Although I don’t necessarily consider myself to be a total newb with respect to setting up a website, the extent of my ‘programming’ has been using Rapidweaver, playing around with Dreamweaver and evaluating Flux (all visual editors). And of course I have set up a few self hosted WordPress sites, but nothing other than basically using standard themes and templates.

I haven’t been happy with the limitations of Rapidweaver, of late, and have been looking at other options, ie, Dreamweaver and Flux and others. This week, I was exposed to EE via the Fusion Ad Bundle that showed up in one of my RSS feeds.

So I am wondering if EE would be an appropriate option to explore for someone who basically has no coding experience, but is willing to learn? Should I be looking for a different solution or is learning some basic HTML coding, in preparation for beginning to use EE, the best solution?

solana - 18 December 2010 09:55 AM

So I am wondering if EE would be an appropriate option to explore for someone who basically has no coding experience, but is willing to learn? Should I be looking for a different solution or is learning some basic HTML coding, in preparation for beginning to use EE, the best solution?

EE differs from WP in many ways, of course, the first being that you don’t need to be a programmer (I can’t spell PHP) to create a complex or attractive site.

If you can build web pages using any Mac or Windows editor using HTML, CSS, and Javascript, then EE gives you plenty of power with a gentle learning curve. EE’s tag system embeds nicely with HTML and is as easy to learn. I started on EE with little knowledge of HTML or CSS, and my Javascript was always ‘borrowed.’

If you’re not comfortable with HTML and CSS, the learning curve is more pronounced. However, EE 2.x now has pre-built themes (templates) which can get a site up and running nearly as quickly as WP, yet with more capability for the non-programmer.

grrramps,

Thanks for the reply and feedback. I suspect that my lack of html and css coding skills may pose to big of an obstacle for me to overcome at this time with respect to being able to use EE effectively and efficiently. However, I am still considering it. I already knew that at some point I wanted to move beyond the Rapidweavers of the world and this may be the opportunity for me to jump out there and learn some new skills. I’ll just have to see.

Thanks again for the reply!

Solana

Hey -

I’ll throw in my viewpoint as someone who teaches EE to many people. I’d definitely recommend getting a solid understanding of HTML & CSS before jumping into EE - even if it’s just coding up a simple static 5 page site.

Rendered web pages draw bits and pieces from a number of sources these days between the HTML, CSS, Images, and JavaScript.  If you aren’t pretty well clear on how it happens from a static point of view then throwing in dynamically generated code from a tool like ExpressionEngine (or any database-driven CMS) can tend to be confusing. 

I’ve had some students in my EE classes that weren’t fully comfortable with HTML/CSS and I could tell they weren’t fully grokking just what it was EE was doing in there.  In one case I got a message from one of these students about 6-7 months later saying “it all makes perfect sense now!” 

Boyink!,

Thanks for the reply and feedback. While I can certainly code in bits and pieces and can usually view a piece of source code and figure out what is going on, I don’t think I am to the point yet that I code actually sit down and hard code a 5 page site from scratch.

On the one hand, I could say that I am not ready for EE. On the other hand, it sure would force me to get up to date on coding very quickly.

Thanks again!

Solana

Hi Solana,

I just replied about the number of licenses you’d need in the other forum. I don’t think I realized that you are considering the Freelancer version which doesn’t work with Multiple Site Manager.

With that said, I do think the EE tags are easier to learn than straight out PHP or another object-oriented programming language. En ExpressionEngine site a blend of logic and front-end coding. If you build a template, you can then place the EE tags within it. I’ve even had people take existing CSS/HTML templates and place the EE tags within it to help them learn. (In fact, Boyink! does this on his site of free tutorials as well) : https://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free-tutorials/

Hopefully that gives you some confidence in your decision.

Leslie,

Thanks for the clarification and the info. It does help!

Solana

No problem, Solana. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to start a new thread.