Thread

I’m working with a client on a city schools network. I highly recommended the use of Expression Engine because of the power that it affords. I’m currently implementing it in EE, and I was walking him through the process of creating new pages with the pages module, linking the pages together, etc.

Basically, he seems really really nervous. It’s coming across as very technical and difficult. And he’s the main site administrator. We’re going to be creating accounts for other people to add, edit, and delete content - people like teachers, who may not be internet saavy.  He’s said repeatedly he’s willing to just get off of Expression Engine and start using FrontPage or Dreamweaver to maintain the site, and I’m trying to convince him that this is the better route.

Basically he’s worried about the HTML knowledge that’s somewhat required for entering in new content. Such as header tags that I have styled up, and customized unordered lists and stuff like that.

For example, there’s a page entry that looks like this:

<h4>Departments</h4>
<p>            <ul class="links"><br />
                                <br />
                <li><a href="http://{path=information/special_education/}">Special Education Departments</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Technology Department</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Other Information</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Area/Local Links</a></li><br />
            </ul><br />
            <br />
            </p><h4>Parent Information</h4>
<p>            <ul class="links"><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">School Calendars</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">School Improvement Plans</a></li><br />
                <li class="document"><a href="http://index.html">TCAP and Gateway Testing Schedule</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Report Card on 2005 State Schools</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Tennessee Curriculum Standards</a></li><br />
                <li class="document"><a href="http://index.html">Notification of unsafe school choice options</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Admission of Suspended or Expelled Students</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Student Goals and Objectives/Vision (coming soon)</a></li><br />
                <li><a href="http://index.html">Parent's Right to Know</a></li><br />
            </ul>

That seems to make him very unsettled and I’m trying to put him at ease, but I’m not sure how to do it. I plan on creating a help guide to walk people through the basic HTML tags they need to know and the CSS classes they can use, and how to navigate and work with EE.

Does anyone have any advice/thoughts/words of encouragement for me? Am I wrong to be pushing EE on them?

P.S. This is not a paying client, I’m working for free for them as part of my senior project in IT.

What I try to do?  Especially if the client is not comfortable with html?  Handle everything I possibly can via the templates so about all they enter is straight text into form fields- fields with very clear directions.  And I wouldn’t bother with having them use pages- I don’t see the need.

So basically?  If I have a header that needs to have a special class?  I make a field for just the header- and I handle the styling in the template.  Or if I want stuff to link to each other?  I might setup a relationship field- or I might use categories- or I might even use a custom field.  Then I’d let the templates and my code handle the job of putting in all the links.  Now- not dead sure how doable that is on this site- but given your client, I’d try to flat avoid anything other than them typing things right in.  And I’d focus on how I could structure things so that the heavy lifting is done in the templates and they’re never aware that it’s happening.

Which- kinda vague advice, but it depends a lot on the site how you can set things up to make data entry idiot proof.

I still have to meet the first client whose brain did not melt at the prospect of learning HTML 😊
My advice would to simplify, simplify, simplify. Set up EE so all they have to do is add content. Allowing unprepared end-users access to HTML, classes etc… is a recipe for disaster.
Have you looked at something like Markdown? They might find it easier to learn…

Definitely ditch the Pages module, and figure out how to implement navigation so it gets built dynamically.

I’d never unleash a client on a setup that required them to edit a list like that to add links to a new page - EE provides so many ways to do this dynamically and it’s really one of the big benefits of using a CMS at all.

Ok, thanks for the advice. I’ll have to look in greater depth into the custom fields. I didn’t think there would be a way to generate an unordered list.

I cannot fathom a simpler way to link static pages together without using the {path=/page/} syntax though.

Here are four ways to build navigation based on unordered lists dynamically without the Pages Module, or any other 3rd party module.  It uses the url_title_path method for creating the links which is essentially as simple as the {path=/page/} method.

Textile is what I use with clients for helping them format their content. I like Textile a little more than Markdown because Textile allows for adding classes which gives me even more formatting options. That way I can set up the css and allow the client to add the specific class they need. Here is a simple example:

// CSS
.red {font-color: red;}

// Textile Formatting (This is what the client would type.)  
h2(red). Welcome to my site!

// Resulting HTML
<h2 class="red">Welcome to my site!</h2>

And it handles the basics very well too:

// Textile using bold, italic, and a link
The *big brown fox* jumped on the _chance_ to work with "ExpressionEngine":http://www.expressionengine.com.

// Resulting HTML
The <strong>big brown fox</strong> jumped on the <em>chance</em> to work with <a href="http://www.expressionengine.com">ExpressionEngine</a>.

It’s not the most elegant solution but it does make things more manageable for clients. Perhaps EE v2 will address some of the control panels shortcomings.

I second the use of Textile. Although using TinyMce you can apparently limit what a client can do and therefore limit the damage a wysiwyg editor creates. I haven’t personally found Textile to ever be lacking except in obscure cases.

I second the use of Textile. Although using TinyMce you can apparently limit what a client can do and therefore limit the damage a wysiwyg editor creates. I haven’t personally found Textile to ever be lacking except in obscure cases.

True (and same for Markdown). I just recently did a site where the client just had to have Tiny installed and it reminded me again just how far wysiwyg editors still have to go before the code they produce is really tight and clean.

Every once in awhile I check to see how the “What you see is what you MEAN”:http://www.wymeditor.org/en/ editor is doing. Although I doubt its ready for DaveJay’s project.

How do you guys handle linking to other pages from the body text from the clients perspective?

Well, I am coming from a Textpattern background where I could simply do a

"internal link":/some-section/some-article-name

, and then there was a plugin developed to help clients find those pages and insert the links in the pages, it would even change if the page changed url (as long as it had the same id). However, for EE, I don’t know. I personally recommend that clients use a tabbed browser and copy paster urls where needed.

The main thing though, is that I tend to set a reasonably high expectation on the competency of my clients so that if they feel that they are not competent in that area they should hire or train someone to be competent in that area rather than find a technology that will somehow meet them at the lowest rung. Expectations can be HUGE here.

What happened to the page width?!