Thread

Hello,

I’m really enthusiastic about giving Expression Engine a go for managing our websites (currently 5)!  What I’ve seen so far is great.  Right now I’m in the planning stages of this major rehaul and could really use some help figuring out if EE can do some of the things my organization would like it to:

(1) We maintain a listing of member-submitted content and would like to be able to allow members to propose edits on each other’s content (a simple “edit this page” button on every page) and all these “proposed changes” would be moderated by our editor.  I was thinking there might be a way to do this using entry workflows, but I can’t quite wrap my head around how it would work.  Alternatively, is there a bug-tracker plug-in that we could use for proposing edits/bugs?

(2) We would like to use tags for entries across the board but would like to specify a list of tags for members to choose from when entering their content.  On our current site, we have a whole bunch of checkboxes.  I’ve been previewing EE and noticed that I wasn’t able to create custom fields checkboxes so I’m wondering, is there a way to achieve the same affect in EE? Maybe using text clouds instead?

(3) We would like to be able to share content between two sites so that content posted to the “news” section of our non-membership driven site can also appear in the “news” section of our membership-driven site, but not the other way around (member-submitted content appearing on the non-membership site).  Is this possible?

(4) We would like to customize the look of the entry editing/publishing pages for certain member groups.  Our membership-driven site has a certain look and we don’t want to confuse our members with something that is too different from what we have now.  Possible?

(5) We have articles on our membership-driven site and would like to have a good workflow for article editing.  I understand there are entry workflows but is there a way to keep all the drafts of an entry in EE in case we need to go backwards a version?  Is there a way to log comments on an entry—I’m guessing perhaps having a separate custom field for “Editor Comments”?

(6) Also regarding articles, is there a way to build in a word counter (sort of like the characters remaining counter on these forums) into the entry editing page?  It would help our editor to be able to check on the word count of the article without copying and pasting into word.

(7) Is there a way to integrate EE and PHPList?  In other words, we’d like to be able to easily send out a newsletter to a particular member group, for example.  And regarding member groups, can one user be a member of several groups?

Thanks very much in advance for any answers you can provide on these subjects.  I’ve been searching these forums a lot in the past few weeks but if I’ve missed an existing thread on these topics please feel free to direct me to it!

Thanks again,
Jen

I’m really enthusiastic about giving Expression Engine a go for managing our websites (currently 5)!  What I’ve seen so far is great.  Right now I’m in the planning stages of this major rehaul and could really use some help figuring out if EE can do some of the things my organization would like it to:

Hi Jen,

Have you guys already purchased a license? It sounds like you have. If so, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with the license number so we can get you access to technical support and the other resources available to paid license holders. That will be a much better way to get answers to your questions then posting in the pre-sales forum.

We can provide you with general answers in pre-sales but you’ll want to set yourself up with tech support to really dig into these types of things with our staff and the community.

(1) We maintain a listing of member-submitted content and would like to be able to allow members to propose edits on each other’s content (a simple “edit this page” button on every page) and all these “proposed changes” would be moderated by our editor.  I was thinking there might be a way to do this using entry workflows, but I can’t quite wrap my head around how it would work.  Alternatively, is there a bug-tracker plug-in that we could use for proposing edits/bugs?

There are various solutions to what you describe above. It will depend on the specifics of what you need.

There isn’t a bug-tracker plug-in but you can configure a weblog to act like a bug-tracker (its what we do for example).

(2) We would like to use tags for entries across the board but would like to specify a list of tags for members to choose from when entering their content.  On our current site, we have a whole bunch of checkboxes.  I’ve been previewing EE and noticed that I wasn’t able to create custom fields checkboxes so I’m wondering, is there a way to achieve the same affect in EE? Maybe using text clouds instead?

I don’t know a way to accomplish exactly what you describe above. You could use categories instead of “tags” as categories would be predefined by admins and you can restrict members from adding new ones.

(3) We would like to be able to share content between two sites so that content posted to the “news” section of our non-membership driven site can also appear in the “news” section of our membership-driven site, but not the other way around (member-submitted content appearing on the non-membership site).  Is this possible?

If the Sites are both running off the same EE installation the above is certainly possible. You can accomplish the above with the Multiple Site Manager for example.

(4) We would like to customize the look of the entry editing/publishing pages for certain member groups.  Our membership-driven site has a certain look and we don’t want to confuse our members with something that is too different from what we have now.  Possible?

Certainly. One approach would be to use the Stand-Alone-Entry-Form and customize it for each Member Group.

(5) We have articles on our membership-driven site and would like to have a good workflow for article editing.  I understand there are entry workflows but is there a way to keep all the drafts of an entry in EE in case we need to go backwards a version?  Is there a way to log comments on an entry—I’m guessing perhaps having a separate custom field for “Editor Comments”?

You can save Revisions for each entry and revert back to an earlier revision. You could combine this with a “Editor Comments” field like you describe.

(6) Also regarding articles, is there a way to build in a word counter (sort of like the characters remaining counter on these forums) into the entry editing page?  It would help our editor to be able to check on the word count of the article without copying and pasting into word.

I’m not aware of something like this but there is probably a Javascript solution available somewhere.

(7) Is there a way to integrate EE and PHPList?  In other words, we’d like to be able to easily send out a newsletter to a particular member group, for example.  And regarding member groups, can one user be a member of several groups?

Integrating EE with PHPList would require customization. You can send email to specific Member Groups through the Control Panel. A Member can only belong to a single Member Group.

Hi Leslie,

Thanks very much for your reply!  Your answers were just what I needed.  I have not yet purchased a license but am planning to do so next week. 

Thanks again!

Jen