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Hi EE forum members,

My name is Nate and I am new to EE and to this forum. I have resently started working for a small agency that have started to use EE (licensed version) and since I have never used EE before I am already stuck :(

I am working on a simple site for a local newspaper and what they want is a simple members area that people can sign up to and add comments ect. But where can I access what members can see? I have found this page in my themes folder: profile_themes and there is a .php file in there with a lot of content but I can’t seem to get my head around how members can access it and how I can even get to it via EE?

I feel so stupid to ask such a lame question but I have tried to understand how this works but have failed big time lol.

Can someone please help me out?

Thanks in advance!

All the best,
Nate

Hi Nate -

Welcome to EE.

Does the newspaper just essentially want comments on articles available to registered/logged in members only?

Or is it an entirely different area of the site?

Hi Boyink!,

Thanks for the quick reply and for the welcome 😊 As per the layout designs that the designers gave me they want to have users register on the site then once they have been registered they will be able to add comments to each post or news topic. Also I have just been told that there will be around 10-15 editors that will be assigned to different parts of the site where they can upload news to once they have signed in.

Thanks,
Nate

OK - this is a fairly large topic, but here are some pointers to get you started:

For the commenting—on each weblog you can specify whether users have to be logged in to leave comments:
Admin ›  Weblog Administration ›  Weblog Management ›  Edit Weblog Preferences > Require membership in order to post comments?

So you’ll need to link people to first a registration page - see Member Related Links

Or the login page which can then link to the registration page:
Login Form Tag.

Once registered and logged in they would be able to comment, not otherwise.

For the admins - essentially you’re going to create a number of member groups and assign privileges to them to dictate what they can do on the site.  I’d suggest looking around the Members and Groups docs.

thanks for that Boyink, for a bit more of an understanding now. So once I assign editors to weblogs, how can I design the members area once they have logged in? Would I have to download all the templates that are in http://expressionengine.com/templates/source/category/member_profiles/ and create a template group called say “members” and add all of the templates in there?

Sorry for all the n00b questions, I come from a wordpress background and once someone has registered they logon to the admin area and all gets done from there. But it seems with EE I have to get all of the templates sorted first right?

Thanks again,

thanks for that Boyink, for a bit more of an understanding now. So once I assign editors to weblogs, how can I design the members area once they have logged in?

If by “members area” you mean what the editors see for managing the site content - you don’t design it.  You configure a view of the Control Panel that they see - stripped of everything not applicable to their needs.

ok I see, so the editors will see the admin panel located say here: http://www.newspaperssite.com/system so once thay have logged in they will see the system panel but only what I want them to see? Ok so what are the Member Profiles templates for? I have seen other EE news sites on in showcase area on this site and I have registered on a few and they seem to have what seems to be a custom admin area for registered users.

ok I see, so the editors will see the admin panel located say here: http://www.newspaperssite.com/system so once thay have logged in they will see the system panel but only what I want them to see?

Yes.

Ok so what are the Member Profiles templates for?

For member profiles…;)  But member profile don’t include the Publish/Edit areas and the step from custom member profiles to a completely custom Control Panel for use in actually managing the site content is a big one.  Not impossible, but big - and most times not worth it when you only have a handful of people who’d ever see it.

For example - I have custom member profiles on Train-ee:

http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/member/user/boyink/

But wouldn’t bother building a control panel if I had anyone else wanting to add/manage content. Note that I used the User Module from Solspace - it gets around having to style the default EE member profile templates which are a bit of a pain.

I have seen other EE news sites on in showcase area on this site and I have registered on a few and they seem to have what seems to be a custom admin area for registered users.

I’d be willing to bet all you saw was a custom member profile area - unless some of those sites actually gave you admin access as well.

thanks Boyink! you have giving me a lot to think about 😊 I see that EE works very differently to other CMS out there. Thank you once again for your time and help!! You da man.

Nate