Thread

Hi everyone. I just purchased EE 3 days ago for my own website.

I currently have it up in Dreamweaver with a mix of PHP, CSS, Javascript and other personal code. I really do not need EE to edit the site content as im the only one editing it.

But the reason I wanted EE was because I want a clean and more consistent look trough all pages. The site is pretty big and I cannot keep up with having it consistent in terms of layout and design. The reason I went with EE was because everywhere I read it said it does not require you to fit into a design structure but it can fit your site. So far I love what I heart. Parts of the site have external systems like an account system, a wordpress blog (which is coded to look exactly like the site but WP only is for the blog under example.com/blog) another helpdesk system, a Vbulletin forums, etc.

Now I don´t plan to run everything under EE but just my main static .php which I want to convert into a bit more dynamic.

EE is running, index.php is remove with mod rewrite, I created a /test page as I cannot create the current sections which would overwrite the ones I have already.

My statics pages are coded like this:
PHP include (head) this includes a head.php of every html site
PHP include meta tags (I included another metatag.php on each page so I can have another title, description on each page)

Here goes content which has a navigation like Home - Section - Page name. I change this manually on each page I edit.

Content. I edit this manually

Finally a foot.php include tag.

So basically for each page I just create the content on the page on dreamweaver and upload it via FTP. I also manually change the name for the metag.php to point to a file which I can change the description, title, etc.

The header and footer is each one on its own file which is included dynamically on each page. So if I need to change something in the footer, like copyright trough all pages, I just change the foot.php and its changed on all pages.

Now, the reason I want to migrate the site to EE is so I dont have to keep handling all this separate files and what EE does is actually just what I have but more dynamically and can be managed via the control page.

I already purchased a Kindle book on EE, watched some 20 video tutorials on Youtube, and read the documentation and some tutorials.

But honestly Im still lost into how to import my structure.

I have to mention that in the head.php there is the CSS which is a main one for all pages, javascript, etc.

From what I understand I need to start splitting the code and putting it inside EE, then create the templates which include all the EE tags which would render the whole page just like I have right now. Is this correct? Would EE work for me here?

My idea was to have the javascript, CSS, head, footer, etc all on each files for management, then also have some snipped codes like copyright, menus, etc, separate.

Im still not sure if I actually need EE as I just open Dreamweaver and edit everything on each one file.

Let me mention that I do not want to be logging into EE to change each word on a website, that would take ages. I want to keep using Dreamweaver for my main content, and just put the code inside EE so it handles the whole structure better and my idea was in the future to put stuff more dynamic on pages.

Im very confused about the templates, channel, categories, etc. Im not sure where to put each code. But then again im just starting. I do love what I see in the way that EE does not get into my code, I can use Javascript, CSS, PHP includes, etc just like I have them now and I like this. It means I can adapt my site for EE and not have to adapt it to work for EE.

In the past I looked into Drupal and other CMS but they box you into their systems, something which I never liked it as some parts of my site would not work anymore, like the ones pulling external stuff via PHP.

I was impressed how easy was EE to get it configure for my site. It let me change the default index.php right away, remove it, change the admin page and even let me upload the system folder into above the public_html folder so its very clean and its not getting in my way.

My questions are if someone has some example of a website and how it would look in EE, where should I put my header content, my footer, etc?

Hi Nibb,

My advice, go and read through:
http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free-tutorials/category/building-a-small-business-site
the tutorials are for EE1 but the code is quite the same for EE2 just change “weblog” with “channel”.

Or buy Mike’s book it’s wonderfull!

I’m not a EE superhero but I started there an year ago and they helped me so much.

bye!
Francesco

Francesco - thanks for the kind words.

Nibb -

If I understand things right you want to use Dreamweaver to manage content, and EE to manage code?  I have to say that’s a bit of an odd implementation approach and I’m not sure how efficient the end result will be.

Here’s why - one of the reasons that EE helps a consistent site is that it re-uses templates to produce multiple pages.  You could, for example, have an entire 10-page ‘About’ section powered by one EE template and 10 entries in an ‘About’ channel.  Navigation is built dynamically by EE.

But with your approach you’d need 10 templates (all saved as external files so that Dreamweaver could continue to edit them), and navigation would have to be built manually.

If your goal is to not manage so many separate files then I think you need to work towards eliminating Dreamweaver from the mix, otherwise you’re just going to end up with a similar number of EE templates rather than the HTML files you currently have.

Yes I understand what you say but the truth is that EE cannot really create content, unless its news or a blog, you need to manually upload an image one by one, and put text in each box one by one. EE is good to manage content, but having to design a full page with EE would be a nightmare, just imagine one page that has a billboard, several icons on each title, then some thumbnails that open bigger image, a small video tutorial that opens in a lightbox windows, and then jquery boxes that can be dragged and dropped.

In Dreamweaver I open the page and can edit everything from one screen. I cannot start to think how this would be done in EE, I would kill my mouse with some many clicks having to go back and forward to each channel. One piece of text in this box, another here, the image uploaded here, etc.

Its way easier to make the page in Dreamweaver, take the code and paste it into EE.

You are right that I will end up with allot of templates, almost for the same files I have in Dreamweaver and im aware of that but there is not choice. If you happen to have a news page, where the design is the same and all you do is push articles thats another thing and I have systems in place for that already. I have hundreds of FAQ, and news that are dynamically generated already.

The pages I want to put inside EE are static pages. And each one happens to be 80% different than the other page. One can contains a huge table that compares some products, and another one contains text and images.

My current headers, footers, and some other stuff is dynamically generated via PHP, and this are the ones I want to insert into EE so I can manage them from here.

I don´t have time to master EE in 3 days, so im aware that I will end up with having as much templates as file, but at least I can get it running inside EE with exactly the same way they look now, then once running, I can take all the time in the world to try to make this more dynamically, deleting templates, and trying to make stuff as much EE friendly as possible, then I can start deleting templates.

EE is great if several people need to edit several parts of a website, but remember, its just me. So unless I really need it, why would I be splitting each text into a channel to make my job harder? In Dreamweaver I can open it and have all the content right there. And of course Dreamweaver is just my code editor, I actually use like 10 other softwares together with Dreamweaver.

I know EE is very advanced but in my case I need for something rather simple, which is handle my header, footer, and some snippets, nothing more. In another project I could fully use EE potential. Today, all I want is a better way to manage my site.

Let me explain the first thing I want to manage in EE.

Currently 1 page is contained from a header, body and footer.

Both the header and footer I insert via a PHP include command.

So I only need to edit the body. Header and footer editing can be already done a cross the whole site this way.

The problem was that I ended up with duplicated titles on pages. So I went a step further, and I replaced the title and metatags in the header to include an individual title. Which I manually edit on each file.

So basically now header includes the custom title from one file, header is then included together with footer in the a page.

The problem with my approach was that I had to manually edit the body file to change the filename of the custom title file each time.

Now, inserting header and footer into EE is easy. You just create a template or snippet and embed this into any other template. It actually does the same I had already.

Then I edit the header title to include content from a channel to it can have custom titles.

Now here im stuck.

I ended up with the same problem I have now. I would need to basically edit each template to tell it from which channel to pull the title.

I was thinking EE could decide this or manually generate this on the fly.

Basically now, each time I create a template in EE, it will embed the header and footer, but again with the same title for the page, unless manually I change its channel.

Of course I don´t say EE has to fill this data, I will do that, and there is no problem with that. What I want is able to duplicate a template, and not have to edit its structure, then just go to EE and create the channel name for it for the title.