Thread

Before you install ExpressionEngine and start tweaking preferences, it’s best to take some time to think about the content you’ll be managing with EE and plan out that content’s structure. It goes a long way in making that content valuable and reusable for years to come. Read on…

Keven, you say that EE is designed for COPE, yet in the same post, you extol the virtues of your RTE. Unless there is some magic going on between the input and storage, the RTE is storing its content as pre-formatted XHTML (I base this on the “view code” option); hence not COPE. To serve this content to a mobile app, it would need to be deformatted and restructured.

Real COPE would provide a repeatable compound field that consists of a heading, a heading level selector and a series of addable blocks. These blocks could be paragraphs, quotes, lists… or child compound fields of the same type.

Structured body content.

By all means, it could behave like an RTE for editing, but would not be. An RTE - especially when it includes am H1 option, which should be reserved for the page title - is antithetical to COPE.

I would disagree about Expression Engine being a COPE style content management system as well. In early 2007 I worked for a solid year with NBC universal on a project called the phoenix project for a number of their news entities. They were at that time very diligently working on a COPE integration and Expression Engine, even now, would not cut it.

The major factor in Expression Engine not being COPE friendly is the unfriendly ways of targeting content to certain URL structures utilizing complex programming rules instead of user control. In order to be a true COPE engine one must be able to create any piece of content and target it to any place on the site and order it inside that section of the site. Expression Engine is not currently setup to do this, it does not have a good way of setting up deep URL structures, has no good way of integrating different channels into a single section list and ordering them, content cannot easily be targeted to two places on a site, categories are used as url segments to pull content as opposed to letting developers setup pages that specify what type of content to display, the list goes on.

Don’t get me wrong Expression Engine is a good cms, but it has a long ways to go to be a truly COPE cms.

Expression Engine is not currently setup to do this, it does not have a good way of setting up deep URL structures,

Have you investigated the Pages module? 

has no good way of integrating different channels into a single section list and ordering them

You can pipe multiple channels together into a single channel:entries tag and order them as an aggregation.  There are add-ons to do ordering if the native functionality isn’t there.

content cannot easily be targeted to two places on a site

Content can be published to as many places on a site as you wish, using any combinations of the custom fields you’ve created to store it.

categories are used as url segments to pull content as opposed to letting developers setup pages that specify what type of content to display, the list goes on.

You can create non-categorized templates to pull any content you want.  You can also pretty easily work around categories in the URL if need be.

Hi Mr. Boyink,

Thanks for your post, I have to say I enjoyed your EE book and have actually bought it twice, once for EE1 and EE2, I also really appreciate your website and all you do for this community 😊.

I have just started digging into the pages module. I am actually coming back to expression engine after a long hiatus. The pages module seems like a step in the right direction for sure, but it feels unfinished. The UI is lacking, and it seem that the dev community around expression engine has been working hard to try and complete an incomplete piece. I would love to see expression engine come out with a more full featured content targeting ui in the future, it would be great to be able to allow user better control over their content without them having to remember url structures, create weird category structures that may not meet every need, or tack on a bunch of third party code to manage content. Structure seems to be the best thought of tool in this regard, but it also seems to be the most hated add on as well. This conflict has scared me away from it’s use.

To be fair, this is a common problem currently for all open source cms solutions. I actually did a demo with some one at Ellis labs of the type of workflow I am looking for and they said that it was a great workflow and EE could not come close to what I wanted at this time :(

You can pipe multiple channels together into a single channel:entries tag and order them as an aggregation.  There are add-ons to do ordering if the native functionality isn’t there.

I am curious what add-ons you are reffering to

CG11 - 11 August 2012 08:41 AM
content cannot easily be targeted to two places on a site

Content can be published to as many places on a site as you wish, using any combinations of the custom fields you’ve created to store it.

This is actually exactly the issue I am taking, it is possible to target content anywhere with combinations of custom fields sure, the issue I take is it is not easy or intuitive. It requires rules to be set in the templates, if I am a content publisher I may not understand those rules then I am perplexed why it shows up in two places or I may not understand why it is not in two places. I believe the user should see a list of all the url’s available for them to put their content and pick what is right, this is much more straight forward for the user than saying use the two categories in unison to get it on this page.

So each url on a site needs to be setup independently in some sort of ui, and lets say I have a form to set up the section with, then I can set the templates to display not only the list page of that content but also the more page. Now I have complete control over look and feel as a developer and it is completely separate from the targeting control of the user. You could then see what entry types are allowed on each url and present the appropriate urls for the entry being created to a user when they are in the publish workflow.

Again you are correct in saying it is possible, I am saying it is not easy for the user.

CG11 - 11 August 2012 08:41 AM
categories are used as url segments to pull content as opposed to letting developers setup pages that specify what type of content to display, the list goes on.

You can create non-categorized templates to pull any content you want.  You can also pretty easily work around categories in the URL if need be.

Lets say I take the above example and let users place content on any page they desire using a visual targeting mechanism. So now my story is going to show up on sports and news. Now lets say I have a category to program against as well within this target, as a user I can more easily understand my ui because entry placement is separate from category. Category can be weird and feels like it is used as a catch all some times it feels more appropriate to let content categories in a cms be exactly that a category within a placement list.

Again, this all comes down to preference and their are work arounds for all these things I am sure. But in our case at the time their was not enough flexibility in the ui compared to other systems on the market.

Hi Mr. Boyink,

Thanks for your post, I have to say I enjoyed your EE book and have actually bought it twice, once for EE1 and EE2, I also really appreciate your website and all you do for this community 😊.

Thanks - nice to hear! 😉

I have just started digging into the pages module.

Sure, it was never fully developed as envisioned but does give you control over URLs.

To be fair, this is a common problem currently for all open source cms solutions. I actually did a demo with some one at Ellis labs of the type of workflow I am looking for and they said that it was a great workflow and EE could not come close to what I wanted at this time :(

EE is a $300 solution. I think the market loses sight of that - it’s not going to have features that more expensive options might have.

I am curious what add-ons you are reffering to

Low has a reorder add-on, for one.

This is actually exactly the issue I am taking, it is possible to target content anywhere with combinations of custom fields sure, the issue I take is it is not easy or intuitive. It requires rules to be set in the templates, if I am a content publisher I may not understand those rules then I am perplexed why it shows up in two places or I may not understand why it is not in two places. I believe the user should see a list of all the url’s available for them to put their content and pick what is right, this is much more straight forward for the user than saying use the two categories in unison to get it on this page.

I see this as the business consultant/developer’s role - to determine the needs of the content and program the system to suit.  I actually don’t want my clients worried about where the content comes out, only that they need to hit “Publish” and know the site will do the rest.

So each url on a site needs to be setup independently in some sort of ui, and lets say I have a form to set up the section with, then I can set the templates to display not only the list page of that content but also the more page. Now I have complete control over look and feel as a developer and it is completely separate from the targeting control of the user. You could then see what entry types are allowed on each url and present the appropriate urls for the entry being created to a user when they are in the publish workflow.

Again you are correct in saying it is possible, I am saying it is not easy for the user.

It sounds like you have a more url-centric client or project than I’ve ever had.  My projects have never been as such.  Clients publish content and let the system determine the URL.