If eeSiteKit does not allow custom themes it would just seem more sense to get someone to build the blog for me in Expression Engine as I learn the program in Expression Engine?

4.  After learning HTML, XHTML and CSS, could I just use Ruby and Ruby on Rails instead of PHP, MySQL and Java with Expression Engine? Because I played around just a little with Ruby and I love it and people have said you can build programs in fraction of the time in other languages. Or is MySQL a must as well as PHP for Expression Engine.

5.  If I decided to do the blog with WordPress, is there an advertising free option in WordPress. And after having it up on WordPress, how much trouble would I have moving my blog to an Expression Engine format once I master it.

Great members I truly appreciate all of you help to my questions, like I said just wanted a clear and straight direction to learning this great program, and where better to start than with you guys. If you guys can answer these additional questions 1-5 and any other input you have in addition that would be awesome!

Many thanks,

Miki

I’ve not looked at the “Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML” book, but if I could recommend two to you, I would look at “CSS Mastery” and “Bulletproof CSS.” Both great books.

After learning HTML, XHTML and CSS, could I just use Ruby and Ruby on Rails instead of PHP, MySQL and Java with Expression Engine?

You can definitely learn Ruby and RoR, but it won’t help you a whole lot in the EE department. Learning PHP will likely be better if you plan on extending the capabilities of EE since it’s built on PHP.

First things first, though. Start with XHTML and CSS, build a site with templates and EE tags. If that’s fun and you need more, then on toward PHP and friends.

I’ve seen that Head First book, used it for training someone where I used to work - excellent book I think, but it depends how you learn.