What Kills You About Designing for ExpressionEngine?
PSDs, PNGs, HTML, CSS, DIVs, in-line, attached – there are all sorts of things to remember when designing a website. Take all of that, then you throw ExpressionEngine in the mix and for many, you now have what seemed like a simple project that has turned into a blank stare.
Fear not, we’re here to help. What is it that frustrates you when you are designing for ExpressionEngine? What questions do you have that you can’t seem to find the answer to? ExpressionEngine is flat awesome, and we will help you see why.
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I don’t know that I’d say that it “kills” me, but one thing that keeps tripping me up is the default dynamic mode on the most common tags such as exp:weblog:entries.
The effects of dynamic mode—and the effects of setting dynamic="off"—are not well documented.
EE goes to some trouble to try to separate content and presentation, then defaults to dynamic mode where the URL not only selects the presentation—its main function—but also affects the selection of the content. But exactly how the URL affects selection of content is something that you pretty much have to figure out for yourself if it’s not doing what you wanted.
Yeah, dynamic mode can simplify your templates and in some cases can let you reuse one template for multiple purposes, but in my opinion it needs to be a lot better documented.
It occurs to me that I didn’t word that very well. The big problem is that the URL information is communicated behind the scenes to the content modules, rather than being supplied to the template and then communicated by the template to the modules. Exactly what is communicated and how it is used is not well documented. And what no longer works when using dynamic="off" is also not well documented.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how to change the theme for EE. I accidently placed a theme that I wanted in the wrong folder, so I wasn’t able to select it before installing EE. Now, I found the site_themes folder, but the changes that I make to the file don’t seem to effect the page.
What is the best way to edit or create themes for EE? I can’t find a very good ‘how to...’ on this. It is very frustrating.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Hi,
EE does not support the type of one-click theme changes that some other well-known blogging platforms support. This is not a bad thing really, but I can see how it may put off some newcomers, who are just having a play with EE for the first time. To switch to a new theme just create a new weblog and assign one of the themes you have previously uploaded to the that new weblog.
The trade off for one click themes is that it is difficult to create and test a new theme without having a separate install to do so. WP has only recently seen this problem addressed in an semi--intelligent manner.
I find that EE is actually easier to theme. It does not do it in one click, but I have never found a one click theme that does all I wanted. So, I have had to delve into the arcania of the template. With WP that means navigating PHP which I have neither the desire nor ability to do. With EE all I have to have is a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and CSS. Making a new template is easy enough and testing them does not disrupt my live site.
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