Thread

I’m brand new to ExpressionEngine and fairly new to web design in general. I have a small site that currently has static pages using CSS, but also some PHP-MySql based subdirectories.

Does anyone have recommendations for basic organization after I incorporate EE? Should I keep my static pages as home and top-level pages and put all the EE stuff in a separate subdirectory? Or, should I just be brave and put EE at the top level and fold in my current static content? (In other words, would you recommend I make my home page an EE generated page?) Does it really matter?

Actually, I found a partial answer to my own question in another recent thread,

you can use your templated css on static pages too. just call them with the full URL instead of the {path= statement.

EDIT: I just verified that it does work. Using this:
href=‘http://e-places.net/index.php?css=style/style.css.v.1226685517’

but I expect there are other issues, too, like wanting to do cool EE things on the home page, that indicates EE should be at the root, right?

It doesn’t seem very practical calling the stylesheets that way.
Any small change to the style.css page and the hard coded version number would change breaking your layout on all those pages. Is it necessary to use the Version number when calling a stylesheet that way?
Otherwise it sounded like a good idea.
Being new to expression engine, you might rather install core versions in sub-directories, if you are working with the core version. For me it was hard to know what current version EE sandbox installation would wind up being my root site, you can always use your domain hosting options to point the domain at any sub-directory also.
Just thoughts.

Or, should I just be brave and put EE at the top level and fold in my current static content? (In other words, would you recommend I make my home page an EE generated page?) Does it really matter?

Be brave. EE can be very capable, flexible, and forgiving. If anything, you could plunk your current home page, all of it, right in the EE index page, and use templates for everything else. Once you get your head around the template group/template system you’ll fully appreciate the flexibility EE brings to a site; complex or simple.

Thanks, that’s the input I was looking for.  I have a big advantage in being pretty new to site design. I don’t have a big investment in development anywhere yet, so I can redesign anything at this point. That said, I would like to come up with a structure that is easy to maintain and not waste time.

But, already, I have eight or so static html pages using css, two PHP-MySQL modules (Limesurvey and PHPList), and I’m adding EE. It would be nice if all this stuff referred to the same css styles. It would be nice if I could put Google Analytics code in one place and have as many pages as possible refer to that code. (You know, good software design and all that.)

But, I’m so new I don’t know if this is reasonable. I think I can configure htaccess so it parses html as php so i can use php includes (aren’t SSIs old school?). Or, I can rename all my html files and links to .php extensions. It sounds like the best approach would be to change my static html files to EE templates? What approach does everyone else take for new sites they develop?

I prefer to keep as much as possible in one place. That’s easier said than done, of course, but makes for a more manageable goal.

EE’s templates allow you to put ALL your CSS in one location, or one set of templates, within a template group, if you need. Even for a half dozen static pages, I’ll chop them up and park them in EE. It’s just easier to manage, especially when using {embed}. Ditto for Analytics code.

Includes? Bah humbug!!!

😊

EE makes it somewhat painless to keep everything under one roof—PHP applets, and the like.