Mini ExpressionEngine Dictionary

When I started using ExpressionEngine (EE), many of the words used in the documentation was confusing. I made a list as I went along and I’m posting it here in case others find it handy.

Channel - Usually used to store the content for sections in a site (Home, News, Products, About). Each channel (called Weblog in EE 1.x) can have a different design, user rights and input fields. Channels are only editable from the Control Panel.

Control Panel - This is where you set up your EE website, the backend if you will. This is where you edit Templates, Weblogs, Categories, Members and all aspects of your site.

Category - A list of elements that may have URL/image/description properties related to them. Categories are assigned to a Category Group. Categories may be added dynamically by site users based on the permissions you set (does not require the use of the Control Panel). May be considered as “tags”. You can assign multiple categories to each Weblog Entry.

Category Group - A group of categories. May hold several Category Fields. You can assign any combination of Category Groups to each weblog. You’ll find these categories under the Category tab when you add content to a weblog.

Category Field - An input field. May be of type Text, Texarea and Dropdown.

Embedded Template - Any template can be nested inside other templates. If an element is repeated across pages, break it into it’s own template and embed this instead. That way, changes to it will be site-wide with just one edit.

Field - An input field. May be of type Text, Texarea, Dropdown, Date and Relationship. Using plugins, you can also get various WYSIWYG editors. Text types may be set up to support formatting. Dropdowns may get their content from from another custom field. Relationships are like “Advanced Search”. They may grab content from other Weblogs and vice versa. Very powerful stuff that takes a little fiddling to learn.

Field Group - A set of custom fields that can be assigned to a Weblog. A typical set may be title, image, summary and article. A products weblog (section) use a Field group that has fields such as product name, weight, specs and price.

Template - A HTML-page with placeholders for fields that ExpressionEngine will fill in. The can be a complete or just a part of a page. The templates are setup to pull content from one or more weblogs. The Field Groups assigned to each weblog will decide what data EE will be able to fill into each template.

Template Group - A group of templates. Grouping affects the rendered URL’s. If you want long, descriptive URLs, you can achieve this by grouping templates. To end up with a URL like this: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/ you can create a Template Group called ‘aboutadobe’ and create a ‘pressroom’ template in this group.

Weblog - Weblog changed name to Channel. See Channel.

Weblog Entry - A single piece of CMS content / article