Thread

I’m an EE newbie (but a very experienced web and database developer). I am about to create my first site with EE. My site has a landing page and two subsites. The subsites will use the same template but have some menus that are different and some the same (with the same content). Is this possible with the main EE product or do I need Multiple Site Manager?

Any guidance in how to organize my content is appreciated. All my pages are just plain content pages - no blogs!

Thanks,
Carol

To follow-up… I am using the demo site and am using the Pages Module to create the content pages.

You can do it without MSM, although that method is now unsupported.

My personal rule of thumb is to use the unsupported method if the sites are to be closely integrated and to use MSM otherwise.

Hi, Thoms, Welcome to the forums!

Markus has a good point.  But I’d like to ask also - what differentiates the sub-sites? Are they subdomains? Different subjects?  What is different about them?

The sub-sites have about 50% content the exact same (same header and footer, same top nav menus items and page content with 75% of left nav differing on each sub-site). The overall template is the same, it is just the left nav menu items and their page content that differs.

So ideally for the pages that are they same (same content and menu item) I only want one entry (page) in the database. I think I will need nested templates to pull this off where the outer template holds everything except the left nav and then I nest templates for the left nav.

What is the unsupported method your guys are mentioning? Since I’m a newbie to EE, I’d prefer to do my first site without MSM so I can get the basics down first.

I don’t see why you need either the MSM or the other method for this, to be honest.  This kind of thing can be done with a single installation of ExpressionEngine.  Have you worked through the Video Tutorials and Getting Started Guide?

What about the MSM do you feel that you need? I’m still not sure what you envision with subsites. Can you define what you are looking to do?

You may be right as I am trying to get my head around the templates and pages I may be making this harder than it is.

I have a landing page: mysite.com/index.html

From there you go to either site A or site B,
mysite.com/siteA/index.php
mysite.com/siteB/index.php

or it could be

mysite.com/index.php/siteA
mysite.com/index.php/siteB

I’m flexible on the url structure.

Both A and B have the same look and feel. The only difference is in the left nav and the content on the sub-site home pages:

siteA has: menu1, menu2, menu4, menu5
siteB has: menu3, menu4, menu5, menu6

Each menu item displays a single page. So menu4 is on both A and B and displays page4 in both sub-sites. I only want to enter page4 in the database once.

Is this possible with nesting templates? Each left nav menu item is its own tiny little template that holds one menu item and the page points to that template? But this is where I get confused. I don’t think I understand nested templates enough yet.

I have gone thru the tutorials and read the User Guide. I have the hosted demo installed
and I am working with that. I understand how to create Page with the Page Module. Each page has a template. I need the template to differ so I can have different left nav items. What is the best way to achieve that?

Thanks so much.

Well, you don’t nest templates with ExpressionEngine - you have template groups, and templates inside them, and that’s it.  I personally think you can do this without any method for multiple sites, by simply using weblogs and two template groups. You may need to refine it with some conditionals for your embeds.  I’d recommend starting by building SiteA, and see how things go. You can add SiteB in any method later down the line.

OK, that is good advise. Are you confident there is a way to add siteB and have pages that are common to both sites and only have the common pages entered one time in the database?

I have to “sell” EE as the technology to use to the client tomorrow and I want to make sure I can deliver what they want.

Thanks for all your help.

Hi, thoms - yes, I’m confident that you can do this.  You’ll want to consider this as you map out your site, and note also that ExpressionEngine is a template based system, not a Page based system.

OK, Thanks. Can you briefly describe the strategy I should use as I layout my site? I think if you point me in the right direction, I’ll be off and running. I’ll looking for the next step to get beyond just using the Page Module to display one entry in one template that defines the entire site.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, that really is something that is beyond the scope of these forums to handle.  You would need to map out how you want your site to function, and then see how you would implement that in ExpressionEngine.  Because EE is so flexible, there are often several ways to tackle any given question.

Again, I would suggest working through the tutorials and building out one of the sites so that you gain some familiarity with how ExpressionEngine works.  That will help you to build a sane, scalable solution to handle your site well into the future.