ExpressionEngine 2 : a quick-start guide

ExpressionEngine is one of the fastest growing content management systems on the web. It's the power behind many high-traffic sites, and it can power yours, too. With this Quick-Start Guide, you'll get hands-on experience developing with the latest ExpressionEngine 2.0 by building a complete web site from start to finish. You'll learn advanced techniques for customizing and optimizing your sites, including templates, add-ons, and more. In this book, noted expert Ryan Irelan walks you through creating an online news site, Engine City Times. You'll get hands-on experience working with dynamic content, categories, an RSS feed, site search, and more as you build your news site. You'll further improve your ExpressionEngine skills with advanced techniques for creating powerful and manageable templates, effectively managing site files and assets, and optimizing your ExpressionEngine website to handle thousands of visitors. Go beyond the native ExpressionEngine functionality and customize the system through the use of add-ons. You'll discover how add-ons can help you build better websites, and you'll also build your own add-ons from scratch. Whether you're a web designer, web developer, or web master, this book will get you up to speed quickly building sites with ExpressionEngine. Contents......Page 5 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Foreword......Page 9 What's New in ExpressionEngine 2......Page 11 What's in This Book?......Page 12 How to Read This Book......Page 13 Online Resources......Page 14 Getting Started with ExpressionEngine......Page 15 Evaluating Hosting......Page 16 Getting the Software......Page 18 Installing ExpressionEngine......Page 19 Exploring the ExpressionEngine Directories and Files......Page 22 Touring the Control Panel......Page 24 What We Learned......Page 29 Building Our First Template......Page 31 Dissecting ExpressionEngine URLs......Page 36 Displaying Dynamic Content......Page 37 Working with ExpressionEngine Variables......Page 38 Bringing Life to Templates with ExpressionEngine Tags......Page 40 What We Learned......Page 46 Building Our First ExpressionEngine Site......Page 47 What We're Building......Page 48 Engine City Times Home Page......Page 49 Moving Forward......Page 51 Setting the Preferences......Page 53 Cleaning Up the Default Site......Page 54 Representing the Content......Page 55 Controlling Content with Custom Statuses......Page 64 Working with Categories......Page 67 Creating Authors and Members......Page 70 What We Learned......Page 74 Building Out the Home Page......Page 76 Displaying the Categories......Page 87 Embedding Reusable Code......Page 89 Building Out the Article Template......Page 92 Lighting Up the Category Template......Page 99 What We Learned......Page 102 Adding a Static Page......Page 103 Lighting Up the Navigation......Page 106 Cleaning Up Using Conditionals......Page 109 Creating an RSS Feed......Page 112 Adding Search Functionality......Page 114 What We Learned......Page 117 Digging In......Page 119 Creating Relationships Between Entries......Page 120 Building Entry Relationships......Page 121 Setting Up Related Entries......Page 123 Writing Related Entries Template Code......Page 125 What We Learned......Page 127 Exploring the File Manager......Page 129 Creating and Managing Upload Destinations......Page 131 Editing Image Files......Page 135 Embedding Images in Entries......Page 137 Adding Files to Entries......Page 138 What We Learned......Page 141 A More Powerful Channel Entries Tag......Page 142 Writing Custom MySQL Queries......Page 147 Adding Content Outside of the Control Panel......Page 150 Sharing Data Between Templates......Page 156 Edit Templates Anywhere......Page 158 What We Learned......Page 160 Setting Permissions and Establishing a Baseline......Page 161 Optimizing with Four Types of Caching......Page 162 Disabling Unneeded Queries......Page 168 Optimizing for High Traffic......Page 169 What We Learned......Page 171 Exploring the Different Types of Add-Ons......Page 173 The Add-on Developer Community......Page 184 C......Page 187 E......Page 188 H......Page 189 N......Page 190 S......Page 191 T......Page 192 Y......Page 193 Whether you’re building a small site or a large corporate undertaking, ExpressionEngine is becoming the tool of choice. With this Quick-Start Guide, you’ll get hands-on experience with ExpressionEngine 2 by building a complete web site from start to finish. You’ll learn techniques and best practices for customizing and optimizing your sites, including working with new ExpressionEngine 2 features, templates, and site search.Get up and running with ExpressionEngine 2 quickly as ExpressionEngine expert Ryan Irelan walks you through creating an online news site, Engine City Times. You’ll get hands-on experience working with dynamic content, categories, an RSS feed, site search, and more as you build your news site. Presents a guide to Web site development, design, and marketing using ExpressionEngine 2.