Thread

We’re looking at ExpressionEngine for a college Web site. We’re particularly interested in creating a system where faculty members can edit their own bios, and a user can sort faculty members by research interest or department.

Can ExpressionEngine do this natively, or is there a recommended plugin?

We’d also like to be able to create an events calendar similar to this one:

http://www.risd.edu/calendar/

Is this something we can do with EE?

Hi there!

Yes, ExpressionEngine would be a great fit for this site. You might take a look at a site like Director-EE as an example of a site built with ExpressionEngine that includes user profiles that they update themselves. It allows viewers to sort and search those profiles a variety of ways. I’m not sure exactly the route Director-EE takes to get there, but you could use the included SafeCracker module to accomplish this. Solspace’s User also gives you a ton of flexibility for user profiles.

Speaking of Solspace, I would recommend their module Calendar for your project, though it’s certainly possible to simply set up each calendar item as its own Channel Entry without the need for any additional add-ons. Let me recommend having a look over the Big Picture article in our User Guide. It’ll help give you a better idea for how content is structured and displayed in ExpressionEngine.

Hope this helps! Are there any other questions I could answer for you?

we have developed some education sites with ee and some with wp. both have their advantages. ee is certainly more robust and reliable than wp. but non-technical users tend to prefer the wp interface for updates. that said, there are some elegant ways to handle profiles with ee that you will not find in wp. kevin mentioned user and calendar from solspace that you will definitely want to use. i would also recommend that you look at supersearch, matrix and playa. those will come in handy. what kind of requirements do you have other than those that pertain to faculty?

Hi Auburn College of Business,

adamEEman offers some good insight! Thanks for the additional info.

Are there any other questions about ExpressionEngine that we can answer for you?

Thanks for your interest in using ExpressionEngine.

So nice! Now no more questions!

Alyssaly_W, are you working with Auburn College of Business? Just want to make sure I don’t close this thread up if Auburn has any more questions.

I apologize for my delay in getting back to you, but I really appreciate the followup!  We have gone ahead and decided to purchase ExpressionEngine - the customer service alone convinced my supervisors. Thanks again!

That’s great to hear! We’re thrilled to know Auburn will be using ExpressionEngine to power part of its web presence. If you need anything, please let me know!