The Big Picture¶

How it Works¶

When you add content to your site using ExpressionEngine’s Control Panel, it will be stored in a database. When someone visits your web site, your content is retrieved from the database, formatted visually based on your markup, and presented to them. ExpressionEngine is a dynamic system since it generates your web site in real time for each user visiting it.

The power of ExpressionEngine’s dynamic approach is that it allows much more power and flexibility than what is possible with a traditional static web site. Your content can be easily formatted, precisely controlled, and flexibly reused in ways that would be tedious and difficult (if not impossible) to achieve with a static site.

Technical Overview¶

ExpressionEngine stores your content inside Channels. Channels are simply information and are completely independent from the pages your visitors see, which are known as Templates. Templates contain any markup you desire (ExpressionEngine affords 100% control over the markup on every page) as well as ExpressionEngine Tags which pull in bits of content dynamically.

Since there is no assumed relationship between a Channel and a Template, your content exists independent of your site’s design, making ExpressionEngine a true content management system with great flexibility.

• The Control Panel is where you publish and edit content, and manage your site.
• A Channel consists of your entries, comments, preferences, and other related “data.” It is simply information.
• Tags permit you to show data from a Channel, or any other Module or add-on, in your Templates.
• A Template represents a single page of your site. It is similar to an HTML file.
• A Template Group contains a collection of Templates. It is a container similar to a folder.

Some Examples¶

To better illustrate how ExpressionEngine works, let’s say you publish an online magazine. Your magazine has a home page that lists summaries of the five most recent articles. Each article summary links to a page with the complete text of the article. Your site also has an archive page that lists all the articles you’ve ever published.

With a traditional static web site, adding a new article to your site is a tedious process, requiring you to manually edit at least three pages: You’ll have to update your home page with the most recent article’s summary, you’ll have to update your archive page with a link to your new article, and you’ll have to add a brand new page for the full version of the article. These new pages must then be uploaded to your web server.

In contrast, ExpressionEngine makes adding a new article to your online magazine a breeze. Simply access the Publish feature using your web browser and ExpressionEngine will automatically update your home page, update the archive page, and create a brand new page featuring the full text of your article. These updates happen instantly, the moment you click “submit”. Or you can tell ExpressionEngine to make the changes to your site at a specific date and time in the future.

Here’s another example: Let’s say you must update the copyright information in the footer that resides on all 200 pages of your web site. With a static web site this is a time-consuming proposition; each of the 200 files must be opened, edited, saved, and uploaded to your server. With ExpressionEngine, however, you could set up a “footer” template that enables you to store your copyright information in one place, making it a breeze to instantly update all 200 pages just by making a change in one place.

Or let’s say you decide to create a new archive page displaying your articles sorted alphabetically by title instead of chronologically. With a static web site you are in for a long afternoon of work. But with ExpressionEngine, creating a new archive will take a few minutes; you’ll simply create a copy of your existing archive template, then update the parameter that controls the order that the items appear.

In a Nutshell…¶

ExpressionEngine simplifies the process of managing your site while giving your designers complete creative control. You can simply add your content in the EE Control Panel and the system will automatically format it based on your template designs. And since ExpressionEngine is managed using your web browser, you can update your web site from anywhere you have access to the Internet.