Thread

Hello, I’m a dev that has built an app using CodeIgniter, and am going to be developing the “marketing” or public website for the app.  Our current public website is built on Joomla, but it’s a bear to manage and seems sluggish.  I’m considering EE for the next version but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the feature set.  For instance, in the past I have used RocketTheme for my joomla themes, and have been pretty happy with how they look.  Do I understand correctly, that with EE, I would be responsible for generating all the markup (using the EE tags, etc…)?  In joomla I’m used to being able to do something like “publish this custom html in this position on this specific page”.  I guess I’m just unclear on how the output (html, javascript, etc…) is generated.  Also, I’m not sure I fully understand what a “channel” is.  What role does a channel play?

How are css and js files included?
Would I be writing my js inside expression engine?
Are there pre-built modules for EE that tackle stuff like login boxes, etc? 
Is there a default theme, like found in Joomla or wordpress?  Once EE is installed, is there a functioning website immediatly available (albeit with no content), or are things not live until you start publishing pages?

I’m sure there are simple answers to these questions, It’s just day 1 of looking at Expression Engine, but I think it looks really interesting.

Another question comes to mind, can I use my existing app user database as a basis for the login to my public website built with EE?  To clarify, my user already have logins to my app, and I want to use those to login to my EE built site.  Is this possible?

Hi ggoforth,

EE offers a lot of flexibility; probably more than you’re used to with Joomla. For most of your questions there are multiple possible approaches. I’d suggest starting with this reading:

Channel Module
Templates
Saving Templates to Text Files
Member Module

In addition to our Community page, those should help get you started.

Is there a default theme, like found in Joomla or wordpress?

EE ships with an Agile Records site theme (an example site for a fictitious music label) that can be chosen at install time. Other site themes are available, such as these, though I’d wager most designers build from scratch once they’re comfortable with the system.

Another question comes to mind, can I use my existing app user database as a basis for the login to my public website built with EE?

The best way to accomplish this is to export your current members to an XML file, then use EE’s XML member import.

Thanks for your interest and let me know if you have further questions!

Awesome, thanks for the info Brandon.  Regarding the XML Member import, once I get them into the the EE database, would I then need to modify my codeigniter app (not my EE site) to authenticate against the EE database?  I use hashed passwords with a salt, so it’s kind of a custom authentication.  I’m assuming I would still be able accomplish this in these cases?

Your best bet, if feasible, is to port your existing app into EE as a native module. See the Developer Documentation here.

It’d be up to you how to handle authentication if you aren’t going to let EE handle it; all we can do is support the EE side of things. You’re free to look at EE’s source to see how everything’s done, but I’d still highly recommend porting to a true add-on, especially since your core code already uses CodeIgniter.