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How would you model this static site in EE

June 20, 2012 5:35pm

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  • #1 / Jun 20, 2012 5:35pm

    sbellcheck

    1 posts

    I’ve got a static site already built for a client.

    http://www.nosda.co.uk/

    I now need to transfer it onto EE. This is my first time using EE, although I have years of site building experience, front and back end.

    I’ve already kicked things off by creating a couple of pages, but I know that things will soon get more complicated. Some pages are simple title/body affairs, others have many sections in them, all needing to be managed.

    My first thought is to create a channel, which I can embed into different templates. But, this looks like I’ll be creating use-once templates. Could there be a better way?

    Oh, and it needs to be in 10 languages.

    Thanks in advance!

  • #2 / Jun 21, 2012 8:13am

    Mantishead

    55 posts

    The way you approach this sort of task really depends on what you are trying to achieve with ExpressionEngine.
    As a content management system my assumption is that you wish to provide a means for you client to have editorial control over some, or all, of their website.  It is this question which is crucial in determining how exactly you will structure your website in ExpressionEngine.

    One of the beauties of ExpressionEngine, over other CMS/Blog platforms, is the ability to build your site (templates) using entirely your own code, and then as and when required utilise EE tags to pull in dynamic elements from EE.  Thus, it is entirely possible to completely recreate a static website inside EE by simply creating templates corresponding to your static pages and simply pasting your own code into them.  This then allows you to systematically replace any areas designed to be dynamic with EE tags as and where appropriate.

    Templates are analogous to the static aspects of your website.  These are the areas you won’t typically allow clients to control.  The elements on the page you wish to provide editorial control over need to be dealt with differently - using Channels and/or Pages, depending on the nature of the content.

    For something like a Blog, this is very easy.  Create a new Channel called Blog.  In the template designed to serve this dynamic content insert the appropriate EE tags to call in the channel content.  In fact, in earlier EE incarnations a Channel was called a Weblog, due to it essentially being exactly that.  It’s name was changed to reflect the fact it could be used for so much more than this.

    If however you have more demanding needs, for example your client needs to control ALL elements of content, even those seemingly static ones, you have to get more creative and look at using a Channel of static content snippets and/or Pages module.  You can even go a stage further and use something like Structure which allows you to use Posts as Pages.

  • #3 / Jun 21, 2012 8:15am

    Mantishead

    55 posts

    With regards to 10 languages…  Is this a serious strategic requirement with specific recognition of different content for localisation, such as one might see for a large global brand or do they just want their content to be readily translated?  For the former I would consider using multiple site manager and ensuring each site was managed individually.  For the latter I would consider deploying Google translate to provide a quick and easy means to do a verbatim translation.

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