Thread

Hello.

I’m building a site for a magazine publisher and I’m heavily considering EE to handle the heavy lifting.

The site will need to:

Be the home for the publisher’s three magazines.  They’d like the set up to be http://www.example.com/ for the flagship publication and http://www.example.com/publication1/ for one of the other and http://www.example.com/publication2/ for the third.  I’d then be re-directing the non-flagship domains to the latter two URLs.  Hopefully that makes sense.  They’re all going to have the same look, just different content in each of those sections.  Would EE be able to split out the content like this?  Would I just use different categories for those sections?

Allow editors to log in and post articles.  Each article would have at least one photo but a majority of them would have multiple photos.  I’d like to be able to have a thumbnail shown in the article or next to it and have some way for the user to see the full-size of all the photos (lightbox, thickbox, simple pop-up).

Display the article author’s name - not necessarily the username of the editor who posts it to the site.

Have videos posted to it.  Probably via an embed from YouTube or Revver.

Have audio posted to it and possibly include some type of audio player…like a Flash piece or Flash “jukebox” that would play mp3’s.

Allow for users to register, comment on stories, keep a user profile with lists of favorite things (bands, movies etc.), and participate in forums.  (I know that this is possible with EE, I just don’t know to what extent).

To a certain extent, I’d also like to have pieces of content restricted to only those who are members.

Additionally, how robust is the email feature that EE provides?  The editors will probably be sending out a monthly “newsletter” to all registered members to tell them that new audio files are available for download.

Have some kind of ad serving.  I haven’t seen anywhere stating that EE provides this, but have people been able to use phpAdsNew (aka OpenAds) to handle ad serving?

Have “contest” entry pages set up where registered users could enter for give-aways.  This also leads me to ask, does EE offer a quick way to build web forms/contact forms?

Replace feeds with FeedBurner feeds so we can keep stats.

A “send to a friend” ability for articles and a “print this page” link for articles

——

Thanks in advance for taking the time to address this.  A lot of my thinking is coming from using Drupal for the past year or so.  I’ve actually started building out this site and I’m maybe 55% of the way done, but I’m seeing that Drupal tends to bog down a server with certain features I’m trying to implement.  I’m definitely willing to drop the money on a commercial license + forums module if EE will make the client happy and give both them and their users a good experience.

Also, since I’ve already built out the look and feel of the site and I have a good grasp on XHTML and CSS, what’s the learning curve for EE like?  If I put my mind to it…and gave it all I have for the next few weeks, would I be able to crank this thing out??

Thanks again for your help and time!  EE definitely looks like something I’ll use in the future…I just need to know if that time is now!

Be the home for the publisher’s three magazines.  They’d like the set up to be http://www.example.com/ for the flagship publication and http://www.example.com/publication1/ for one of the other and http://www.example.com/publication2/ for the third.  I’d then be re-directing the non-flagship domains to the latter two URLs.  Hopefully that makes sense.  They’re all going to have the same look, just different content in each of those sections.  Would EE be able to split out the content like this?  Would I just use different categories for those sections?

Absolutely it can do this. I would recommend having a look at the Multiple Site Manager; alternatively, depending on the setup of these separate sections, a weblog each would be fine; you might like to pop an email to sales to discuss the license issues and which is appropriate.

Allow editors to log in and post articles.  Each article would have at least one photo but a majority of them would have multiple photos.  I’d like to be able to have a thumbnail shown in the article or next to it and have some way for the user to see the full-size of all the photos (lightbox, thickbox, simple pop-up).

This is all handled in your templates.

Display the article author’s name - not necessarily the username of the editor who posts it to the site.

Easy, make a custom field for this; depending on if it’s a set number of authors you could have them in a drop-down custom field, or even use a relationship field to store more information about the author.  Or just a text input for their name.

Have videos posted to it.  Probably via an embed from YouTube or Revver.

Have audio posted to it and possibly include some type of audio player…like a Flash piece or Flash “jukebox” that would play mp3’s.

No problem for either.  You should check out our showcase and our new media category; many more sites, of course, use EE for multimedia, this is just a new category and is still being filled, as is the rest of the showcase - always new additions to go in.

Allow for users to register, comment on stories, keep a user profile with lists of favorite things (bands, movies etc.), and participate in forums.  (I know that this is possible with EE, I just don’t know to what extent).

Just make a custom profile field for favorite things to list, they can have an avatar and member photo, and permissions based on what you set up.

To a certain extent, I’d also like to have pieces of content restricted to only those who are members.

You can use Template Level Restriction, or conditionals within a template, to restrict content based on membership group.

Additionally, how robust is the email feature that EE provides?  The editors will probably be sending out a monthly “newsletter” to all registered members to tell them that new audio files are available for download.

It sends out in batches, and depends, really, on your server and infrastructure. There is also an add-on by solspace.com to integrate with Constant Contact; and possibly other such third party add-ons.

Have some kind of ad serving.  I haven’t seen anywhere stating that EE provides this, but have people been able to use phpAdsNew (aka OpenAds) to handle ad serving?

We have many users utilizing both phpAdsNow and OpenAds, amongst others - so no problem there.

Have “contest” entry pages set up where registered users could enter for give-aways.  This also leads me to ask, does EE offer a quick way to build web forms/contact forms?

You can use the comments for that, just re-label them, really.

There is a built-in contact form, and if you need something more complex, such as storing that information in the database check out solspace.com’s Freeform.

Replace feeds with FeedBurner feeds so we can keep stats.

I don’t see why not, many EE users utilize Feedburner.

A “send to a friend” ability for articles and a “print this page” link for articles

Built in, called “Tell a friend”.  The print this page is really just linking to a minimalist styled template to give a printable page, very easy.

Also, since I’ve already built out the look and feel of the site and I have a good grasp on XHTML and CSS, what’s the learning curve for EE like?  If I put my mind to it…and gave it all I have for the next few weeks, would I be able to crank this thing out??

There is a learning curve, but it’s well worth learning and the template manager is incredibly powerful. I would build your skeleton first then add in the EE Tags where you need content pulled out.  Given your background I do not think you’ll have any issues with it.  How about trying it out?

Lisa,

Thanks for the speedy response!  I’m going to go ahead with the 30-day trial.

Fantastic! Do not hesitate to post as you come across things that you need help with. Also, please check out our Support Resources and Support Policy. I’d also recommend reading through some of our blog, especially the Developer Blog and Learn ExpressionEngine.  Those will help give you some insight as you learn.

Ok, I’m setting things up with my 30-day hosted account…if I build out this site to a certain extent and then want to export it to my own server…will my templates be out of wack because I currently don’t have a way to FTP a library template in to the hosted system folder?

If I just go ahead and create a bunch of templates will I make more work for myself in the long run by not using library templates?

Thank you, Victor!

Not at all. See updating from the trial to the full version. =)

You guys rock.  I didn’t even see that in the user guide.

Two more quick questions!

This is probably more of a how-to, but as I mentioned above, I want the editors to be able to include or attach a photo or multiple photos with each article.  Would I do this via a custom field or would I do this by making calls to the photo gallery?

And, I have their hosting on a temporary domain right now.  If I install EE on that domain and build the site out…will it be a pain to switch over the domain later?

Thanks!

Switching over the domain name shouldn’t be much of a problem.  I build using the IP addy pretty often, then switch everything over in maybe 10 minutes once I switch dns.  One thing that’s handy- use EE {path=} links rather than hard coding urls (they’ll change automatically when you change settings).  I also create a few user defined globals if I need a quick link to image folders, etc.  With that approach, you just change the global and you’re done changing the paths.  Then it’s just a matter of a few configuration settings and any weblog paths hard coded in ‘Admin- Weblog Admin- Weblog Management’ (such as the per weblog search urls and such).  10 minute job- max.

There are a number of ways to handle photos- depending on the site.  You can upload all photos to the gallery and then relate a specific gallery entry to a weblog entry- see relationships.  It’s not my usual method, but I’ve done it where appropriate.  Only negative- you’ll need to create as many custom relationship fields as you could have related photos- one field per photo.

Another thing I’ve done- have an ‘images’ weblog.  Each image is a single entry.  Those can then be related to the ‘regular’ entries.  Then when I show the regular entries, I use reverse relationships to show all of the images related to that entry.  Or- you could do it via shared categories, if that made sense in a given instance.

Of course, you can also directly upload images to the weblog article- put them inside the article where desired or put each in a custom field- or all of them in a single custom field.  You’ll want to set up some file upload preferences to handle uploads via the weblog interface (one is already there by default).

But to boil it down- there isn’t necessarily a ‘right’ way- the needs of the particular site will determine how you set things up.

Confused yet 😉

Nope, not confused yet at all!  Yet… 😉

Thanks so much for your help, everyone.

Another thing I’ve done- have an ‘images’ weblog.  Each image is a single entry.  Those can then be related to the ‘regular’ entries.  Then when I show the regular entries, I use reverse relationships to show all of the images related to that entry.

Robin…Very timely…Thanks for jogging my memory. Hadn’t used reverse relationships yet so it wasn’t my first thought. Needed to set something like this up today where an entry would have anywhere from 1 to 10 images. Makes for a very messy Publish form if you need 10 image fields. Especially when each also need a caption and photographer attribution. Works like a champ, at least on first blush. The only downside is the author needs to work in two different weblogs. Not a problem with this client though.

Ok…now I’m confused.  This can be moved if you feel it appropriate, since this is no longer a “pre-sales” question.  I’ve purchased my commercial copy 😉

I’ve tried to use the relationship method you described above (an images weblog).

Here’s my setup:

I have an “Interviews” weblog set up with all of my custom fields in it.
I then set up an “Images” weblog with two custom fields: images_relationship and images_body.  The images_relationship custom field is the one that I’ve assigned the relationship to…and it relates to the Interviews weblog.
Everything works to this point, as when I go to publish an entry in “Images”, the relationship select box appears with the entries in my “Interviews” weblog.
I use the upload file feature to place my photo into the images_body field.

I must be screwing up the syntax in my template.  Here’s what’s in there:

<div class="article-photo">
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="interviews"}
{related_entries id="images_relationship"}
{images_body}
{/related_entries}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

I realize I’ll have to put a conditional in there when this is all said and done in the event that an article doesn’t have an associated photo…but something’s amiss with my code there.  When I view source, it’s not spitting out the img tag, which makes me think that I’m not calling the weblog entry the right way.  I even followed along with the related entries docs twice :-(.

Thanks in advance for your help!

In that scenario, you need reverse-related…
—————

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="blog" entry_id="10"}

{blog_headline}

{blog_body}

{reverse_related_entries weblog="gallery" sort="asc" orderby="title"}
{gallery_image}
{gallery_caption}
{/reverse_related_entries}

{/exp:weblog:entries}

—————

Excellent.  That works.  We’re almost there!  I can’t get it to loop through all of the related photos though.  I tried changing the limit, but again I think it’s a syntax issue on my part…

Any thoughts?

Again, thanks so much.  The EE community has been so awesome thus far!

Without seeing your code, it’s hard to tell. In my test example I’m pulling one weblog entry (id10) and it gets all the related images.