Thread

Greetings,

I recently purchased my first EE commercial license and I am desperately trying to learn the ropes. I’m really surprised after dropping $300.00 how little is offered in terms of helping newcomers to EE learn how to use it. There’s the User Guide, which just states in plain text, everything one can do on EE but it does little to TEACH people how to use them. Plus there are ZERO photos or videos to aid the text ... Then theres the Train-EE site which forces you to cough up more money or else try and sift through free tutorials that are over 5 years old. The support Forums seem to be great for single questions but what if you are looking for a clear and easy way to learn the ins-and-outs of EE??? Am I just missing something? Because I feel like I just got duped for $300, which is really disappointing b/c I was really excited to use EE but after sinking hrs of time and getting no where I’m fed-up. Pleeeaaaassseeee somebody point me in the right direction. I’m not even sure this is the right Forum to post this in b/c that’s confusing also!

Hey BrassFeather,

I am also a newcomer to EE!
I’m following Expression Engine 2: A Quick-Start Guide by Ryan Irelan.
It is only $22 for an electronic version.
I’ve read alot of it and it is probably what you are looking for (step by step instructions).

EE’s forums are set up to answer any trouble shooting questions. Ryan’s quick start guide is not.
So if you come across any questions along the way, look to these forums.
The people who run this are paid!

Hope this helps,
Noob

I can’t recommend Ryan Irelan’s screencast series enough:

http://mijingo.com/products/screencasts/learning-expressionengine-2-complete-series/

There is another approach to learning EE: Study templates.

I recommend localhosting EE (use XAMPP or MAMP for example), install a simple template and study the template’s code.

You certainly don’t have to get into CodeIgniter or PHP. HTML, CSS and EE’s tagging language is all you need.

Here is an example of a simpler template:

http://eetemplates.com/templates/details/tudobem

EE1 used to come with a bunch of templates that were excellent for learning.

EE2 comes with a demo template, but I found that template too complex. Perhaps they created it to knock the socks off of new users, but it is an unconventional design and not too approachable technically. Bring back the starter templates please.

Here’s EE’s template introduction:

http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/overview/templates.html

At the end of the day, EE is a great value for money spent and, I believe, a better alternative to much of the “droopla” out there. You can create a sophisticated site and still not use all or even most of EE’s capabilities.

I agree it is very hard to get some basic information. I think it would be nice to have some intro videos for beginners at least explaining the basics of templating, categories, tags and information architecture. EE looks exciting, but I too am struggling to find easy to digest info. The user guide is not useful to me. It makes things harder.

I have purchased the “quickstart guide” but really I am looking for something else, explanations as to how things work, without me having to build a whole site to learn how to use it. There are very little free resources, I think these should be free seeing as we are paying for the product.

Something like the tutorials they have on Lynda.com would rock my world!

There is another approach to learning EE: Study templates.

I recommend localhosting EE (use XAMPP or MAMP for example), install a simple template and study the template’s code.

You certainly don’t have to get into CodeIgniter or PHP. HTML, CSS and EE’s tagging language is all you need.

Here is an example of a simpler template:

http://eetemplates.com/templates/details/tudobem

EE1 used to come with a bunch of templates that were excellent for learning.

EE2 comes with a demo template, but I found that template too complex. Perhaps they created it to knock the socks off of new users, but it is an unconventional design and not too approachable technically. Bring back the starter templates please.

Here’s EE’s template introduction:

http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/overview/templates.html

At the end of the day, EE is a great value for money spent and, I believe, a better alternative to much of the “droopla” out there. You can create a sophisticated site and still not use all or even most of EE’s capabilities.

i don’t think the demo site in ee2 is unconventional in any way. it’s actually an example of how you SHOULD use ee leverage the functions.

And you don’t have to get tied up wth complexity, although again, they aren’t complex, they’re very simple tag use. But you can just use what you need from them.

The problem is youre looking at it from a designer standpoint and while that demo was built with designers in mind, the templates were built to show usage to developers.

At least that’s my take. It’s overwhelming at first if you don’t know anything, but it’s a great framework to learn.

Greetings,

I recently purchased my first EE commercial license and I am desperately trying to learn the ropes. I’m really surprised after dropping $300.00 how little is offered in terms of helping newcomers to EE learn how to use it. There’s the User Guide, which just states in plain text, everything one can do on EE but it does little to TEACH people how to use them. Plus there are ZERO photos or videos to aid the text ... Then theres the Train-EE site which forces you to cough up more money or else try and sift through free tutorials that are over 5 years old. The support Forums seem to be great for single questions but what if you are looking for a clear and easy way to learn the ins-and-outs of EE??? Am I just missing something? Because I feel like I just got duped for $300, which is really disappointing b/c I was really excited to use EE but after sinking hrs of time and getting no where I’m fed-up. Pleeeaaaassseeee somebody point me in the right direction. I’m not even sure this is the right Forum to post this in b/c that’s confusing also!

there’s a learning curve with ee. especially if you’re not already familiar with tags. But believe me, once you understand them you’ll never want to do it a different way. they are extremely flexible.

It sounds like what you were hoping for was some prebuilt themes. There are some out there, and actually pretty nice ones, but woothemes/themeforest stopped making ee themes. If you go here, you can buy these templates, and you do a fresh install of ee. It sets up all your groups, your modules and everything else you need. You can literally just start changing the content and be off and running in a day.

Theme Forest

I hope it’s ok to post this here since they sell things, but this is a very nice way for a newbie to get familiar with ee.

HOWEVER. if you find the built in demo site complex, this is much more complex than that.

I can’t recommend Ryan Irelan’s screencast series enough:

http://mijingo.com/products/screencasts/learning-expressionengine-2-complete-series/

I totally recommend making an investment in this video series. I was a lot like you in the beginning.  This webcast series tied it all together and it was like a light bulb went off.  I am not an expert like many of the people on here, but I can make my way around and put a site together with little effort now.

Greetings,

I recently purchased my first EE commercial license and I am desperately trying to learn the ropes. I’m really surprised after dropping $300.00 how little is offered in terms of helping newcomers to EE learn how to use it. There’s the User Guide, which just states in plain text, everything one can do on EE but it does little to TEACH people how to use them. Plus there are ZERO photos or videos to aid the text ... Then theres the Train-EE site which forces you to cough up more money or else try and sift through free tutorials that are over 5 years old. The support Forums seem to be great for single questions but what if you are looking for a clear and easy way to learn the ins-and-outs of EE??? Am I just missing something? Because I feel like I just got duped for $300, which is really disappointing b/c I was really excited to use EE but after sinking hrs of time and getting no where I’m fed-up. Pleeeaaaassseeee somebody point me in the right direction. I’m not even sure this is the right Forum to post this in b/c that’s confusing also!

This is almost a carbon copy of my first post here after purchasing EE, I know exactly how you feel.

While it does seem overly complicated at first, people here told me that once you “get it”, it would be like a light was turned on and that’s exactly what happened.

The above suggestion on working with the sample site, or taking apart a pre-made template, is probably your best approach to learning EE. It will also help if you work locally, also as suggested. Get to know it, install it a few times with different templates, play with it and you will see what you can do with it.

You have to move away from the stereotypical CMS application mindset. This isn’t Wordpress, it isn’t Joomla, you won’t be able to switch “themes” with the click of a mouse. This is a platform for developers/designers to exercise their own creativity. The one thing you will find when that light comes on is that there really are no boundaries.

My first install was with the sample record site template. I then moved to a live version with a purchased template. Now I am ready to tackle a new design of my own that will address all of the things I didn’t like about the pre-made designs.

Hope that helps and never be afraid to ask for help here. Try asking specific questions about tasks you want to learn, there are always experienced users here willing to help.

Good Luck

Hi guys, I just opened another thread about this and it’s surprising how absolutely comparable the frustration of the beginners (like me as well) is. We say all the same things, lol! And I so much agree with the fact that a commercial software should not be so poor in other regards like support and free learning resources.

In fact, it’s great that we help each other, but I would also be nice to hear someone sayign that we should demand more for our money, not from the community, but from the EllisLab team. For example no one from the team answered this thread.

I’d put things a bit more in perspective if it doesn’t sound too blunt.

Cheers

Hi Guys, I would also recommend Expression Engine 2: A Quick-Start Guide by Ryan Irelan.

But if you don’t want to spend any money why not try one of these free tutorials:

http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/build-portfolio-expressionengine

http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free-tutorials/category/building-a-small-business-site/

Also I would strongly recommend getting really familiar with the EE documentation, it covers all the different tags etc and includes some simple examples of how to do various things.

I feel your pain!
By now, I somehow made it past the very beginning - but I agree with you. Even now, finding how things work is a royal pain, and depends on pure luck.
There is no doubt in my mind that EllisLab should do a lot more, in terms of quantity and quality.
Good luck to you (and to EllisLab)