ExpressionEngine Jargon Buster
ExpressionEngine - that mystical CMS that powers your website. In this article we'll share some of the key words that designers and developers tend to use and put them in plain English that the rest of us can understand.
Channels
A channel can be thought of as a 'type of thing'. So for example, an online shop may have the following 'things':-
- Normal text pages
- Products
- Blogs
Each of those things is a channel.
Entries
An entry is an 'individual thing'. For example, a single product.
Fields
Each entry is made up of fields. You could think of these as the questions the site asks you when adding something new. For example, if you were selling a book online it may have the following fields:-
- Book title
- Author
- Genre
- ISBN
- Price
- Description
Templates
This one's slightly harder - but bear with me:- a template is the design or layout for a type of page. Your website may be built up of a bunch of different templates, such as:-
- A product category
- A product page
- A news item
They're essentially the page you see, with your information wrapped around it.
Add-ons
ExpressionEngine can be extended to add new functionality. Maybe you want to start selling products online, or maybe have a calendar of upcoming events? Add-ons add new abilities to your site.
There's a bunch of different types of add-ons, these include:-
- Modules
- Accessories
- Extensions
- Field Types
- Plugins
But don't worry, as a site owner you don't need to know these. Just know that if your designer or developer throws those terms around, they mean they're adding new abilities to your site.
Statuses
A status describes the current state of the entry. For example: an entry can either be shown, or hidden. In ExpressionEngine terms, open means public and closed means hidden.
Every channel has open and closed, but your website developer can also add additional ones for you. These may include things like:-
- Out of stock
- Discontinued Product
- Needs to be checked by legal department
The 'Control Panel' / 'Admin Panel' / 'Backend'
The control panel is the screen you go to to add new entries. If you haven't been told how to get to this, ask questions! It's probably the whole reason you're using ExpressionEngine in the first place.
Conclusion
These are the key terms you'll probably see thrown about the most when developer-y types talk about ExpressionEngine. Heard something else, but no idea what it means? Shoot us an email and we'll help you figure out what it means.
- by Emma Herbert
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