Thread

I’m very interested in using ExpressionEngine in my next projects at work or freelancing. I’ve installed the Core and played around with it a bit, but you have to understand that I’m coming from working with Wordpress a bunch.

There’s one question that I can’t figure out about ExpressionEngine, what’s up with pages, and page management? I know that EE has a module for Pages that adds some functionality (haven’t paid the 10 bucks to try it out yet) but from the screenshots I’ve seen, it’s still not the same as most other CMS’s.

It doesn’t seem very hierichal, where pages have parents and/or siblings, it seems like you just type in the URL where you want it to go. How would my client know what to type in there?

Is there something about pages that I missing? Thanks for your help!

Hi, TheJester12 - welcome to the forums!

ExpressionEngine really leaves much of the organizing in your hands using categories, relationships, etc.  Pages can make use of categories as well, allowing you to create a hierarchy.  As far as instruction on what to put for the URL - that is really a training issue that you would need to address with your clients if you choose to use the Pages route. Of course, that isn’t necessary - you can simply use weblog entries and call them by their standard URL.  All Pages does is allow you to give an entry a custom URI.

I think what would be better here would be to see what you need for this project.  The word “Pages” could be construed as wildly different things.  Could you, perhaps, give us an example of the implementation you are after and we could offer more specific advice?

And of course, trying out EE could help you quite a bit too!

There is also a brand-new third-party module, Structure, that might do what you want.

EE just isn’t a “page-based” CMS.  It’s a “post-based” CMS that doesn’t come out of the box making assumptions about your content in that way.  It’s a paradigm shift—moreso the more you’ve worked with page-based CMS, but once you “get it” the post-based approach is more powerful and flexible.

I’d really try to understand the inherent nature and strengths of native EE before going with any 3rd party modules - or even the Pages module.

Here’s a tutorial I wrote to demonstrate how a section of static content that appears on the site as pages can be powered in EE with one weblog and one template.  Each post in the weblog becomes a page, and the navigation is built dynamically from page titles.  All with standard EE tags, no plugins, modules or extensions required.

Hmmm, thanks for the great responses. I already like the idea of Expression Engine because it is post based, I like Wordpress for the same reason. It makes things much more flexible. I like EE because it is more professional than Wordpress.

My first inclination is to say that the Structure Module is exactly the kind of thing I would want EE to have, and what I don’t understand why it doesn’t have. It seems like it makes things much more client-friendly. For example, reordering pages based on their publish date isn’t exactly client-friendly.

On the other hand, I’ve been reading through your tutorials all morning Michael, and I’m starting to understand a little bit better how to structure things within EE. I think it will probably take me just diving into a project and trying it with EE. I guess I’ll just wait for the right project (and hope that 2.0 is released by then!)