Thread

Hi, Ok need to know if the following is possible in EE about to hit the buy button:)

- Article management (can I group into categories or just level them second level)?
- Article reviews/star rating?
- Article comments?
- Forum I use is IPB, is there a way to show top 5 new post on the homepage, could that be put in to a custom EE module?
- Can EE handle the 45-50k+ uniques without lag that I get in a day (web server is dual core plenty of power plus a separate MySQL server)?
- Can I include an EE dynamic menu nav on other pages not EE, like my directory pages, is that done by an API?
- Is there a comparison between EE forum module and IPB anywhere, I can’t find it?
- Does the EE forum have dual mode (guest and member posting)
- Regarding SEO, can I have it setup like this mydomainex.com/contantus.html and not mydomainex.com/contactus, I do not like directories digging in to deep mydomainex.com/category/bikepart/newengland.html?
- Can I have unlimited web users, article submitters etc.
- Another outside integration question, how do I plug-in outside apps like movie listing or weather?

I think that should do it for now. Thanks in advance for your help:)

Let’s see:

1.  Yes, you can group into categories, multiple categories, categories can drill as deep as you need.  You can even create multiple category groups and assign more than one group to a ‘weblog/data container’.  EE’s categories are highly flexible.

2.  There isn’t a native ‘ranking’ module, but there are third party alternatives (Solspace offers one and there are others less polished).

3.  EE comes with a comment module by default.

4.  EE has it’s own integrated forum module- so that’s where most of the focus is.  However, there should be a lot of ways to include a snippet from your forum.  If it runs on a mysql db, I’d just install EE and IPB in the same database- and then you could simply use EE’s query module to pull the data directly from the db.  But like I say- there should be other alternatives.

5.  Yes- as long as you use good practices setting up your site and have the horsepower to run a dynamic site, EE can easily handle that load.  I’ll try to dig up some examples for you- there are plenty.

6.  Including an EE template outside of EE…  Would a php include do the trick?  There isn’t an API as such- though easy enough to output data in xml format, which might work.  Just depends.

7.  I don’t recall a direct comparison of the EE forum and IPB.  There are some for other CMS’s, but I don’t recall a forum comparison.  And in truth, the biggest plus for the EE forum imo is the member integration with EE as a whole.  That’s a very big one for me.

8.  EE Forums don’t allow guest posting.  I believe some folks have worked around it using a single login for all guests, but really, it’s not a great option.  Forum posting is pretty well tied into the member module.

9.  You can have as many members as you like and members can submit articles- just make sure your intended use doesn’t violate the EE license and the prohibition on running a blogging service a la MySpace etc..

10.  As to plugging in outside apps- EE has a couple of API’s for bringing in data- Blogger API, Metaweblog API- and there’s the Magpie for pulling in RSS.  There are plugins for Amazon, Tweeter, Fliker- just depends on what you want, or you can always roll your own depending on what you need.

Make sense?

Hey Robin, Thanks for the reply and answering my ton of questions:)  Would like to clarify some things.

- As far as site structure can I have a wider feel and not so deep.  In other words with the directory structure is it possible to just have it http://domainexample.com/aroundtown.html instead of http://domainexample.com/town/aroundtown.html?

- For the blogging is it ok to let people start a general blog?  I have a blog module through IPB that is outside of EE, is that ok?  I want the community feel but not a myspace thing.  It’s just an add not what the site is about at all.

- In the demo did not see how I could differentiate articles from pages, is there a difference?  Is it easy to manage articles?

Ah- I did miss that one.  As to the url structure, the short answer is ‘yes’ the long answer is ‘not so much’.  For the ‘yes’ part- EE has a Pages module which lets you specify the exact url for any single entry page.  So it would be no problem to have a url like http://domainexample.com/aroundtown.html that displays a single weblog entry.  That assumes you completely remove the index.php bit from the urls using htaccess (not hard if your server supports it, but not ‘officially supported’ because it is server dependent.  I always remove it myself.)

That said- if you want to use dynamic categories?  In other words, pages that show all entries in a given category?  And you want to be able to flip those out?  You’re about going to have to follow the standard EE structure- which is either mysite.com/index.php/template_group/Cx or mysite.com/index.php/template_group/category_indicator/category_name.  Well- under a lot of circumstances, you can ditch the template group name if you’re using the default template group’s index page.  But for complex sites, I very rarely do that.  And like I mentioned, you can likely remove the index.php bit via htaccess.

I think some folks have used htaccess to remove the template name- maybe even the category indicator.  It’s not supported if you find a way and I wouldn’t recommend it myself.  If you get too far away from the default structure it can have unintended consequences.  And even if you get it, it seems a lot of work for not a whole lot of benefit- though admittedly, that’s a matter of opinion.

It would be worth reading over understanding EE URL’s so you have a good feel for the logic behind how it all works.  My advice is to keep to the standard structure and setup your template groups to get the best combo of decent/informative/ urls and ‘out of the box’ performance.

As to personal blogs- if it seems a gray area, I’d contact sales directly and let them know the details.  In general, you’re fine allowing your members to post to a shared communal blog- lots of folks do this and it adds some nice interaction and content.  But if it’s debatable whether it’s a blogging service, sales can help you figure it out.

I’m not dead sure what you mean re: “differentiate articles from pages” - and I suspect it’s due to coming from a page based rather than an article based understanding- as well as terminology differences.  EE doesn’t really create a ‘page’ per se.  Instead, content is module and can be output just about anywhere using tags.  Based on the url, you’ll end up with different content as parameters are passed via url and EE tags use those as restrictions on what content should be displayed.  The closes EE comes to creating a ‘page’ is the pages module- but even that isn’t really a page.  It’s just a way of saying to the weblog tag- ‘when you see this url, show the info for this particular entry’- but you could be using other tags on that same template to display additional info, so it’s not like the contents of a given weblog article are the whole ‘page’.  Which- I’m not dead sure that made sense.  Heh.

Thanks for the quick reply:)

It’s a shame there is no guest posting for the forum. I think if a forum is unmoderated it can spell disaster but I have 6 good mods and they know what to do.  Really should leave it up to the owner of the site to decide, give the flexibility:)

On articles, I would love to see a site or hear from someone that set both static pages and article section on their site.  I am thinking something like articlelive.com for example.

Ok so I am still not 100% but this has gotten me a bit closer.