Thread

After going through the some of the basic tutorials, I’m considering the possibility that Expression Engine might be a good tool for making our website usable for non-technical people. I built this site for my employer, Western Pulp. I’d like to know if this would be a good project to translate into Expression Engine.

1. Will the Flash slide show banner on the homepage integrate easily?
2. Can various product display pages be ported into the gallery module? Please note that there are a variety of CSS-driven formats used because of the size of the pictures displayed. An example. And another.

My goal would be to allow non-technical users in my office to update the content and pictures without destroying the look of the site - but still allowing for the possibility of site-wide changes. I think the answers will be ‘yes’ to the questions above, but it seems that there may be too many unique pages for EE to be worth translating to. Advice would be appreciated.

1. Will the Flash slide show banner on the homepage integrate easily?

Your “flash banner” looks to be SlideShowPro which works just fine with EE.

2. Can various product display pages be ported into the gallery module? Please note that there are a variety of CSS-driven formats used because of the size of the pictures displayed. An example. And another.

You could do that with the Gallery or weblogs using custom fields. With EE you can use your own HTML/CSS so achieving the exact same format with the exact same code shouldn’t be a problem.

My goal would be to allow non-technical users in my office to update the content and pictures without destroying the look of the site - but still allowing for the possibility of site-wide changes. I think the answers will be ‘yes’ to the questions above, but it seems that there may be too many unique pages for EE to be worth translating to. Advice would be appreciated.

I’d say this is very doable in EE. If staff only need to update a few images at a time I’d likely go with weblogs + custom fields for the photos since that will be the best way to get exactly what you want, I think.

Thank you. Upon successful completion of some personal EE projects I’ve just begun, I think I’ll give it a shot. You folks have put together what appears to be a great package.

It is not just “appears”, it is a great package! Though it makes demand to learn a lot…

Hi there,

Just wanted to echo the sentiments on here. If you really need to re-design the site to make it easier for everyone to use then I whole-heartedly couldn’t recommend a better system than ExpressionEngine. If you are already a web-developer then the learning curve shouldn’t be at all steep to get your site up and running in ExpressionEngine. You have the added bonus of already having the site design (unless you are changing that) and this can be very easily placed into ExpressionEngine templates to get you up and running very quickly.

You will make the right choice if you pick ExpressionEngine. BTW do I get any credits for saying that!! 😊

Also just to say on a slight side note that your existing site is a really really nice design. Very well laid out with great thought gone into it. Well done.

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks Mark. Your compliment is much appreciated. This was my first bottom-up site after teaching myself standards-compliant coding. It doesn’t hurt that my company has an archive of great product photography to pick from.

Sean

Hi Sean,

No problem with the comment!! 😊

Really nice to see an excellent design that validates really well too!

Best wishes,

Mark