This document summarizes how to build a simple, responsive website with ExpressionEngine by discussing templates, channels, building a blog with RSS feeds, managing pages, and including tweets. It provides an overview of the TwinCities-EE project to build a website for an ExpressionEngine user group, including designing channels and templates for blogs, categories, tags, and entries as well as generating RSS and iCalendar feeds. It also discusses using add-ons for page management, metadata, and including twitter feeds.

1. Building a Simple, Responsive
Website with ExpressionEngine
Nick Benson
Senior Front-end Developer, PressEnter

2. What We’ll Cover…
• Introduction to Templates & Channels
• TwinCities-EE.com Project Overview
• Building a Blog
• Creating RSS Feeds
• Managing Pages
• Metadata Management
• Including Tweets
• Responsive Requirements

3. Getting Started: Templates
• Templates are what produce the HTML/CSS/RSS
code that is served by ExpressionEngine
• Templates are organized within template groups
• They can be accessed directly via a URL:
example.com/[template group]/[template name]
• They can be embedded within other templates:
{embed=“site/header”}
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
{embed=“site/footer”}

4. Getting Started: Templates
• Create a template group called “site” to
contain templates that are used across the
site, for things like the header and footer.
• Most projects start with something like this:
– Index (the site’s homepage)
– Page (for “static” pages, like “About Us”)
– Header
– Footer
– Aside

5. Getting Started: Channels
• Content in ExpressionEngine is organized into
channels (e.g. Presidents)
• Each bit of content is stored within a channel
entry (e.g. Abraham Lincoln)
• Different channel fields can be assigned to a
channel (e.g. birthday, favorite type of hat)
• Fields have different types (e.g. date, text)
• There are loads and loads of add-ons for
different field types (e.g. tags, lists, map
coordinates)

6. Template + Channel Example
This Template will display all of the channel
entries in our hypothetical presidents channel:
{exp:channel:entries channel=“presidents”}
<h2>{title}</h2>
<h3>Fun Facts</h3>
<ul>
<li>Born in {birthday format=“%y”}</li>
<li>Enjoyed wearing {favorite_hat}</li>
</ul>
{/exp:channel:entries}

7. Project: TwinCities-EE.com
The Twin Cities ExpressionEngine User Group
needed a website to publish news, event
announcements / summaries, and other
group information in a geek friendly format.
Users are technically savvy and like things like
RSS and iCalendar feeds.

8. Project: Design Overview
• Navigation
• Side Column
• Main Content
• Tweets
• Sponsors
• Copyright
• Responsive

9. Blog: Requirements
• Blog will be used to…
– Share Organizational News
– Announce / Summarize Events
• Features
– Tags, Categories, Author Profiles
– Generate RSS & iCalendar Feeds

10. Blog: Channel Field Setup
Field Label Short Name Field Type Notes
Summary {news_summary} Wyvern WYSIWYG add-on
from Bold Minded
Story {news_story} Wyvern WYSIWYG add-on
from Bold Minded
Author {news_author} Relationship Selects an entry in
another channel.
Tags {news_tags} Tagger Free add-on from
DevDemon.
Revision {news_revision} Reevision Needed to update
iCal feed; Free.
Location {news_location} Text Input Street Address for
iCal feed.
Event Start Date
Event End Date
{news_event_time_start}
{news_event_time_end}
Date One field for start,
another for end.

11. Blog: Template Setup
• Index
– Display five blog entry summaries per page, paginated
• Category
– Display five blog entry summaries per page, paginated
• Tag
– Display five blog entry summaries per page, paginated
• Entry
– Display a single blog entry, with comments
• News-RSS
– Display all blog entries in RSS format
• Events-RSS
– Display blog entries in “upcoming events” category in RSS format

12. Blog: Index Template
Template Group: news Template: index
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/
{embed="site/.header"}
<section>
{exp:channel:entries channel="news" limit="5" dynamic="no"
paginate="bottom" disable="member_data”}
{snippet_news_summary}
{snippet_news_paginate}
{/exp:channel:entries}
</section>
{embed="site/.aside"}
{embed="site/.footer"}

13. Blog: Index Template
Template Group: news Template: index
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/
{embed="site/.header"}
<section>
{exp:channel:entries channel="news" limit="5" dynamic="no"
paginate="bottom" disable="member_data”}
{snippet_news_summary}
{snippet_news_paginate}
{/exp:channel:entries}
</section>
{embed="site/.aside"}
{embed="site/.footer"}

14. Blog: Template Setup
• Index
– Display five blog entry summaries per page
• Category
– Display category’s five blog entry summaries per page
• Tag
– Display tag’s five blog entry summaries per page
• Entry
– Display a single blog entry, with comments
• News-RSS
– Display all blog entries in RSS format
• Events-RSS
– Display blog entries in “upcoming events” category in RSS format

15. Blog: Snippet Summary Setup
Snippet Name: {snippet_news_summary}
<article>
<header>
<h1>{title}</h1>
(a bunch of other tags for date, author, etc…)
</header>
{news_summary}
<p><a href=“{path=“news/{url_title}”}”>Read More</a></p>
</article>

16. Blog: Index Template
Template Group: news Template: index
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/
{embed="site/.header"}
<section>
{exp:channel:entries channel="news" limit="5" dynamic="no"
paginate="bottom" disable="member_data”}
{snippet_news_summary}
{snippet_news_paginate}
{/exp:channel:entries}
</section>
{embed="site/.aside"}
{embed="site/.footer"}

17. Blog: Index Template

18. Blog: Category Template
Template Group: news Template: category
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/category/example-category-name-here/
{embed="site/.header" meta_title="Category:
{segment_3_category_name}"}
<section>
{exp:channel:entries channel="news" limit="5" paginate="bottom"
category="{segment_3_category_id}" disable="member_data”}
{snippet_news_summary}
{snippet_news_paginate}
{/exp:channel:entries}
</section>
{embed="site/.aside"}
{embed="site/.footer"}

19. Blog: Category Template
• Categories are natively supported by
ExpressionEngine
• In this case they’re used to classify blog
entries:
– News
– Upcoming Event Announcements
– Past Event Recaps
• Seg2Cat add-on makes working with them
much easier.

20. Blog: Tag Template
Template Group: news Template: tag
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/tag/example-tag-name-here/
{embed="site/.header" meta_title="Tagged: {exp:tagger:tagname
tag="{segment_3}"}"}
<section>
{exp:tagger:entries_quick tag="{segment_3}"}
{exp:channel:entries entry_id="{tagger:entry_ids}" limit="5"
disable="member_data" paginate="bottom"}
{snippet_news_summary}
{snippet_news_paginate}
{/exp:channel:entries}
{/exp:tagger:entries_quick}
</section>
{embed="site/.aside"}
{embed="site/.footer"}

21. Blog: Tag Template
• Tags are not natively supported by
ExpressionEngine
• There are several add-ons for dealing with
tags; we’ve had good luck with Tagger by Dev
Demon.

22. Blog: Entry Template
Template Group: news Template: category
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/entry/url_title/
{exp:channel:entries disable="member_data,pagination" channel="news"
limit="1"}
{embed="site/.header"}
<section>
<article>
{!-- code you’ve already seen displaying the article --}
</article>
</section>
{embed="site/.aside"}
{embed="site/.footer"}
{/exp:channel:entries}

23. Blog: RSS Template
Template Group: news Template: news-rss
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/news-rss/
• Use ExpressionEngine’s {exp:rss:feed} tag
• Google will reveal several templates that you can modify for
your own use
• Tip: when building a feed, be sure the parameters passed to
{exp:rss:feed} and {exp:channel:entries} are the same.

24. Blog: Comments
• ExpressionEngine has a native commenting
system… but it’s pretty clunky
• We (and many others) use Disqus instead
– JS based
– Easy to setup
– Robust features
– Free for smaller sites
– Integrates itself pretty well without extra CSS

25. Blog: iCalendar Template
Template Group: news Template: ical
URL: TwinCities-EE.com/news/ical/
Use the nifty “Easy iCalendar” add-on:
{exp:easy_ical:calendar timezone="America/Chicago”}
{exp:channel:entries channel="news“ limit="20"}
{exp:easy_ical:event uid="{entry_id}"
start_time="{news_event_time_start}" end_time="{news_event_time_end}"
summary="{title}" location="{news_location}" sequence="{news_reevision}"
url=“{path=“/news/{url_title}”}"}
{news_story}
{/exp:easy_ical:event}
{/exp:channel:entries}
{/exp:easy_ical:calendar}

26. Page Management 101
• For a simple site like ours, we can get away
with a single template for “static” pages like
“About Us”
• Create a channel called “Pages” with a single
entry field, {pages_content}
• Each entry in the pages channel will be a page
• Use a nifty add-on like Wyvern for managing
text fields with a WYSIWYG interface

27. Attractive URLs
• EE’s normal URL structure is gross looking:
example.com/index.php/template_group/template/url_title
/
• Disable “index.php” with .htaccess
• Eliminate template_group and template by
using a module (pick one)
– Pages (included with ExpressionEngine)
– Structure ($65 add-on with a nifty interface)

28. Structure
• Donated a copy of their add-on to us, thanks!
• Has a really slick interface that clients like
• Allows nice URLs like: example.com/about
• Has tags for building breadcrumbs and site
navigation
• Allows page hierarchy: example.com/one/two

29. Structure

30. Structure

31. What About Metadata?
• We use the free SEO Lite add-on
• Allows us to set title / description / keywords
for each page and blog post
• If we don’t set title / description keywords for
an entry, it will insert default information per
our settings
• Easy to setup
• Prevents creating extra channel entry fields

32. SEO Lite + IfElse
Template Group: site Template: .header
{exp:ifelse parse="inward"}
{if "{embed:meta_title}"}
{exp:seo_lite title_override="{embed:meta_title}"}
{if:elseif "{embed:entry_id}"}
{exp:seo_lite entry_id="{embed:entry_id}"}
{if:else}
{exp:seo_lite use_last_segment="yes"}
{/if}
{/exp:ifelse}

33. Twitter Feeds
• ExpressionEngine has an official, first party
add-on for including tweets within a
template…
• … it doesn’t support twitter lists or multiple
users though…
• …and neither do any of the other add-ons I
investigated

34. Twitter Feeds
• Twitter offers an advanced search feature that
can retrieve tweets in RSS form that match
several criteria (multiple users, etc.)
• The AJW Feed Parser add-on can display
content from an RSS feed in a template
• The Tweetify add-on will turn URLs,
#hashtags, and @usernames into anchors

35. RSS + AJW Feed Parser +
Tweetify
Template Group: site Template: .footer-tweets
<article>
<h2><a href="{embed:url}">{embed:title}</a></h2>
{exp:ajw_feedparser url="http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?
q={embed:twitter-query}" cache_refresh="10" limit="1" parse="inward"}
<p>{exp:tweetify}{title}{/exp:tweetify}</p>
<h3>
<a href="{author/uri}">
<img src="{link#2@href}" alt="">
{author/name}
</a>
</h3>
{/exp:ajw_feedparser}
</article>

36. Make it Speedy
• Only install / enable add-ons that you actually
need and use
• Enable template caching on as many templates
as you can
• Use the Minimee add-on to minifiy and cache
your JS and CSS
• Enable gzip compression via .htaccess
• Use Switchee or IfElse add-ons to keep
conditional stuff from getting out of hand
• Use snippets instead of embeded templates
when possible

37. Make it Responsive
• Media Queries!
• Include css3-mediaqueries.js if lte IE 8
• Keep the aside markup in a separate template
(not within header or footer)
– Displayed above content on mobile homepage
– Displayed below content on mobile secondary
pages

38. Thank You!
Nick Benson
Senior Front-end Developer, PressEnter