Hello everybody.
I’ve been using EE for a couple of years now, and I think it’s a fantastic product. But when I was first starting out with it, it seemed like there was something important missing from all the online tutorials I could find.
Example: The EE docs tell you only very vaguely what “Channels” are. This is probably because channels are a deliberately loose concept, meant to be adaptable and useful in various ways. But the problem with saying “channels are just information” is that it tells the new user nothing about how best to use them or what problems they’re a good solution for.
Suppose you’re creating an online store, and some of your products are downloaded while others are shipped. Obviously the site needs to know about this distinction, but how do we address it? Do we separate the two into different channels? Do we keep them in the same channel but in different categories? Do we just add a checkbox field for “downloadable”? And how does all this interact with templates? WIll the 2 types share a template, or have their own templates in a shared group?
(Also, what about field groups?)
All of these are real options, and can be made to work. But when I was starting out, it never seemed clear what sort of solution would be the best. By best I mean easiest to develop and maintain: the solution that cuts with the grain of EE rather than against it. I don’t think you can get a strong sense of this from reading the docs. I have a strong sense of it now, but it’s all from trial and error experience (and the errors were very costly in terms of time and energy).
I think the lack of advice (not just information) on these questions has a real cost: people shooting themselves in the foot with poorly architected sites. I number of the sites I inherited at my current position have 15 or more channels, practically one template group for every channel (most of them containing essentially the same templates as the others), and awkward, confusing publish forms. Needless to say, digging through all this to fix even simple bugs is a major undertaking.
Anyway, I’ve done around 20 EE sites now, and I think I’ve learned a lot about best practices for designing EE sites that can be efficiently developed and maintained, while still providing excellent functionality for both the visitors and maintainers of the site. Now I’m leaving my EE intensive job, and this knowledge is something I’d like to pass on. This gets me (finally) to the question I’m posing to the community:
Does a tutorial aimed at showing the practical strengths and best uses for various aspects of EE, one which gives you a sense of how to cut with the grain of EE, exist anywhere? If not, does anyone else think that such a tutorial would be a great thing for a beginner to have?
If the community thinks there’s a need for such a thing, I’ll create it. But I’m not so crazy that I want to waste away hours rehashing already available advice, or advice that no one else thinks they need. Just trying to gauge interest before I pour my heart out 😊
Thanks for reading, please reply with any thoughts.