Thread

Well, here we are again, moving on down the default index template.  However, before we begin, I would like to draw everyone’s attention to the new navigation that we implemented to peruse the “series” types of articles on our blog.  If you head over to our blog and look in the right column, you’ll see all of the series.  If you click on one, such as Dissecting the Default Templates you will see the list of articles in the order that they were posted.  This will allow everyone to go through the tutorials at their own pace, in the appropriate order.  Pretty neat, eh?

Remember, the dissections do build on what has been learned in previous articles, so it is important to make sure you grasp those concepts. If you don’t, post in the forum threads! 

So, last week, we discussed Member Links and Conditionals, this week, we’re going to have a quick look at the Most Recent Entries display.

Onwards!

Beautiful series of articles! But too brief for complete novice like me. I’m dreaming about something that can be like… step by step “complete idiot guide into EE”.

Hi, Alex.  This approach is only one way to look at ExpressionEngine, and is certainly not the right approach for everyone; but it is for quite a few.  You might also supplement this with Boyink’s tutorials and Jambor EE‘s ongoing tutorial.

In the mean-time, I would love to have some feedback: what questions do you still have? What is missing that would make this more helpful for you? 

Thanks!

Thanks for the links, Lisa, but your articles here are much more useful in studying EE, imho, because you’re not trying to teach me how to compose a web site in general, but explaining the way how EE works. That exactly what I expecting from the company staff. I don’t need a schoolbook for webdesign, because I know how to do it. What I really need is a platform’s specific info. And I found it in your articles as well.

As for what is missing… well, I believe the templates’ code itself can be much more readable. For now I should make a heroic efforts just trying to separate a template’s code into the logical blocks, that I can use in nested subtemplates. Frankly, I surprised why not it was not done so far. I believe the ability to fully control templates is a main advantage of EE. But how I can learn the logic of default templates here, when cryptography of every one of them I should study under microscope? Why not at least make the explanation’s marks in code? As for tutorials… I’d like to see a step by step tutorial for making a simple site, using nested templates and weblogs, where the final code of site’s index page looks like this:

{html_head}
    <title>Page Title | ExpressionEngine</title>
{favicon}
{stylesheets}
{js}
{metatags}
{reverse_links}
{html_head_end}

{masthead}

<div id="header">
{embed="global/login"}
    {header_logo}
</div><!-- end #header -->

{embed="global/sitemap"}
{embed="global/simple_search"}
{embed="global/site_nav" loc="location"}

{wrapper_column_open}
            {embed=templates/pageNav}

            <div id="content">
            </div><!-- end #content -->
            
{wrapper_column_close}

{embed="global/footer"}

{embed="global/copyright"}

{html_close}

But… dreams, sweet dreams so far…

[...]
If you head over to our blog and look in the right column, you’ll see all of the series.  If you click on one, such as Dissecting the Default Templates you will see the list of articles in the order that they were posted.  This will allow everyone to go through the tutorials at their own pace, in the appropriate order.  Pretty neat, eh?
[...]

Yes it’s really pretty neat! If I can catch a golden fish and she’ll offer me to carry out any one of my wishes, the only my wish will be to know how exactly you made that “pretty neat” stuff you mentioned here.

Hi, alex—I do, eventually, hope to branch out into some of the more complicated areas of ExpressionEngine; however, I would also recommend reading Behind the Curtains - which does cover a lot of the code you posted in your snippet.

That said, my article series is intended for complete beginners in ExpressionEngine - as a jumping off point; it’s more of a “laying the groundwork”, if you will. 

Unfortunately, there will never be any tutorial that will cover every possible type of template combination; ExpressionEngine is simply too flexible for that.  I think that the series posts (Behind the Curtains, Semantics, and Dissecting) are really an excellent groundwork to begin with, their goal is not to instruct on a particular site; but to give you the tools that will enable you to build your own site in ExpressionEngine.

As for tutorials… I’d like to see a step by step tutorial for making a simple site, using nested templates and weblogs, where the final code of site’s index page looks like this

That’s roughly the approach I’ve taken in these tutorials.

[...]
That’s roughly the approach I’ve taken in these tutorials.

Thanks you, Boyink! Lisa already gave the link to your tutorial up here. I read it. It is not exactly the same, ‘cause my example code up here made mostly using custom, user-defined global variables. But, anyway, your tutorial is a good staff and truly helpful! Thanks! Though, frankly, I’d rather prefer not to simplify this approach, and use not striped template (you provide there), but default EE template instead.

Well…honestly - due to the flexibility of EE -  you’re not likely going to find a tutorial with your *exact* approach in mind.  Flip out a few of my embedded templates for your global variables and you’re pretty much there…;)

Well…honestly - due to the flexibility of EE -  you’re not likely going to find a tutorial with your *exact* approach in mind…

I’m not talking about “*exact* approach in mind”. All I mean is to make default setup of EE just a little bit customer friendly. For now EE offers us a bunch of CSS-HTML templates without any sight of understandable structure in it, not mention even simple explanation’s marks in code. As a result, completely novice people in EE, like myself, should find information all over around. For example, I’ve got several dozens web-designers among my friends in Russia. All of them agree that EE is a practically best CMS in the world today. But in their projects they’re still using Joomla and such. Why? They need solution today. No, of course it can’t be “*exact* approach in mind” for everyone, but why not to make instead of single index template several skeleton’s templates working together practically without any modifications in every possible projects? Or at list why not to make a new “series” types of articles on EE blog about this very approach, step by step, from very beginning… 🙄

Well…honestly - due to the flexibility of EE -  you’re not likely going to find a tutorial with your *exact* approach in mind…

I’m not talking about “*exact* approach in mind”. All I mean is to make default setup of EE just a little bit customer friendly. For now EE offers us a bunch of CSS-HTML templates without any sight of understandable structure in it, not mention even simple explanation’s marks in code. As a result, completely novice people in EE, like myself, should find information all over around. For example, I’ve got several dozens web-designers among my friends in Russia. All of them agree that EE is a practically best CMS in the world today. But in their projects they’re still using Joomla and such. Why? They need solution today. No, of course it can’t be “*exact* approach in mind” for everyone, but why not to make instead of single index template several skeleton’s templates working together practically without any modifications in every possible projects? Or at list why not to make a new “series” types of articles on EE blog about this very approach, step by step, from very beginning… 🙄

I’m a bit lost in the language here…sorry….but if the thought is that a few skeleton templates could be used as the basis for “every possible project” then that’s really not possible given the vast variety of different sites that EE is or can be used for.

[...]
I’m a bit lost in the language here…sorry….but if the thought is that a few skeleton templates could be used as the basis for “every possible project” then that’s really not possible given the vast variety of different sites that EE is or can be used for.

Really? How about html headers, reverse links, members login stuff and such? Everything already presented in structured way as separate blocks, but completely lost in unreadable templates without explanation’s marks - where exactly each block started and ended. As for my language… sorry, English is not my native language, and even not a second one! :sick:

HTML headers?  XHTML Strict or transitional?  Or HTML 4?  Depends on the requirements of the site.

Reverse links - as in a blogroll type thing or reverse relationships?  Either way - they don’t get used on every site.

Member login?  Haven’t used it on 90% of the sites that I’ve done.

This is the issue - as soon as you start to define standard templates you start to define an intended use that isn’t going to work for everyone.

[....]
This is the issue - as soon as you start to define standard templates you start to define an intended use that isn’t going to work for everyone.

Agree. Resume – nobody can teach you how to swim. You can understand everything theoretically, but you got to dive in a water yourself in order to really swim.  So, going to read everything in a row for start. 😛