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Your fantastic customer service and excellent software have now made you my CMS of choice!  I’ll be purchasing the most expensive license shortly.  I just had a quick question.  I’m pretty tech savvy but just looking around the software was somewhat confusing.  Using all of the documents here (and the forums) would I likely be able to customize my own site pretty well without being a coder?  I plan on paying a company to professionally design my site but I figure the more work I do in the beginning, the cheaper their part will be and I don’t want to pay them for something I could have done myself with a little elbow grease (plus I would be learning the software better).  Thanks for your input!

Do you have a few hours or days to learn the basics of HTML and CSS, if you don’t know them already? That’s really all it takes to put together your basic idea. Plus, there are lots of free templates out there that you can easily convert. Then you can turn a designer loose on it and end up with a fantastic looking, easy to navigate, SE and user friendly site. The basics are easy, its the details (cross-browser CSS compatibility, and good design) that are difficult. There’s no reason that you can’t get it started yourself. In fact, I think you ought to have a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS if for no other reason than being able to tweak the design yourself.

My site could use a designer, but I’m not willing to pay one at this point and they don’t seem willing to do it pro bono.  :cheese:

I’ve done some HTML and a bit of CSS, I’ve also made custom Invision Power Board skins.  If that’s all it takes and there are free templates then I think I’m set.

If you haven’t already, take a look at Boyink’s tutorial. Right there in chapter 1, he shows where you can get a free template and then make it work in EE.

I’m a newbie to EE also and just purchased the full license, and have been trying to weed my way through getting it implemented the past few weeks.  Like many CMS’s, the user submitted documentation is helpful, but has a lot of gaping holes, and the couple of EE video tutorials are laughable.

I’ve also been checking out Boyink’s tut’s, but be warned they’re extremely text heavy and somewhat confusing.  I’ve managed to get maybe one or two bits of info there, and have frankly given up trying to sort through that site.

Veerle’s Blog has been the most useful so far.  She doesn’t have a ton of tut’s, but the one’s she does have are very well presented and thorough.  She’s also a great designer, so she approaches it from the designers perspective… very helpful for me.

As long as you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS, you should be able to start figuring it out.  Just remember that ‘templates’ are your HTML pages, and ‘weblogs’ are just the data containers.  Whoever decided they should use the term ‘weblog’ for this should be banned from earth.  That term alone, in how it’s used on the backend, makes for unnecessary confusion in the administration.  Other than that, this forum is about the best place for any road blocks.

For as much as they’re charging for this thing, it’s time they got some detailed how-to videos online, with a complete index like Lynda.com.

Goooood luck.

Your fantastic customer service and excellent software have now made you my CMS of choice!  I’ll be purchasing the most expensive license shortly.  I just had a quick question.  I’m pretty tech savvy but just looking around the software was somewhat confusing.  Using all of the documents here (and the forums) would I likely be able to customize my own site pretty well without being a coder?  I plan on paying a company to professionally design my site but I figure the more work I do in the beginning, the cheaper their part will be and I don’t want to pay them for something I could have done myself with a little elbow grease (plus I would be learning the software better).  Thanks for your input!

There is a lot of information out there on EE, the problem is it is scattered all over the place.  So it gets overwhelming when you are trying to figure it out.  I got EE around end of December and have been working on my new site (more advanced than some, less advanced than some) and I am still working on it.  But I only have worked 4-5 hours a week on it, and there is a bit of a learning curve.

I would highly recommend having someone do it, unless this is what you do or you feel very comfortable with HTML/CSS and have coding instincts, it is just going to take you too much time and a lot of frustration.

But it won’t come cheap either.