more power with expression engine
Expression engine is a powerful and versatile content management system; their multi-weblog feature makes it an excellent choice for corporate websites and business weblogs.
My most recent project was a Financing company focusing on interest-free mortgages and loans, I chose expression engine for several reasons…
- Simplicity and user-friendliness of the admin console
Along the same lines as wordpress the interface is very easy for users to navigate! - Ability to create a few different blogs
This website has a few different sections where content would be added frequently - Ability to create custom blog entry forms
This is a very neat feature where the ‘post’ form, if you will, can be customized and made into something else, for example, in this blog, I have a “notable” section where I add links to good articles on other websites… the form for that weblog is simply 2 fields, a title and a url, making it easy for me.
The Multi Weblog Feature of Expression Engine
Each of the sections, Events, News, Press Releases, Sponsorships, and even Testimonials were created as weblogs, because each will continually have content being added, similar to how a blog functions.
Example: Creating Testimonials
First, I created a new weblog and named it ‘testimonials’.
Next, I went into the template section and created a new template, based on the homepage (or index).
- I needed to change the name of the weblog on the first line:
{assign_variable:my_weblog="testimonials"}
- I also needed to remove all the commenting, pagination, date, and other ‘blog-like’ data from the page, so that it looked like a simple webpage
Once I was done with these changes, I created all the other weblogs that I needed in exactly the same manner, but instead copying the ‘testimonials’ template and changing only the name of the weblog. Easy!
Finally, on the homepage, I called in the most recent entries from a few of the weblogs:
The ‘testimonials’ section on the homepage ended up looking like this:
