Thread

Hello everyone.

I’ve just bought an EE licence that I am evaluating to see whether it fits as an upgrade from my current wordpress tech blog tbreak.com

At the moment EE is uploading after which I will install it. The purpose of this thread is to get a “best practices” overview of how I should proceed and would appreciate help.

1) With Wordpress, I create Posts which could ne News, Reviews, Blogs etc. etc. Is it recommended to create a separate channel for each of these in EE or shall I simply create a generic one called articles. Where the above differ are, for example, a Review has a score for the product along with What we like and what we dont like etc.

I’m also evaluating Drupal and in there, I can create a conditional field. So Articles becomes a “Channel” then a drop-down list is populated with News, Reviews etc. and if I select Reviews, some further entries for score, whats good and bad show up. Does EE support that? Worth going down that route or shall I make separate channels for news, reviews etc. etc.

2) For a Wordpress guy, what is the equivalent of “Categories” in EE? In Drupal, I can create taxonomy that could be accessed across all channel types and I could use that to create a menu so any type of channel that has been tagged with that taxonomy shows up.

3) Wordpress has Plug-ins, drupal has modules. There are always some that are favourites. What are the must-have plug-ins for EE?

For a developer, like yourself, you want to review low variables http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/low-variables and http://www.gotolow.com/addons/low-variables

EE and the EE community are far and away superior to WP / Drupal etc.

Good luck!

Hi Abbas,

1) You posts for News, Reviews, Blogs etc are having different attributes it would be great to create separate channel for each one. If some or a couple of post having almost same attributes then you can distinguish by categories.

2) There is something similarity between category feature of EE and WorldPress. In the WorldPress you create blogs under a category. In the same way, in EE, while creating channel entries you can assign category/categories to that entry.

3) EE is very much flexible with add-ons rather than WordPress and Drupal. It have add-on of type Plugin, Extensions, Module and Accessories. (It would be better if you look about it in EE user guide).

Best Regards,

Thanks for your response Bhaskkar-

Trying to understand how categories work. Lets say that I have articles that can be classified as Blogs, News, Interviews and Reviews. And these articles can be talking about Phones, Tablets or Laptops. In Wordpress, I would define a category called “Articles” with sub categories as Blogs, News etc. etc. as well as another category called “Gadgets” which could have sub categories as Phones, Tablets and Laptops. I would then select, say, News and Phone or Blogs and Phones and tablets.

How would that translate into EE? Would I create seperate channels for News, Reviews, Blogs and Reviews? And would I create categories for Laptops, Phones, Tablets etc.?

Abbas - Train-EE.com has a free ongoing tutorial series that is right now in part 2, and you may find it a invaluable discussion - it centers on the topic of content models, which is central to the thinking behind an EE approach to site development, which is very much a bottom up rather than a top down approach which is common with other CMS approaches.  With EE, its chief benefit is to give you the freedom to allow your content uniqueness to determine the model that works for you.

Think of channel field groups as the distinct sets of fields that match up to tha nature of a give type of content. Categories are just filters for grouping content together on the basis of, as an example, topic.

You can think of categories as macro or micro, depending on the degree of filtering you want to provide. Categories can also have hierarchical relationships, with parent, child, etc.

Tagging is similar in mindset, except (a) a true tagging system is not native to EE and (b) tagging systems generally do not have hierarchical thinking - they’re often more micro than that. Some people prefer categories over tags, some tags over categories, and some a blend of both to provide both styles of filtering and functionality. There are a few tag modules for EE - my favorite is Tagger by DevDemon, which happens to be awesomely free.

So the good news is, with EE you are bound by nothing. The bad news is, with EE you are bound by nothing. 😊 the double edged sword that is EE is that you model the content to suit your needs, so it’s perhaps a little more work to set up, but the freedom you have to devise a plan that is exactly suited and designed specifically for your content model is its own reward. Hard to give up that freedom once you get a good taste for it.

All the best with your project,