Navigation - I learnt to code in EE with Stucture, how do I get away from that?
Development and Programming
Hi all,
I’ve been working with ExpressionEngine for a while now. I started learning it at a point where our lead developer had already decided on a set of addons that were included at the start of every project. One of those addons is Structure. Don’t get me wrong, I love Structure, it makes the layout really easy to see and really makes sense when you’re building a ‘typical’ website. However, in want of broadening my horizons and not being tied to one addon, I thought I’d start a site by looking at alternatives; either what EE can do out of the box or by using NavEE.
What I hadn’t realised is how deep Structure’s integration was. I learnt templates, variables & navigation techniques which are all built with Structure, and I’ve suddenly discovered that perhaps EE isn’t capable of what I thought it was to start with. I had assumed that because I could with Structure, that I could have, for example: index.html page.html contact.html
And have one index page, one contact page, and 3-4 pages all using the ‘page’ template.
Some basic questions then: 1. Do I have to use an addon for managing ‘pages’ whether this be Structure or the Pages module 2. Using the Pages module, I can assign a page the URI ‘/about’ and access it from www.mysite.com/about, but I can ALSO access it from www.mysite.com/pages/page/about - what’s that all about, how do I make a page only available from one place and create an address for it which isn’t tied to the template grouping? How does a page being accessible from multiple URLs affect SEO?
Wow - you’ve some re-learning to do..😉
Not sure I can answer all your questions in one forum response. You really do need to re-learn EE from the ground up in this case.
First without some sort of add-on (pages/Structure etc) EE doesn’t manage “pages”. It manages “entries” and the templates are where entries meet HTML and become pages in the browser. You don’t “tell an entry which template to use”, but rather tell templates which entries to pull.
URL’s do bake in the template structure, so knowing the final URLs you want from the get-go helps you create the necessary templates and groups you need.
Navigation is created by using channel:entries tags generally or there are add-ons specifically for it as well.
I’m writing a tutorial series on Train-ee building a portfolio site that’s mostly a native build - at least not using Structure. Otherwise (at the risk of sounding salesy) there is my book which builds an entire site not using Structure. I am in the middle of a minor revision so it might be best to wait a few weeks.