Writing Code

For me, writing the code behind the website was a slow, sometimes painstaking process. I knew a bit of HTML, but precious little about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Expression Engine, or EE (the software I chose to power our content management system).

The HTML part was not too bad. Fairly straightforward and not to cumbersome to work with. Mostly, I used HTML to divide up the page, create links, make lists and fairly mundane things.

The real workhorses behind the site are the CSS, which I'll talk about tomorrow, and EE. They perform all the real work.

I read anything I could find, searched the Internet and hung out at forums trying to pick up whatever I could about working with EE. Luckily, someone I hired to put together that piece of the site had laid out enough code that I could follow the logic and improve on it. The gentleman I hired abandoned the project without warning or explanation about halfway through, so I was forced to pick up the pieces from there. Looking back now, he did me a favor because it forced me to learn the program.

Just so you know, Expression Engine is powerful yet inexpensive content management software. The trade off is, the only tech support you get is via their forums, wikis, knowledge base and documentation. But, let me tell you, those folks are fantastic to work with. I posed a lot of questions on the forums and got the help I needed quickly. Day or night. If you are considering content management software, I would highly recommend Expression Engine.