Thread

We were asked to put a blog together for a client at very short notice. The job fell to me, so with no prior experience of blogging software, and with the clock ticking, I settled on Wordpress, (largely because of its reputation as an easy to use solution). It’s true to say that WP is a complete breeze to learn and configure. From a standing start of nil prior experience of WP, within half-a-day we’d got a semi-customized site up and running AND we’d trained our client in its use. On the ease of use front, WP is some very long way ahead of EE. However, with an eye on future developments I cast around for other potential solutions for the task of creating online content managed websites.

A little time later, swayed by the claims made for EE I chose to buy EE for myself and took the plunge. It became clear that while there is a lot of documentation to augment EE, its creators had failed to provide a clear and easily grasped overview of HOW it all works. EE document is a bit like a series of detailed explanations of the major components of a motor car;  here’s what the gearbox does; here’s what comprises the air conditioning unit; these are the engine bits; and so on.

It’s detailed alright, but it lacks a Gestalt cohesiveness that might otherwise enable the user to understand more clearly how all the parts relate to each other as a functioning whole; and indeed, how it might be driven effectively. I admit to being frankly baffled, clearly, my utter lack of any familiarity with PHP didn’t help, but I don’t think that I’m completely without intelligence. And reading the posts on this forum only served to confirm that EE is indeed difficult to ‘get’ for many users; the general thrust being that if one persevered all might become clear in time. Well, I don’t mind throwing effort at a thing, but as a pedagogue myself, let me just say that this is not the most effective means of learning a new skill.

I followed the laughably cursory initial tutorial, with no idea of what I was doing. Slightly better was Mike Boyink’s series of build-a-site in stages (I even bought some of the ebook screencasts), but I was still at a loss to grasp the underlying principles. I simply could not get it.

Then I discovered that version 2 was due to be launched “in the summer”, which killed any incentive for me to invest further energy into trying to unravel EEs mysteries, when clearly, V2 is going to be a different animal from 1.6. (Too late, it would seem, there is finally a book on the market that seeks to guide the beginner over those early perilous stages of learning EE1.6.)

EE is quite good, but it is shockingly difficult to pick up compared to some of the competition - needlessly so, I suspect. The question is, are the EE V2 development team looking to the EE community to again write the learning material that they ought to be producing themselves?

From what information they’ve given us thus far, the building of an EE site in 2.0 is going to be pretty much the same, so almost anything you learn now will be able to be applied. The main difference is that it will be built on top of CodeIgniter, EllisLab’s PHP framework, which will allow greater access and capabilities for writing custom code/modules/plugins for your sites.

On top of that, the front-end control panel will be much slicker and client-friendly, with ajax and javascript goodness. Plus there will be a new File Manager that i’m looking forward to greatly.

The reason it’s a bit difficult to explain initially is that it’s more of a CMS FRAMEWORK, rather than plug and play application (like wordpress) which allows you to do just about anything in a number of ways. There’s no “RIGHT” way to do anything (for the most part), for all the good and bad that brings.  I hope you stick around, once you get the hang of it—EE will be your best friend.

Funnily enough I hated Wordpress. It was full of weird PHP commands such as the loop etc. I did like the CP and the easy theme switching so for beginners it’s excellent.

Like anything complex and worthwhile learning, it takes a while to come to terms with how everything works. Your best bet is to start with a specific problem then search for it on the Wiki or these forums. It will come together very quickly from there.

Can I also point you in the direction of Ryan Irlan’s excellent screencast series (priced at a very reasonable $5 each) - http://eescreencasts.com/

As for EE 2.0, you will be able to upgrade your current site so it leads me to believe that your learning will not be in vain. If you have any questions then ask away!

Funnily enough I hated Wordpress. It was full of weird PHP commands such as the loop etc.

Agreed. I always found the only efficient way to create your own template/design was to find another one of a similar layout and replace the graphics and mod the CSS. Such a time sink and un-developer friendly.

Thank you stinhambro; Jack. One thing I have come to appreciate is the genuinely helpful EE forum community. You really are a kind-hearted bunch.

Take your point completely about WP and having to mod CSS and graphics. That said,  within the time constraints of the project in question, I found it to be a piece of cake to do just as you described (mod a template and associated CSS; easy-peasy-lemon-squeazy). However, I too saw the long-term limitations of that process, hence my decision to explore EE and its promise of greater design flexibility.

I’m not really griping at EE per se, it’s just that I genuinely believe that the EE documentation team/person has not dedicated enough time or care in identifying how EE’s underlying methodologies can best be explained in a way that permits those new to its mysteries to grasp the essential underlying principles. Why should so many people find it so difficult to get to grips with initially? Are we all a bit thick?

It reminds me of my schoolboy bafflement of algebra. As taught by my mathematics teacher, it made as much sense as a party political broadcast. The scales were cast from my eyes one day when a new boy to the school - for whom mathematics was a passion - explained it to me in terms I understood. It was a revelation! I suddenly ‘got’ it. Clearly, the topic itself hadn’t changed, only the explanation. (As it happened, I went on to become a research engineer and algebra paid a big part in my professional life.)

I’m not asking for documentation that treats people like children, but rather an approach that seeks to explain WHY things are they way they are, together with HOW all the parts fit together. The rest is mere fact.

As for the difference between EE1.6 and EE2, well, I suspect I’m still suspicious it might end up being a bit like the evolution from Flash Actionscript 1 through to AS2 and more especially, AS3. Not so much a case of having to learn new techniques, but having to actively forget previously hard-won knowledge and further rewrite deprecated output. At least if I don’t get too involved with EE1.6 I can spare myself the pain of wasted effort.

I’m not going to disagree with you duckndive, the more (good)documentation the better! I feel that i grasped the core knowledge in spite of the documentation. It wasn’t until i watched some of the videos that i really had the Eureka! moment. That being said, maybe i can point you in the right direction to help you get there as well.

Hambo was right on—Ryan Irelan’s screencasts are golden to get you started. He currently has 10 at $5 a pop. I’d recommend at least grabbing the first 3 for $15—that’s going to get you going in a really good place. Possibly number 5 too—for static content.
http://www.pragprog.com/screencasts/v-riexp/building-a-dynamic-website-with-expressionengine

If you (or your boss) can’t part with the cash, then Michael Boink’s tutorital is really good—if a little TOO detailed. You can start on tutorial number 1 here:
http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free_tutorials/category/building-a-church-site/P20/

Basically once you understand weblogs and templates, the rest is just a pile of tags that let you customize how to display, sort, categorize, parse, limit….. those weblogs. {exp:weblog:entries} will be your best friend!

I totally disagree with you guys. To me, EE has some of the best documentation out there. That’s one of the main reasons I always recommended it to folk. I hate that loop stuff and all the hacks with WP (WP does have a great admin interface). I think the getting started docs and the template with EE is definitely enough to get started (in my opinion). Plus of course the forum is excellent.

Take about two hours and read the getting started doc and do a small one page site. I promise you’ll learn a good bit about EE and find it’s so much easier to create and customize a site than WP.  After that make a list of everything you want your site to do. Then search the doc and you’ll find (pretty much) everything you need. A good percentage of the questions I asked were in the doc (or at least in the forum, but 90% plus in the doc). If you REALLY understand HTML and CSS you can easily learn EE. If someone can pick up WP’s templating system, they can surely learn EE.

The one last thing I will say is, the investment of time in learning EE is worth it. Also, it really nice to know you don’t have to do a bunch of “hacks” to the core system to get it to work. 

Sorry for the rant, but I see some many times people saying EE has “not so good” doc. Look around the internet at other systems and you’ll see it’s really SUPERIOR! I feel a lot of times people are just impatience and want to be able to install EE and say “WORK”! I really believe all of the WP themes floating around the internet have really pulled the “wool” over non-technical people. “WP is sooo easy to use for developing a site.” Try to develop a WP site without a template from scratch and then see how easy it is to pick it up. The template developer has done all of the heavy lifting.  Don’t get me wrong, you can learn WP, but try just to use their doc (without a full template)—it will take time. In my opinion more than EE (and don’t forgot you got to learn the hacks!).

I think EE’s docs are really great and detailed once you “get it.” I’m not completely convinced the documentation alone shows the full potential. But once you know what you’re going for, it’s a GREAT resource.

I have to agree with therooster here in that EE’s documentation has improved immensely since the early days. There are the docs, the wiki, Mike Boyinks excellent series etc…

In my opinion the hardest things to grasp for an EE beginner are these:

1. a “weblog” is just a container for your data, nothing more, nothing less. Using custom fields you can design your data any way you want.

2. EE’s url structure is (at its core)  http://www.mysiterocks.com/index.php/template_group/template_name

3. there’s no 1-to-1 relation between any given weblog and template. In other words you can pull data from several weblogs or just one weblog into the same template.

4. the “glue” between weblogs (data) and templates (presenting that data) is EE’s weblog entries tag. I’d say that the flexibility of the weblog entries tag combined with custom fields is the genius of EE.

4. embedded templates == php includes in other words any chunk of html you need to reuse (footer, navigation etc…) in a template can go in an embedded template. I always use a dedicated template group (often called includes) for this sole purpose. Embed variables make this even more useful.

For those coming from a Wordpress background check out this article on Darren Hoyt’s blog, it’s a really good example of why you’d want to use EE over Wordpress.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Wordpress; I think EE could learn a thing or 2 from WP’s CP 😊

Thank you, Jack, for the links. I’ve paid for a bundle of them and am looking forward to getting stuck in.

Therooster, I don’t doubt that the documentation worked for you, but it’s clear that for those of us for whom EE is a strange beast indeed, I think it would be be a brave soul who could declared unconditionally that there is no room for improvement in the ‘getting you started documentation’.

Thank you, Jack, for the links. I’ve paid for a bundle of them and am looking forward to getting stuck in.

No problem! Just follow along and you’ll be part of the team in no time :coolsmile:

Hi duckndive,

For what it’s worth I couldn’t agree more with your posts. I tried in vain to get the hang of 1.6x but no ‘light bulbs’. I use a number of opensource cms’s with great success. Totally obvious how they work plus good documenation. I have waited for what seems forever for ver. 2.0 of EE hoping it with be much more intuitive and have better docs.

Only this forum keeps me vaguely interested. EE is a CMS I would like to ‘get’. Here in Ireland summer is all but gone and so am I.

Barry

EE is a strange beast.  It is ridiculously powerful… though I’m looking forward to adding CI into the mix. 

It is not, for me, a “beginner” CMS.  Let’s look at my own example.  I started out being thrust into running websites. Being the techie guy, I was on the hook.  I picked another CMS, a paid one, even.  That one has a lot to recommend it, to this day over EE.  Why?  It’s easier for “beginners.”  It has lots of themes, and I could modify a theme easier than write one.  To this day, I’m horrible at css and web design.  I do more php and coding. 

But while that CMS offers theme switching, once you get off the reservation, so to speak, things got hard, fast.  I was restricted in lots of what I wanted to do.  Enter EE.

EE is powerful, very powerful.  But it is not for someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.  What I mean is that if I had to recommend a new CMS to someone brand new to websites, I don’t know that I would recommend EE.  Why not?  Because there is no real right way and no real wrong way to do things.  Do you use categories or several weblogs?  Chances are, you could do it with both.  There is a lot more decisions like that. 

EE lets you build web applications, more or less.  Look at what Lisa has done with her bug tracker: it’s standard EE, used in an ingenious fashion. 

For Websites that just want a fast way to throw a theme and add a blog, clicking on Wordpress is faster and easier.  Can it be done fast and easy with EE?  Sure—but I built three sites before I figured out MY best way to do that.  And that’s not the same as someone else’s best way, either.  Was my way how Rick Ellis would do it?  Who knows—but my guess it isn’t. 

I can take my simple EE site and expand it massively.  I can’t do that with the other CMS I was talking about. 

So the issue here is, I think, the problem someone has when “I need a knife—why are you handing me this 200 function swiss army thing?”  Well, because with that 200 function knife, you can do so much more than just cut something. 

The trick is the lightbulb moment, that is true. 

Here is the lightbulb moment for me: Content and form are totally different in EE.  Once you grasp that the content is totally seperate from the form, things make much more sense.  Your templates are the form: How is the content displayed?  Your HTML and CSS goes there—but it only is a container that wraps your content prettily.  Your content is in those containers called “Weblogs” that is your database—anything you want is there. 

And the tags are the glue putting them together.  Your tags are what tells the database what content to display. 

It’s the old model-view-controller thing, for the programmers.  Your templates are the Views.  Your Weblogs are the models.  And the tags are the controllers.  The tags control how, what, and where the data from the database (your models) is displayed.  Once that’s determined, your templates then let the user view the data how you see fit. 

You have to focus on each of those three elements to build a successful EE site.  Build your templates with the idea that there is a box saying “content goes here.”  Think of your tags as the “Lorem Ipsum” of the process—dummy text.  When you work on your templates, what the tags bring back don’t matter—it’s content. 

Designing and entering your models, or your weblogs, is also crucial.  Think about what kind of data you want to have, and build your weblogs around that.  This takes some nice, thoughtful design.  Categories, statuses—all of this is designed to classify your data in some fashion.  What makes your data unique, and how can you find it?  Think of that, and design your models (Weblogs, categories, statutes, etc) around that.

Tags let you control how to display that data.  Your user (primarily through the URL) sends data to your tag, which in turn processes it and selectes the appropriate data for that page from the models, or the weblogs. 

My suggestion: your template design, your tags, and your models are equally important.  Spend time on each, even if it is just thought design.  A properly thought out set of data models—your weblogs—makes life a lot easier elsewhere.  And so forth. 

So, these are my suggestions for starting with EE:

1) Think about what your site will display.  What is dynamic and will change?  What will be dynamic in the sense of a fixed set of choices (navigation menus, etc), and what is genuinely new content?

2) Design starter content: Start out designing your main weblogs.  What fields, what categories, etc.  Put in some starter content, too.

3) Design some templates.  You can pick some predesigned ones, it doesn’t matter.  What kind of look do you want your site to have?  Where there is supposed to be dynamic content, put “Tag here” or something.

4) implement your first tags.  Don’t implement them all at once—start with the main content.  Note down what tags you are using—chances are, that same tag with it’s options will be used alot, with varying parameters. 

5) test. 

After it works, go on and Flesh out other tags, more weblogs, etc.  Keep going until it is done. 

Works for me!

What I mean is that if I had to recommend a new CMS to someone brand new to websites, I don’t know that I would recommend EE.

I hear you. I already had several years’ experience with flat HTML before I first started using a blogging platform, and it was in adapting my site’s pre-existing theme to the template protocols of that platform that I learned what I needed to be able to later adapt my theme to Movable Type, and then ExpressionEngine.

I’d say at least half of what I needed to know to be able to get up and running with EE, I had learned in working with those other platforms. Most of the rest I’ve learned from these forums. Next came the docs.

These days I will search the User Guide first to see if what I want to do can be found there; if that doesn’t work and I’m still determined to try to work it out, then I’ll bring it here.

Often in that case the answer turns out to be something so mind-bogglingly simple that of course it’s too commonsensical for me to get it on my own.

I have to agree with earlier sentiments about the documentation - I think it’s very good!

It took me an hour to suss out the logic of how tags work, then a day to play with all the different types (entries/webloginfo/category/comments etc) to see what they did. From then on it was a case of referring to the docs to see which bits helped me achieve what I wanted to do, and if it was something I couldn’t see in the docs then a forum search has resolved 99% of “how do I’s”.

But there is still a lightbulb moment!