Thread

So I’ve watched your tutorials and read much of the user guide but still have some questions.

I understand that Weblogs are simply containers for info.  Templates decide how these weblogs are presented on the page.

But if I’m building all my pages in CSS/XHTML, how do I get my CSS styles to impact the page.  When I create a new template, and put in my HTML for the page, do I simply include a reference to my CSS files in the top of my template? 

Do I include say a class, and then the expression engine tags within that class tag rather than the content itself?  If so, then I should go about building my site as I normally would, however all my content would just be changed to weblog tags correct?

If there is some more I should read about this, please point me in that direction.  I very sold on your product but I need to understand better how to go about building my site. 

Thanks.

Another followup…

Can you describe the EE ecommerce plugin?  Does it allow for recieving credit card payments from my page, or do I need to accept those through Pay Pal or another 3rd party?

Hi, Dev707—Welcome to our community!

Yes, you can include the stylesheet information in the same way.  ExpressionEngine can store CSS Templates as well, and you can use the stylesheet variable to pull them in if you prefer.  So you have a few options.  See Linking to stylesheets.

And yes, essentially you should build the site the same as you normally would; and once you have it set up, you use EE Tags to pull in dynamic data, styled however you wish with your own CSS.

You might check out the default templates to see how they handle it.  There are also two ongoing series currently, one by myself about Dissecting the Default Templates and one by our community member Boyink, about Building an EE Site.

The Simple Commerce module is a simple way to enable Paypal for your sites, so yes, you would accept credit card payments via PayPal. You can read about it here and in the docs. =)