Thread

Hello,

I’m new to EE and I am still trying to find a comfort zone (i.e. overcoming the learning curve).  I am unsure of what some of the terms mean.  I’ve done a forum search, looked at the WIKI, KB and DOCS and I did not find a section with all the terms of EE simply defined. (If there is one, sorry, but I have not yet found it).  Would you please help me understand these terms as they would be in a dictionary or encyclopedia or something?

My Questions are:

1) What are Weblogs?  are they the site’s sections?  For instance if I create a site http://www.example.com and there is a folder in my root folder titled Cuisines, then another one titled About.

So each would have a respective domain name of http://www.example.com/cuisines and www.example.com/about.

Are these major sections the weblog that I see in my control panel?

2) What is a group?

3) What is a category?

4) I think I’m getting the template thing, but just for kicks?

5) Distinguish group from category and from weblogs?

6) If you can think of anything else I should know I’d appreciate it.

Thanks for all of your help!

Cheers,
Sonny

Have you seen these videos yet?

Also the tutorial I link my sig is very useful for getting the hang.

Let me try to put in words;

Think of weblogs as database-tables. In each table you define the columns (“for this table I need for each entry a title, an author, an url-field and so on”). EE’s groups can be considered as columns inside a table. Each row in a table is in EE term’s seen as a single entry. For each entry in a table you have to fill in all the group items you’ve declared and additionally EE helps you with some generic stuff. So each entry can be labeled with a category. This way you can organize entries by category. If you want.

The architecture of the EE database looks quite different than my story though, but it’s the idea that counts..

Once you have your tables/weblogs setup it’s time to organize the templates. Since you have multiple options to present your data here are a few options:
1. You have a fairly simple setup (let’s say a weblog) where most entries look the same and each entry uses the same weblog and columns. To present this data it’s an option to use your categories as a navigation tool. Whenever a visitor clicks one of the categories their shown all entries within that category. How you present these entries is up to you.

2. When your website is fairly large with different data-sets you’ll probably need multiple weblogs. In your templates you hardcode links to more detailed templates. Within these templates you decide which entries from which weblog you want to show. And again… categories might come in handy to have a subnavigation. I must say I rarely use them for navigation purposes though.

I really hope this makes some sense. If not; take a look at the video’s again 😉

Thanks Ronny, it made some sense to me fairly succinctly.
Food for thought, thanks again, I smell wood burning upstairs 😊

Let me try to put in words;

Think of weblogs as database-tables. In each table you define the columns (“for this table I need for each entry a title, an author, an url-field and so on”). EE’s groups can be considered as columns inside a table. Each row in a table is in EE term’s seen as a single entry. For each entry in a table you have to fill in all the group items you’ve declared and additionally EE helps you with some generic stuff. So each entry can be labeled with a category. This way you can organize entries by category. If you want.

The architecture of the EE database looks quite different than my story though, but it’s the idea that counts..

Once you have your tables/weblogs setup it’s time to organize the templates. Since you have multiple options to present your data here are a few options:
1. You have a fairly simple setup (let’s say a weblog) where most entries look the same and each entry uses the same weblog and columns. To present this data it’s an option to use your categories as a navigation tool. Whenever a visitor clicks one of the categories their shown all entries within that category. How you present these entries is up to you.

2. When your website is fairly large with different data-sets you’ll probably need multiple weblogs. In your templates you hardcode links to more detailed templates. Within these templates you decide which entries from which weblog you want to show. And again… categories might come in handy to have a subnavigation. I must say I rarely use them for navigation purposes though.

I really hope this makes some sense. If not; take a look at the video’s again 😉

Thanks for the reply.  I’m familiar with dabases and MySQL but quite frankly, this does not answer my question per se. 

I was asking for definitions in the sense of a structure of a site.

Are weblogs corresponding sections on a site?  Maybe I’m not appreciating what you’re saying yet, so I’ll read up some more. 

Thanks nonetheless.

The only non-standard term here, really, is weblog. Think of it as a data container, containing various articles / weblog entries, grouping them. That’s about it, really. You would then use templates (grouped in template groups) to determine which weblog to show where.

You might also want to read up on the different uses of weblogs and categories here.

The only non-standard term here, really, is weblog. Think of it as a data container, containing various articles / weblog entries, grouping them. That’s about it, really. You would then use templates (grouped in template groups) to determine which weblog to show where.

You might also want to read up on the different uses of weblogs and categories here.

Thanks, I’ll read up on it.