New Site Layout And Backend
June 24, 2004
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
I’ve been working on this for a few days behind the scenes. This weblog is now being run on Expression Engine. While Movable Type is still installed, it’s been changed to generate “mt_index.html” instead of index.html. For those users who are linking directly to index.html, I’ve removed it and created an automatic redirect that will bring them to this page (the weblog is run from a PHP file called “index.php” and in order for that file to act as the main site index, the HTML file has to be removed).
In a short while I will also be moving my gun site to an Expression Engine weblog, just as soon as some technical issues are worked out. I also hope to move my gunshow listings to some kind of weblog as well.
All of the previous entries and comments have been imported into Expression Engine. However, all of the old archives from the Movable Type weblog are still available at their original locations. Any links to those articles will still work.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Looks great! Good functionality. How smooth was the importation? Is the stylesheet and index language similar to MT’s?
The import was very smooth. They have a pretty good import script that takes a Movable Type export file and imports it into EE. It will either map or create categories to match the original categories and it has a bunch of other options about how to handle text formatting, etc.
As for templates and stylesheets, EE has a significantly different way of handling things since pages are dynamic instead of pre-generated. Further, a weblog’s location is given by two files that can go into any directory. There’s a standard “index.php” that you don’t alter and a “path.php” that tells the index file what “template group” and default page in that group to use. You can have multiple weblogs in different directories or even merge multiple weblogs into a single webpage in one directory because of how the template groups work. You specify which weblog content is displayed by using the weblog id (or ids) in the template tags. If you’re curious about it, take a look at the User Guide.
Once you wrap your head around their basic mode of operation it’s pretty easy to work with, though.
I like the design. Much cleaner and the colors are great.
Jeff,
Thanks. The design is based on one of the templates that is included with EE. I just tweaked it a little. I suppose that just goes to show the difference between something created by a web developer and what I managed to hack out with the old site.
Also, this new template is done completely with CSS. The old site was all tables with a little CSS.
Very nice, even though I kind of liked the old one. It is easier to read, and I suppose will be quicker to track things around. Good design!