Thread

Dear All,

We’re thinking of switching to EE rather than using our own existing CMS. We will be developing a large site for a public gallery, with the following features, that I wondered if EE would be suitable for, and if so, what the solutions would be?

Home page - RSS feed, pulling in current events and exhibitions

Projects - these would need to be categorised (eg exhibitions, learn) and would consist of images, text, video, audio and related content from around the rest of the site.

Courses - bookable courses, so online booking, capacity counter, online payment

What’s on Calendar - displaying and linking to Events, Courses and Projects

Supporters page - allowing for online payments

Online shop - products, add to cart, continue shopping - related projects, online payments

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks

Welcome to the ExpressionEngine forums, red-london!

Home page - RSS feed, pulling in current events and exhibitions

Your RSS feeds, or other sites? We can do both.

Projects - these would need to be categorised (eg exhibitions, learn) and would consist of images, text, video, audio and related content from around the rest of the site.

Sounds like channels to me. You can use categories and custom fields, and related entries.

Courses - bookable courses, so online booking, capacity counter, online payment

Capacity counter might be the only issue, but you could look at a third party EE based shopping cart for this.

What’s on Calendar - displaying and linking to Events, Courses and Projects

We have a very rudimentary calendar system. Solspace.com has a third party offering that would prove helpful.

Hi Sue,

Thanks very much for your reply.

You say ‘sounds like channels’ - could you give me some examples of these please? I wasn’t clear what that meant.

Am I right in thinking that EE currently doesn’t have a way of allocating spaces to book? Could you recommend any third party add ons for this?

Any plans to improve your calendar system?

Do you have any examples of other gallery sites that use EE.

Many thanks

Hi, red-london!  I’d also like to welcome you to our community.

Channels in ExpressionEngine are “data containers”.  They can hold a wide array of information.  You create “custom fields” that specify that data.  For instance, you might have a “video” custom field that would be a link to a video.

The content in channels is called “entries” and an entry is one “piece” of content.

So, for example, let’s take your calendar.

The calendar itself may be a Channel.  Each entry in that channel would be an event.  You would set up custom fields for a description of the event, location, max attendees, etc - whatever information you need.  You could then use our category system to group those events together and label them, perhaps as “Courses” and “Projects”. 

You could also use relationships to relate entries to a course or project,and group them that way.

Am I right in thinking that EE currently doesn’t have a way of allocating spaces to book? Could you recommend any third party add ons for this?

Correct, this isn’t an out of the box feature.  There may be a third-party option on Devot-ee that fits the bill.

If you do need a more robust calendar system, you might check out Solspace Calendar.

I don’t have a specific link to an EE run gallery, but there are many.  You might peruse Show-ee to see the wide variety of sites built on EE.  Our Showcase is also a good place to look.

Does that help?

Thanks Lisa

It’s really difficult to decide whether to use it or not. All the sites I’ve seen, that I know use it, look a bit template like to me.

If only we could try before we buy!

Hi, red-london,

I’ve just sent you an email to the address on your red-london account.

Hi, red-london,

I’ve just sent you an email to the address on your red-london account.

Thanks very much Lisa, much appreciated.

Hi, red-london. Do you require any additional help on this thread?