Thread

have a static website with about 300 pages. It’s ranked well in the Search Engines’s for many terms and I have new ideas in mind which necessitates a CMS. I’ve explored Drupal to a fair extent and I must say for a non- developer / non-geek, it’s a steep learning curve. But I love the features it offers but have been rethinking since sometimes to do a simple task it needs a lot of researching and hair splitting days.

I had posted these questions in another CMS forum. but found that I have to do a lot of work tweaking code.

My first encounter with EE sometime back and I was attracted to it simplicity (to use). Even though I don’t know PHP, I can customize certain aspects with guidance. And I love the layouting and design that can be done here.

My goal for the website was to create a community where my site visitors can form a community and contribute content to the website.

Here’s my wishlist for the website: I want to know if these can be done in EE? :

1. Convert my static website (in HTML) to a CMS-driven website. I want to retain the extensions as they are. (.html, .htm). Is this possible? (very important requirement)

2. SEO - How does SEO and SE friendly URLs work here? . Is it possible to generate URL aliases automatically. Say for instance, I create about 3 pages a day; instead of manually inserting an alias, is it possible to automatically generate a URL alias through the title or the filename?

3. Allow for categorization and subcategorization of topics / create a hierarchical structure of content?

4 . Create context sensitive menus? I don’t really know how menus are created and handled in EE.

5 .Automatic updation of a page (in a particular category) with the latest articles posted under that category / page. For example, I have a page called ‘Food Articles’ - Under this, I write about 10 articles and each time I write a new article, it should be automatically posted as links in the original page of ‘food articles’. Similarly there are many pages like these which should have an updated list of links (of articles relevant to that page) automatically displayed.

6 . Forums - I believe there is an inbuilt forum in EE (but sold as an additional component), right?

7. User generated content - I’m guessing I can have two options here - one, whenever a user wants to contribute to the site, he would have to be given access and then he can start submitting content - is this possible? two, Without a user having to login to the site, is it possible to contribute content. Many visitors to my site might not be tech-oriented so I want it to make it simple for them to contribute. The priority however remains that I have to encourage visitors to contribute to my site. Basically is submitting content to a EE site user friendly (in terms of usage of the CMS?)

8 . Image Gallery - not a priority now, but it’ll be nice if users can submit their photos and create a gallery.

9 . Videos - might be something that I want to do in the future ; would be a nice ask if they can embed videos from sites like youtube.

10. NewsLetter - I have seen a couple of snippets for creating and managing newsletters.

11. Blog - Currently I use wordpress and i don’t mind that working in conjunction with EE.

Well, that was basically my greedy wishlist…I would appreciate any suggestions on doing these. Thanks.

Let’s hit some of these:

1. Convert my static website (in HTML) to a CMS-driven website. I want to retain the extensions as they are. (.html, .htm). Is this possible? (very important requirement)

It will take some extra thought to get the .html extension.  You’ll want it in your url titles for posts and any template names that might be used w/out extra segments appended.  I probably wouldn’t do it myself- I’d either leave the current static files as they are and add new content via EE- or I’d import the static and map to new urls using htaccess.  So- yes, it would be doable.  But I tend to prefer going with EE’s standard structure.

2. SEO - How does SEO and SE friendly URLs work here? . Is it possible to generate URL aliases automatically. Say for instance, I create about 3 pages a day; instead of manually inserting an alias, is it possible to automatically generate a URL alias through the title or the filename?

I’m a little fuzzy on what you mean by ‘URL alias’- but EE does generate SEO friendly urls.  I prefer to remove the index.php - or rename it to something more meaningful.  But EE plays nicely with the SE’s.  It helps if you set it up with that in mind in the first place.

3. Allow for categorization and subcategorization of topics / create a hierarchical structure of content?

No problem- EE allows entries to be assigned to multiple categories- and allows a hierarchical category structure that nests as deeply as you need it to.  It’s highly flexible in this regard.  You can even assign multiple category groups to weblogs.

4 . Create context sensitive menus? I don’t really know how menus are created and handled in EE.

So the ‘current’ section of the navigation is highlighted- something along those lines?  It depends a bit on your main nav structure.  If it’s category based, you’d likely use the weblog categories tag, which generates a list of categories available to a given weblog.  While it doesn’t ‘auto’ highlight, using segments and conditionals, it’s easy to add it.  But really- it depends a lot on what you’re trying to do.  (I generally do have context sensitive menus- so it’s definitely doable.  How it’s done and how easy it is to do may vary.)

5 .Automatic updation of a page (in a particular category) with the latest articles posted under that category / page. For example, I have a page called ‘Food Articles’ - Under this, I write about 10 articles and each time I write a new article, it should be automatically posted as links in the original page of ‘food articles’. Similarly there are many pages like these which should have an updated list of links (of articles relevant to that page) automatically displayed.

This is default behavior, so no problems here.  You publish it?  It shows up on the site- wherever you have tags/parameters/urls such that it should.

And… Part II

6 . Forums - I believe there is an inbuilt forum in EE (but sold as an additional component), right?

Correct- EE’s forum is used here, if you want to see it in action.  It is sold as an additional module- and does require EE Pro/Personal to work- see here for more detail.

7. User generated content - I’m guessing I can have two options here - one, whenever a user wants to contribute to the site, he would have to be given access and then he can start submitting content - is this possible? two, Without a user having to login to the site, is it possible to contribute content. Many visitors to my site might not be tech-oriented so I want it to make it simple for them to contribute. The priority however remains that I have to encourage visitors to contribute to my site. Basically is submitting content to a EE site user friendly (in terms of usage of the CMS?)

There are a number of ways to allow user generated content- I prefer the standalone entry form.  They must be a logged in user and have permission to post to the weblog to add content.  So- you can have weblogs users are allowed to contribute to- and then give them access to a template with the form on it.  Very easy.  There are other options- including the Moblog- but the SAEF is my preference.  (Note- it’s against EE’s license to use it as a ‘hosted blogging service’- but having members contribute to group weblogs should be fine.  If you’re unsure on that one- sales can help clarify.)

8 . Image Gallery - not a priority now, but it’ll be nice if users can submit their photos and create a gallery.

While there is a gallery module, it’s not conducive to having a gallery for each member.  Depending on what your needs are- a shared weblog might be.

9 . Videos - might be something that I want to do in the future ; would be a nice ask if they can embed videos from sites like youtube.

Embedding vids shouldn’t be a problem- again, I’d do it via a shared weblog.  Perhaps a field to hold the vid link if there is one?

10. NewsLetter - I have seen a couple of snippets for creating and managing newsletters.

EE does have a mailing list module that might serve your needs.  If you want something more complex, I know a number of folks use Constant Contact and integrate that with EE.

11. Blog - Currently I use wordpress and i don’t mind that working in conjunction with EE.

While there’s no real reason you couldn’t keep them both up, I’d move the wordpress over to EE.  It makes more sense to me in the long run, and it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to do.

Hope that helps a bit.  EE does have a learning curve- it comes with the power and flexibility of the system.  I think it sounds like a good fit for the site, at least in general.  But it will take some time to setup a site like the above.  Have you tried EE out in practice?  If not- I’d recommend a test run.  It’s the best way to get a feel for whether EE will work for you- and for the project.

I apologize about my long list of questions; thank you for patiently answering them all. I’m clear about all the questiions but one, the first one. You say that

It will take some extra thought to get the .html extension.  You’ll want it in your url titles for posts and any template names that might be used w/out extra segments appended.  I probably wouldn’t do it myself- I’d either leave the current static files as they are and add new content via EE- or I’d import the static and map to new urls using htaccess.  So- yes, it would be doable.  But I tend to prefer going with EE’s standard structure.

So how do I keep my content as it is and match the look and feel to the new EE site? Or I copy (import them all to the EE site) and somehow display them?

The problem I see here is that the exisiting static content might not tie in with the content that I create later.

No problem- that’s what we’re here for.

OK- you’ve a couple of options on how to handle the existing info.  1. leave it as it is, do new content in EE.  In EE, just use the default url structure- which is still SE friendly.

Pro- easiest and fastest way.
Con- it really isn’t integrated- for example, if you do a search in EE, it’s not going to pull in that static info. 

Import the content- note, if it’s all static now?  This may mean doing it by hand.  Anyway- get the content into EE AND force EE to mimic the current url structure.

Now- I’d read over understanding EE URLS- it will help you get a feel for what’s required of an EE url.  Depending on your current site- it may/may not be easy to mimic the structure.  Now- you can name EE templates with an extension- i.e. my_template.html.  But keep in mind- say you name the template you use for displaying categories/multi-entries ‘cats.html’.  No problem- except, EE needs the category info appended to the template name for it to be ‘dyanmic’.  So- mysite.com/cats.html would work to show all entries- but to show just entries in category 1, you’d end up with a url like mysite.com/cats.html/C1 - which isn’t what you’re looking for.  So… maybe you use cat names and cat url titles like boots.html- ok, you name the template just cats.  Now- you don’t want to show all entries on the cats template- because then you have no .html.  But- the specific cat pages would be like cats/category/boots.html.  BUT- say that page has 1000 boot entries- you need to paginate it.  EE sticks in a Px to indicate page.  So- you’r back to a url like cats/category/boots.html/P0.

Which… is a long way of saying- trying to match it up may be doable- or it may not- but either way, it’s going to need a whole lot of thought and understanding of both your site structure and how EE works.

So-
cons: a lot of extra work and frustration;
pro: if you manage it, it’s a seemless integration and you DO have all the info in EE- so searching, commenting, etc. works site wide.

Last option- set up EE without overly worrying about matching the current url structure.  Import the data.  Map the older urls to their new EE ‘single entry’ pages via htaccess and 301 redirects.

Pro: doable, gets everything under one umbrella, doesn’t give you an aneurysm
Cons: some work to do the mapping, and importing is going to require work regardless.  But 300 entries isn’t a killer, you can do it slowly over time, and you end up with a very nice, dynamic website.  This is the approach I’d take.

That help a bit?

There is another workaround for some of your .html pages.

As long as they are single entry pages of some sort (like an about.html, contact.html), you can use the EE Pages module to do this.

Example: http://www.eehowto.com/about-us.html/

This is a link to my About Us page. There is no real about-us.html file. It just looks like there is one.

NOTE: You’d need to remove your real .html file(s) as they are replaced.