Thread

I am a brand new adventurer of CMS tools- I have researched Joomla, and heard great things about it, but I have several specific questions for anyone who has ever used joomla or expression engine…

1) can i create my “template” in rapidweaver (which is what our site is currently built on) and add content through the cms? (which leads to the next question…)

2) can i use the content that i added, on a per user basis- like set up several different user groupings, and each user grouping has specific content appear on their page- all based on login? (this would be used to single source the login and the information, i would just “check a box” to activate specific info)

3) can i create a php login page to make the person register, and select what type of user they are, and then have that php send to the cms to tell them how to register that user, and what info to allow them to see? (this way i dont have to approve and select content on a per/user basis)

Thanks,
drowning in a sea of tools…..

Hey stilearning - welcome to the forums!

1) can i create my “template” in rapidweaver (which is what our site is currently built on) and add content through the cms? (which leads to the next question…)

You can use any HTML editor to edit your ExpressionEngine templates, by using the feature to save templates as text files.  However, I think that you’ll need to step back and change your thinking on the model used.  The templates in ExpressionEngine are purely for presentation, whereas mostly the data will be stored as weblog entries (or gallery, wiki, forum, etc) and pulled into you templates dynamically.  This means that you don’t add content through Rapidweaver, but through ExpressionEngine.  The design would be done in Rapidweaver or your editor of choice.

2) can i use the content that i added, on a per user basis- like set up several different user groupings, and each user grouping has specific content appear on their page- all based on login? (this would be used to single source the login and the information, i would just “check a box” to activate specific info)

You can set up membership groups in ExpressionEngine and each member belongs to a group.  Yes, you can show content based on membership group or individual member. 

3) can i create a php login page to make the person register, and select what type of user they are, and then have that php send to the cms to tell them how to register that user, and what info to allow them to see? (this way i dont have to approve and select content on a per/user basis)

This can all be done but some is not out of the box and will need some customizations.

Perhaps I could ask what your ultimate goal is with this project?

The main purpose of our wanting to write a php to “communicate” with the cms is:

we want to single source all of the items that we put into a “intranet” portal- built with several audiences in mind- our sales team, customers, and so forth. There is overlapping content for specific groupings of users, but we do not want to manually micro-manage user capabilities. I can create the php script outside of the tool, I just need to know will it be able to communicate with the tool in the fashion i am asking for?

So when you say “template” does that include the header and footer graphics, and sizing for the page, or is it just the css properties associated with the page- ie. the link colors, text attributes ect.?

How does it ultimately work when you “turn on” or “turn off” content- is the content displayed in its own link bar or is that something that i can customize?

Thanks!

Oh also,
What are the forum capabilities?
We have a current forum system that allows us to show/hide pieces of the forum based on groups- like we would do here for the content… does it work the same way for a forum?

Thanks!

I’m sorry, I meant of the overall project, not of a particular PHP script.  Yes, you can either use the Development API or PHP in your templates to have the communication that you need.

A template can be CSS or HTML (or XML, Static, RSS), so I mean all of those, and you can use Embeds (similar to PHP includes) for re-using template bits in other templates.

How do you mean turn on or turn off content?  You can use all sorts of filtering methods - as far as when, where, and how data is displayed? Entirely up to you.

You’re using the forum, member groups are used for permissions, so yes, you can do that.

I’d recommend trying out EE with the 30-day demo so that you can see the forum as well. =)