Thread

I’ve built a couple of sites now using EE and am interested to hear how you guys approach page content and templates.

The majority of sites I have designed usually have a combination of static text, a page introduction if you like, and dynamic data. For instance a hotel website would have a ‘Tariff’ page which has a static text introduction, then the latest room rates pulled from an EE Channel.

Up to now I have created a Channel for ‘Page Intros’ so the client can edit the static text on various pages. I have used separate templates for each type of page (in this case a ‘Tariff’ template which pulls data from the ‘Page Intros’ Channel first, then the information from the ‘Tariff’ Channel).

Is this the most efficient way to approach this?

Would an alternative be to have one much larger template, connected to the Pages Module, with conditionals to display the relevant dynamic data on the page, then the client just deals with “pages’ rather than a ‘Page Intro’ channel. Would have such a large template slow down the site?

Or is there a method of handling page content that I haven’t seen yet?

Both approaches you mention are valid, there’s plenty of different ways to do the same thing in EE 😊

There is no “best”...😉

In general, each unique content type gets a channel/weblog and template.

My “Theory of Website Complexity” states there is a fixed amount of complexity in any web site.  Think of it as a balloon.  You can chose to squish that balloon in different directions.  You can make it flatter and wider (more templates but each template simpler), or you can squish it skinny and tall (fewer templates but with each template having more complexity). But in either case the complexity (area/size of the balloon) is the same.

There is no right or wrong way, each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages.  More but simpler templates can be easier to reverse engineer down the road and run faster from a system perspective.  Fewer but more complex templates might net you cleaner URL’s.  But you’ll need to decide the approach based on your requirements as developer and the project requirements.

Having said that, you’ll be crippled with the Pages module approach because you won’t be able to use segment variables, which would be key in a more complex template.

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys.

I guess as there are so many approaches to creating EE sites it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the way I’ve always done it wasn’t the ‘best’. Glad to hear it’s all relative and down to personal choice.

I’ll avoid Pages.