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Hi guys,

Being new to EE, I would just like to find out what are some of the “best” practices that you guys employ? Are there any best practices that the pros use?

This could be anything at all.

I ask this mainly because its good to know and with something as flexible such as weblogs, its easy to go down one route and use them for the wrong things or what they are not intended for.

So what are you waiting for? Put in your 2 cents worth!

Cheers!

Hey, there are so many ‘best practices’ when it comes to EE…
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The best way to learn them is:
A. by doing ee
B. read the forums
C. Search whatever your doing, if your installing or looking for a specific module / feature take time to google it and there will most likely be 10 other people who did it before you and shared their experience.

for example googling ExpressionEngine Install will return this article: http://expdesign.net/home/articles/expression-engine-install-best-practices/

I’ve been also recommending:]http://www.eescreencasts.com/] http://www.eescreencasts.com/[/url] to ee beginners, I’ve watched all of them and wished I had seen them when I first started.

so yeah, maybe not exactly what you were looking for, but I hope it helps anyway.

1. Don’t just start building. Think about how to best fit your content into EE. Figure out how many weblogs you’ll need, what custom fields will be needed within each weblog, if you’ll need categories and how you’ll use them. The more you can plan out your data structure up front, the easier your development will be.

2. Use a consistent naming convention for your custom fields. When I have field groups that are used with specific weblogs, I use “weblog_field-name” for all of my custom fields. That way, if I have similar types of content in different field groups, I can insert the weblog name dynamically so that i can re-use the template. For example, I have a custom field in my “photography” weblog called “photography_thumbnails”, and I have a field in my “paintings” weblog called “painting_thumbnails”. I can then use the same template for both weblogs by calling {{weblog}_thumbnails}.

3. I always set up a weblog for miscellaneous content like footer text, and other bits of copy that don’t really fit within another weblog, but that I’d still like to be able to edit easily.

4. I always add “edit” buttons to all of my content

No matter what site you’re building, make sure you have some kind of plan before you settle in. It makes it all so much much easier and really helps when you suddenly find yourself asking “what do I do now?” .