Thread

Hello all,

I was wondering if using EE for my CMS needs is the perfect match.

I am currently designing a full featured website mockup in PSD.

Eventually I will port this to XHTML + CSS. I can use a Web consultant for this
or maybe, even better, I can take the challenge and do it myself.

In any case, once I have this website I am not sure how I will combine it with
EE, I don’t know if what I actually need is a EE template so it would be instead
porting the PSD mockup to a EE website template.

What is your suggestion? Where can I start? I want something awesome and I am
ready to buy the full commercial version of EE if that is the right choice.

Just tell me how.

Thank you,
Jorge Bucaran

Hi Jorge,

Well the quick answer to this would be that the site that you are going to be building isn’t dependent upon any version of ExpressionEngine or for that matter any certain CMS system.

ExpressionEngine is by far and without a doubt the most easiest CMS system to be able to take any template you design and get it working with the least amount of fuss.

If you have something designed in Photoshop and you can then get that into being a HTML template then you can definitely use it from within ExpressionEngine no matter which version you go for.

If you can’t convert your PSD file into the required HTML version on your own then there are many people on the forums here who could do that sort of thing for you or you could contact people on the Pro Network who also have experience in this kind of thing.

Hopefully that helps a bit but just to let you know that you can definitely get something awesome looking but just remember that ExpressionEngine actually makes things easier when you come to the template side of things but that shouldn’t be your only reason for purchasing it.

Best wishes,

Mark

The beauty of EE is that it can do almost anything you want it to do. I take my photoshop design, slice it, code it to html/css and then port in the EE tags.

You should easily be able to do the same thing, but like Mark said the pro network can help you if you get stuck.

So my number one task is to finish my design and XHTML+CSS-ize it.

For one moment, let’s assume I already have it. Now what?

How do I bring both worlds together? For example looking at the templates section within EE (I already downloaded and installed it on my localhost) shows custom EE tags and conditional [If] tags and other elements like {assign_variable:my_weblog="default_site"} ...

My website will evidently not have these for starters, do I have to add this myself? (that means I need to know what it is 😛)

J

Since I’m fairly new to EE I think I can answer this questions simply ^^; From my n00bish view.

For a page were you have content, like the view more page for example, you’ll start with a simple tag:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="news_articles" limit="1" status="Badge|Open"}

and close it with:

{/exp:weblog:entries}

But in between, were you have your placeholder for the title you will put:

{title}

or the body/content:

{article_body}

It’s incredibly simple.  As EE just looks for tags, if you have a template with -no- EE tags, it just serves it, but without EE inputting/changing a thing.

A work flow example would be:

Make static HTML/CSS page -> put page in Expression Engine -> make sure it runs (staticly) -> and weblog & applicable tags -> test -> Jump up & Down with excitement that it works!

The EE documentation is the best I’ve ever seen for any CMS (I’ve tried many, and -never- been able to make a template from scratch till EE, now could just be experience gained, but other systems were to complicated for my design orientated mentality)

I Recommend watching Episode 1 of Pragmatics Screencast (http://www.pragprog.com/screencasts/v-riexp/building-a-dynamic-website-with-expressionengine).  Not much need to follow along, but will explain the basics of the tags, and is also based off of a static site -> dynamic EE.

Hey!

Thank you all! I will watch that video and get started with EE!

J