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Hello, I would like some recommendations on building a site…. I have experience in PHP programming with CodeIgniter so my approach has always been pretty much building sites from the ground up… so i decided to start using a CMS like Expression Engine….. do you think it would be appropiate for a site for the students council of a school??.... each department of the council should post entries (news, info, pictures, etc) and students of the school should automatically receive an email with a snippet of info of the new post and link to that new post… do you think EE would be appropiate for something like that??/.... can the look of the site be changed completely to fit any css design?... or should I just stick to doing the whole thing with Codeigniter?? what do you guys think?? thanks in advance

Sure thing and a huge time saver for someone like you. (look towards weblogs and member groups, comments and notifications as well mailing lists)

Design wise…it will look how you design it (using ee tags is very similar to using cfm - standard (x)html wrapped with a few ee tags for dynamic processing).

Best of all you can always have your pages process PHP should you ever need to use your old php snips.
Spend some time with the core version and you will not regret it, so many things are already built for you.

OK, so I have been reading the tutorials and installed it on my local server… I was surprised to find that each post (template) is a raw new html file completely unrelated to the Theme of your default home page… so, if Im planning on giving user names and passwords to users with almost no knowledge on html how would I go about auto adding a header, footer and sidebars to each entry?... also, is there a way to auto send mass emails to a bunch of people?? presumably I should have a table with a bunch of emails.

... I was surprised to find that each post (template) is a raw new html file completely unrelated to the Theme of your default home page…

You can choose which type of formatting (XHTML, Auto br or none) you want but yes there is no WYSIWYG editor out of the box so you would do this with TinyMCE(or extension by LG) or FCKeditor....there a few more.

so, if Im planning on giving user names and passwords to users with almost no knowledge on html how would I go about auto adding a header, footer and sidebars to each entry?

-They would not, they would only add entries and comments. You would create a template that contains that HTML. For your ‘header’ and ‘footer’ or in PHP world of includes EE has “embedded templates” which can be hidden from being processed on their own - unless ‘included’. Start here then go into docs here >

... also, is there a way to auto send mass emails to a bunch of people?? presumably I should have a table with a bunch of emails.

-Hit [Communicate] tab and there you will have options to send email to either mailing lists or member groups.

Let me explain myself a little bit better… I have two kinds of users…. users with logins and passwords that can add content to the site (entries with pictures) and just users that can comment on these entries if they wish…I dont want any of these users handling any kind of html…also, I want to automatically load a header, footer and sidebar on each post to keep my site standardized… will the wysiwyg editor give me the option to,with each entry, autoload header, footer and sidebar?

OK, I just realized where my confusion can be coming from… whats the difference between a new entry an a template?.... are my users gonna be creating new entries or templates?

whats the difference between a new entry an a template?.... are my users gonna be creating new entries or templates?

It depends on what you want the users to do. If you want them to create templates, EE can allow that. If you want to restrict them to creating content (entries), EE can allow that.

An entry is content. A template can be a section of a web page (header, footer, content, logo, or a whole page).

OK, I just want them to add content (entries) and a little flexibility on the text, font, images positioning and stuff, but the wysiwyg editor should take care of that… I still dont get how to automatically add the heder and footer for each entry

The “template lightbulb” hasn’t gone on yet.

Start with an index template (or whatever). Create a new template called Header (or whatever name is convenient). Create another called Footer. In the Header template place all the XHTML you’d use for the header. In the Footer template place all the XHTML you’d use for the footer. In the main template (either Index or something else) add this line above your main content and the second line after your main content.

{embed="template_group_name/header"} (substitute 'template_group_name' with your template groups name).

Main Content

{embed="template_group_name/footer"} (substitute 'template_group_name' with your template groups name).

Your page should then display the Header content and the Footer content wrapped around the main content. That should help with the ‘template lightbulb’ moment.