Static Structure with EE

Posted: Jul 2009, Matt | In: | 3 Comments

Expression Engine (EE) has pretty much become our default CMS of choice. But one of the biggest issues has always been trying to coax EE into making more traditionally structured sites. Looks like those days are finally over, as the very ingenious people at NGenWorks have built a superb module for generating sites with a fixed structure! Hoorah!

The Stucture Module (v1.2.7) forgoes the current template_group/template setup and creates “static” and “listing” pages that are all editable through a tree sitemap view.

This module means that the EE content is now structured in much the same way as it will appear on the main website. It’s a quantum leap in usability from a content authors perspective, and it’s something I feel Ellis Labs should have introduced themselves.

The good folks at Jambor-EE have provided a comprehensive tutorial on how to use the structure module.

If you’re new to Expression Engine?
The tutorial over on Jambo-EE assumes you’re not new to EE, and that critically you know how to configure your EE installation to hide “index.php” from the URL paths.

There are many ways to remove the index.php from an EE path, but the easiest is to use the superb htaccess generator extension courtesy of LeeviGraham.com.

I’ve started applying this module to a structure playground on our web site.

I will journal my experiences with the structure module in the comments section of this article.