Jun 29
I’m ExpressionEngine 1.6 powered now!
2007 at 10.16 am posted by Veerle Pieters
Finally I found the time to update to the new version of ExpressionEngine. This was actually done in an instant really. The only thing you need is full concentration. Not sure if you’ve noticed this lately, but I’ve added a banner to Layers magazine at the bottom of all my Photoshop-Illustrator articles. This appears automatically. It didn’t took me too long to figure out and implement this in ExpressionEngine. This is how…
Analyze what I need
In my templates I have a template group which is named "includes". In this group I store the header, footer, sidebar, flickr thumbs etc. Actually all repetitive components of my blog. If I want them to appear on a certain template I just have to add the EE "include" tag and I'm done. So I figured maybe I can do the same thing for the banner, but have it only appear on the articles that belong to the Photoshop-Illustrator category. This way it automatically shows up on the related articles, just where I want it to appear.
Implement in a second (well OK, almost)
Here is what I did. I created a template called "sponsor" in the template group "includes". In this template I pasted my static XHTML code and I gave it the proper styling via my CSS stylesheet. Then I added the EE "include embed" tag in my "comments" template. This template is the one that is loaded here. It's the article page with the comments below. At the bottom of my article code I added this simple line of code:
I'm using the variable pair 'categories' for this. Now that I can use these tags, the only thing I need to do is adding a conditional variable to make sure this banner appears only in articles that belong to the category 'Photoshop-Illustrator'. In this code I'm referring to the ID of this category. You can find this if you go to Admin > Weblog Administration > Category Management.
About Layers magazine
I'm going to write a 4 pages article for Layers magazine that will be out somewhere in the Fall. Even online you'll find a taste of what the magazine has to offer.
22served
1
Hey Veerle,
Informative as ever. That could be really useful for displaying other related sections of the site too.
Have you also tried the Multi Site Manager as well? I’m looking at implementing this for 3 of my sites.
2
Thanks for the quick tutorial Veerle. I’m a die hard EE user and I always love reading articles on EE like this.
3
Great timing ...I was just thinking about updating to 1.6 myself, but was wondering if it would a lot of time. And you just answered that concern. So will do the update this afternoon.
(p.s. Do you have any insights on adding images to an entry in such a way that the person adding the image doesn’t have to do anything to format it? I was wanting to have an art_image field for articles and automagically format it).
4
Hey Vanni,
I’ve had a little look into the formatting of images myself. As far as I can tell you create your custom field {art_image} and then add this to the template that will display the image.
You could then wrap the field in a div and then sprinkle some CSS love to it which would change the appearance of the image and also display it where you intend on the page - so perhaps a nice border etc.
5
Do you mean the Embed tag?
6
Wow, it’s unbelievable! You could write about one of the most essential and most widely used features of computer languages like a if-statement as if it were the next big thing.
7
Vanni:
Neil is right, it’s pretty easy to do. To add to what Neil said, you could create a custom field called {art_image}, then in your template where you want the image to show up, you could do this:
<img src="{art_image}" alt="{alt}" title="{alt}" width="100" height="100" />
This is what I do, and I actually take it a little further and add another parameter to my img tag in the html for the “alt” and “title”. I simply just add one more custom field called {alt} and it’s that simple.
Hope that helps.
8
@Deron and Neil - Many thanks! Very helpful and timely.
one more last bit ... do i need to add a conditional for when no image has been added.
PS Veerle and others. I have been dabbling with EE for two years now. But with this latest try I am really getting into it! Thanks to your helpful posts on EE and to your reader’s advice. cheers all…
9
Hey Veerle,
Welcome to the club,
i am a long time user of EE and it can bend, bend and bend even more it still do what you want.. it’s a great system and hope they keep improving it.
10
Neil Bradley said:
No not yet, I’m not in that stage yet. First I have to have a 2nd site :) Still designing the duoh.com site.
ZenBug said:
Oops, yes my mistake. I’ve fixed it. Thx, for pointing this out. Guess I was confusing the naming with the name of my template group.
Thijs said:
Well not all of us are gifted programmers, so sorry if a *simple* designer like me gets excited.
Vanni said:
I do almost the same as Neil is describing for the images that link to my art section on the homepage and in the right column if you are in one of the “art” sections of my site. I’ve created this custom field for the image:
{sidebar-img}This field’s formatting is set to none. The styling is done in the CSS. However, the difference with Neil’s way is that I have to enter the entire img element in that custom field. He’s taken this another step further. The user has to enter the path in a separate field and the alt attribute in a separate field. So he doesn’t have to deal with the code of the img element.
11
I always love reading articles on ExpressionEngine like this. I was just thinking about updating to 1.6 myself.
12
It is kind of unbelievable, but in a good way since there aren’t that many engineers around who still get excited about the basics.
This article was well written - so well in fact, that I didn’t even stop to think that “hey, I know all this already”.
Personally, I think that bridging the gap between graphic design and programming makes for an inspiring read, as long as it’s the designer making the move towards programming and not the other way around.
13
Thanks for the quick tutorial Veerle. I’m a die hard EE user and I always love reading articles on EE like this.
14
Already updating to 1.6. Thanks
15
Since you mentioned your illustrations page ... I really like your artwork.
16
Hey Veerle, thanks for the help.
17
Interesting article!
18
Excellent as always. Nice to learn about the small details that make everything so much eaier.
19
Thanks for the quick tutorial.That could be really useful for displaying other related sections of the site.I love reading articles on ExpressionEngine like this.
20
Veerle, love your blog and sorry for the trolls in your other EE 1.6 post. I am pro-opensource but I also realize the benefit of comercial software too.
I love your boldness in color choice, not just bold but really well chosen. 1 question, why the wide layout? I realize you use big mac monitors and target the design community .... maybe I just answered the question :-> but I am left to scroll right to check out the art and flickr sections.
21
iWantToKeepAnon said:
I guess you did :) I just checked my stats from today going 2 years back in time and 97.7% uses a screen resolution higher then 800 x 600. It was my intention to create a smaller layout as well and have it resized with javascript, but it’s just not worth all the effort really since this 2.3% will keep on shrinking. I’m focussing on improving my blog with a new design and better structure etc.
22
@veerle, I agree that maintaining 2 designs or writing the JS code for a small group isn’t worth it. Personally I run at 1024x768 but I don’t like any apps maximized, including my browser. So it’s my fault I scroll left/right. Keep focusing on good design and keep telling us what you find!