Reply To: Fantastic news.

[amcnea]

EE uses a lot of “templates” – but in a different sense from Joomla.

Hmm, maybe I am just not seeing things right (I still haven’t download EE yet), but when I run a google search for “Expression Engine Template” (No Quotes), I get pages such as the following:

http://expressionengine.com/templates/themes/category/site_themes/
http://www.nikhedonia.com/notebook/entry/6-brand-new-templates-for-expression-engine/

And these seem to be showing me templates in the joomla sense of the word. I am also seeing the words “theme” and “site-theme” used synonymously.

So, yes. Just need the css and html.

Anyways, as for parsing out the CSS and the HTML, this seems like far to much work (at least for my standard, but I live by a code of laziness). Might I suggest a few alternatives to this approach.

1) The easy route is probably to get a template (in the joomla sense of the word) for expression engine such as the items listed above. However, those templates arn’t that great and finding a really good one might take some time.

2) If you really like the joomla templates, try to move everything into a joomla template. (I know you don’t like this option, I only list it for purposes of being thorough.)

3) If you really like the joomla templates, create a hybridized site. From what I have observed, the login and password for the Expression Engine system is only relevant to the forums. The main FFS website really has nothing to do with the user login system. So, replace the website with a joomla site. Have the forums link on the “Joomla site” point to the “Expression Engine Forums”. Then, alter the login script on the “Joomla Site” so that the following will happen:
Upon attempting to login in
A) Log the user into the Expression Engine Site.
B) If (A) is successful, Log the user into the Joomla Site
C) If (B) failed, then pull the user registration info from the Expression Engine Database, and create a new Joomla Account for the user, and log him in.
Note: The user registration section would also have to be altered to simultaneously register a user into joomla and expression engine.

Option 3 has the advantages of being able to use the Joomla Templates without all the hassle of dissecting joomla, and you can use the joomla back-end for managing the site. Also this allows the forums, and user accounts to remain intact. While duplicating the accounts into the new system at the point of login. Which means no sensitive information has to be given to the developer.