Historical errata for ExpressionEngine 2

“Click on the “Content” button and then “Publish” at the top left of the Control Panel to add new content to the site. If you had multiple channels set up in EE (by default there’s only one),"

The default installation of EE2 (Build: 20091207) doesn’t create any channels. When I select Content -> Publish, the message “There are currently no channels” is displayed.

“You should see three groups “feeds,” “search.,”
and “* site.”"

No groups are installed by default.

Today is {current_time format=“%D, %F %d, %Y” }

The space before the } sign should be removed, or the tag isn’t interpreted.

At the bottom of page 57, Ryan says:

Click on “Publish Page Customization”
and set the following items to “No”:

Page 58, however, does not begin with the promised information. Instead, it features a screen grab of a different control panel (create a new custom field).

Perhaps I can redeem myself here. :-)

In the 6th paragraph, “they” should be “the”:

Click the link “Add/Edit Statuses.” Use >>they<< gray
button that read “Create a New Status” to create
a status called “Top Story.”

Second paragraph under Editing Content. The word channel is missing an L:

Also notice the search functionality at the top of the page. It will let you search and sort content by channe, category, status (Open or Closed) and date range.

During the file upload process, the example to use for the system directory is ‘ringo’, but if using the trial version of EE 2.0 you are unable to set a custom system directory name. Would be useful to make note of that in some fashion.

In my trial version of EE, the File Manager is found on the Content Menu, not the Tools Menu as stated in the PDF.

The html and css files that I downloaded from the book’s website feature a two-column category page, not three-column as described and pictured.

Extra word ‘the’ in “We’ll start by wrapping the all of the content in the lead-article div with a basic EE Channel Entries Tag pair.”

The text states: “Finally, we need to give the weblog parameter the value of news, which is the EE section from which we’re pulling the content.” I don’t see this weblog parameter in the displayed tag pair below.

While not technically necessary, it would be nice to include the closing

tag in :

{title}

By {author}

{article_excerpt}

<a href=“{title_permalink=” news_articles/view“}”
class=“read_story” >Read Story
{/exp:channel:entries}

I would suggest:

{title}

By {author}

{article_excerpt}

<a href=“{title_permalink=” news_articles/view“}”
class=“read_story” >Read Story

{/exp:channel:entries}

In the static downloaded html templates, the “Read Story” links are not enclosed in paragraph tags as they are in the subsequently developed dynamic pages. I think it would be better to be consistent and include the

tags in the static templates as well. Besides consistency, I think it looks better.

In the last paragraph, the terms “weblog” and “section” are confusing to me. I think “channel” would be a better choice for each of these terms.

Footnote 4 refers to the “weblog categories tag pair”. Should this be the “channel categories tag pair” instead?

The template-home.html file that I downloaded has the category navigator list in News-Politics-Sports order, unlike the other template files which have the category navigator list in News-Sports-Politics order. This is also reflected in Figure 3.1. I think you should change the template-home.html and Figure 3.1 to be consistent with the others.

Maybe include a small sidebar/callout reminding users that the 30-day trial requires that your web host have Zend Optimizer installed. While it’s not hidden, it’s not clearly pointed out on ee.com and it will save others lots of time, I’m sure. (I spent 2 hours trying to figure out why I couldn’t get the trial to install.)

In the code sample, the time variable moves from its place below the h2 tag (where it was in previous examples) to below the closing address tag.

In the first full paragraph on the page (it begins with, “Before the category…”), you say, “we need to tweak one setting in the Global Channel Preferences, which you can access under Content Administration section of the Control Panel.”

I actually found it under Admin > Channel Administration > Global Preferences.

I had to change:

to

adding the [site_url} tag to get the proper link to the image (absent a basref declaration in the

).

P.S. The book is very helpful for someone new to EE (and starting with 2.0).

There is a reference to URL in the form, yet no code exists for a URL field in the form. Suggest removing the text reference.

Just realized that links are now allowed, preventing my 2 prior attempts at posting from showing up.

In short, related_categories_mode needs to be set to “yes” and not “on.” Apparently there was a change somewhere along the line.

More importantly, according to the beta support forum for ee 2, there is a bug preventing RCM from operating propertly. In my case, as I worked through the example in the book (and as reported in the forum), it only returns the entry currently being displayed, even though other entries are available for display in the database.

A simple forum search for related_categories_mode will show the entry I refer to.

There are text references to “weblog entries tag pair” when it should be “channel entries tag pair.” Also the code on this page has an {exp:weblog:entries… rather than a {exp:channel:entries…

At the end of the first full paragraph, it states “We want to configure it similarly to Letters to the Editor - with comments disabled.” Looking back at the earlier chapters, the book did not walk through disabling comments for the Letters to the Editor Channel. Perhaps it should have.

The Module Configuration button is referred to as being “at the top left.” In build 20091211 it is at the “top right.”

You refer to setting the feed template to type “feed.” In build 20091211, the type is listed as “RSS Page.”

You refer to the Search Module as being “provided with both the free and paid version of EE.” From what I’ve read on the EE 2.0 site, there will be no free version. I suggest eliminating the reference to it.

There is a dangling

tag at the end of the second line of the form. It should be removed.

Unless the search_in parameter is specified on the exp:search the search will only look at the entry titles. I suggest calling for search_in=“everywhere”

In the 2nd code segment, there’s a closing

missing. It should be placed just prior to the {/reverse_related_entries} tag.

The text and code use “dynamic_parameter” when it should be “dynamic_parameters” (plural). It works fine once you do that.

Just below the tag pair example, the paragraph begins with “This tag pair will output a nested unordered list with a id and class”. Grammatically, should say ‘an id’ rather than ‘a id’.

In the code, the line:

related_categories_mode=“on”

should be

related_categories_mode=“yes”

Subscribe to the News

Instead of:

Under the Editing Content heading in the second paragraph, second sentence, the word “channe” should be “channel”

I copied the template-article-ee.html verbatim.

The related_categories_mode=“yes” only displays a single entry under the related articles within the “news_articles/view” template.

The book is missing the parameter dynamic=“off”.

In the tag variables section under the Getting Started with Expression Engine chapter, there is sample code showing how to use tag variable with the Channel Entries tags to pull in content. The tag variable {body} should actually be {news_body} in order for this to work with the Agile Record sample site if we’re pulling content in from the “news” channel from that site.

on page 40 the words “for” and “use” are highlighted.

{my_blog}

should be highlighted instead as it is on page 41.

The b in blog here is capitalized in the code section while on page 40 and 41 it is lowercase. I think it should stay capitalized from page 39 on to the rest of the code.

on the top: “Preload replacement rariables are not much..”

I think Scoobie Doo was aiding you on this one. It should be “Preload replacement variables are not much..”

3rd paragraph

The first part, exp, indicates to EE that this in a EE tag.

I think it would sound better if it was

The first part, exp, indicates to EE that this in an EE tag.

Complete Tag List seems to be from the 1.0 days of EE and not 2.0. Perhaps you can add them to the back of the book as an appendix or cheat sheet?

paragraph #2

Unless you tell it exactly where to pull from EE will pull content from every channel.

—should be—

Unless you tell it exactly where to pull from, EE will pull content from every channel.

6th paragraph

Another typical parameter for the Channel Entries Tag pair…

—should be—

Another typical parameter for the Channel Entries Tag Pair…

for and use are highlighted in RED again in the code, why?

on the first code snippet the limit is 1 and on page 46 the limit has changed to 2.

Why did

"

Today is {current_time format=“%D, %F %d, %Y”}

"

jump a few spots to the middle of the page from where it was on the top in the final code? As a reader I found it confusing.

You have listed in the output section today’s date twice

a) the date is showing two different dates

b) you removed it from the top in the code on page 46

c) it should now say Mon, March 1, 2010 instead of Mon, November 30, 2009 on the bottom since March was used earlier.

I personally think you should keep the time/date where it was on top instead of moving/adding it to the bottom.

2nd paragraph

..to build a online version..

change to

..to build an online version..

By default the status’s are not capitalized. So its not “Open” and “Closed”, rather it is “open” and “closed”.

Where can I find the list of the two other parent categories with their children? To make it easier for the reader it should be here on this page. Off to the scavenger hunt…

appending _ in front of say world is now deemed bad now. EE views world and _world as the same.

{exp:channel:entries channel=“news_articles” disable=“pagnation” limit=“2” status=“Top Story”}

Should be

{exp:channel:entries channel=“news_articles” limit=“2” disable=“pagnation” status=“Top Story”}

for consistency’s sake.

To submit your letter or comment, you can use our commment form or email editor@enginecitytimes.com. Letters may be edited for content, clarity and space constraints.

shows up in the third column and not under the full content. I added

"

To submit your letter or comment, you can use our commment form or email editor@enginecitytimes.com. Letters may be edited for content, clarity and space constraints.

"

to make this work properly

Cartoon Image does not show up on the View template. Instead ALT is shown.

There should be a chapter on how to upload from a local server to the main host server. Which parameters need to be changed within EE to make it work online as opposed to the local test development server the user is working on. That would be very helpful.

Article image is not showing either on the view pages.

#42187: I copied the template-article-ee.html verbatim.

I did not use dynamic=“off”. {article_excerpt} is shown where the contact should be shown.

You said to create a field group for the pages content but didn’t specify the specific options for this page. Would be helpfull if they were listed. Like is this a pure coded page or a wysiwyg page.

When setting up member groups for writers and editors you specify: “Additionally, grant access to the Publish page and Edit page (listed as “CONTENT: Publish” and “CONTENT: Edit”). Everything else should be set to
No." Should you also not set the “CONTENT: Section” to yes as well?

There is a paragraph that has been duplicated discussing related_categories_mode. It starts with “Before we add…” and ends with “would look like this”. This paragraph is on the page twice.

I am pretty sure that Figure 4.3 on page 61 is incorrect as this is not what I see when clicking the Create a New Channel Field Group button. I do however see Figure 4.3 after I have created the Channel Field Group, clicked Add/Edit Custom Fields followed by Create a New Custom Field.

After clicking the Content button and then Publish no “channels” came up. It said “There are currently no channels.” Where do we get the “channels?”

The paragraph beginning with “Before the category link will work properly, we need…” states that in order to tweak one setting in the global preferences you “(click Admin and
choose Overview)”. This is incorrect. The correct menu path is Admin/Channel Administration/Global Preferences.

Last paragraph suggested changes.

1. “Click Create a New Custom Field at the top left”, should be ‘top right’
2. Figure 7.2 needs updating to reflect EE 2.0

Two words.. Cheat Sheet!

Comments/Form don’t work. I even copy/pasted the code from the book download link and still no luck.

The comments/form doesn’t work when you click “View Rendered Template” on the “View” page, but they do work when you click on the link “READ STORY” link from the “/news_articles/page.” You might want to mentioned this somehow. I’m new to EE so I couldn’t figure out why my comments weren’t working from the “/news_articles/view” page “View Rendered Template” link.

Today is {current_time format=“%D, %F %d, %Y” }

doesn’t display correctly. It just displays "

Today is {current_time format=“%D, %F %d, %Y” }

" in the browser.

On page 26 it says “You should see four groups: about, global_embeds, * news, and search. The asterisk next to the third group denotes that its index template is the home page of the site.”

Figure 1.6 on the next page shows a different set of template groups and “site” is the group with the asterisk next to it.

The text does not match the image.

Second to last paragraph, last sentence:

“You should a form like in Figure 10.3.”

s/b

“You should see a form like in Figure 10.3.”

Paragraph 3:
—
In the Control Panel, select the Admin button, and then under Content Administration select Global Preferences. Look for the Cache Dynamic Channel Queries preference and toggle it to Yes. Click Submit to save your changes.
—

Global Preferences is not under “Content Administration”, it is under “Channel Administration”.

paragraph #3 Let’s go back to our hello_world template… —should be— Let’s go back to our my_info template…

“2.\tThere are several ways to remove or change the index.php file from the URL. We’ll discuss those ways later in the book.”

I didn’t see this later in the book. Any plans to include it? Thanks

Last sentence of the first paragraph says, “This section is limited to the most three recent letters.” Should be, “…the three most recent letters.”

Page 44(PDF) and 32(PRINT) - Tag Variables - Third paragraph;

“Let’s go back to our hello_world template…” -> shouldn’t that be “Let’s go back to our my_info template…” ?

“The next step is to create a way relate…” should read “The next step is to create a way to relate…”

Minor typo. Transposition of words…
4th Paragraph
“We also have the option of creating NEW A template for this channel.”

Are “NEW” and “A” transposed?

In the MakingthePages/template-category-ee.html file (Line 21) and in the “Checking Your Work” (Pg.101) the code should be “id” not “class” to make the 3 columns display correctly.

Example: <div id=“{switch=”lcol|mcol|rcol“}”>

I am also having issues getting the comments to work. Setting the AdminSecurity & Privacy>Security & Sessions / Require IP Address and User Agent when receiving comments? switch of ‘Off’ allowed the form to appear, but I can’t get any of the comments I submit to post properly. I just get a blank page on Submit.

Copying and pasting Related Articles code into view template renders everything except the {article_excerpt} tags which it prints explicitly.

The paragraph that begins on page 87 with “Before we add the ExpressionEngine code to make the…” then repeats itself after “it would look like this:” on page 88 rather than show the code example after the “:” character.

“AArticles” should just be “Articles”

“With all of the preferences set, click Create New Upload Destination to add the news articles destination to ExpressionEngine.” In the latest EE2 build, the button says “Submit”, not “Create New Upload Desitnation.”

In Advanced Templating, can you include a section on using “Snippets”, a new feature in EE2.x?

I have no idea how to use them and I thought it was a key missing element, in an otherwise excellent book!

Upgrading to v2.02 fixed the above article_excerpt issues

The category page template in the downloadable code bundle has 4 recent articles using an lcol|rcol format instead of the 3 articles/columns listed in the book and in the PDF’s inline code helper.

The content pasted below is duplicated on the following page (p97):

Placed in the Channel Entries tag pair, it would look like this: Before we add the ExpressionEngine code to make the related articles display, let’s briefly discuss how we’re going to tell ExpressionEngine to show articles that are somehow related to the one being viewed. There are complex ways to do this—based on tags and relationships between entries—but we’ll keep it simple for this site and define related articles as those that belong to the same cate- gory as the article being shown. Luckily for us, ExpressionEngine has a parameter we can set in a Channel Entries tag pair to make this hap- pen almost automatically: related_categories_mode=“yes”. Placed in the Channel Entries tag pair, it would look like this:

The text inside of the Field Instructions box in the screenshot says “Use this field to assign this article to a print edition of the newspaper.” However, the text on the previous page that mentions creating brief instructions for this new custom field says “Choose the print edition in which article appeared.” These two should probably match up.

In template-category-ee.html

line 21 reads class=“{switch=”lcol|mcol|rcol"}, while the CSS styles target IDs. So line 21 should be

id=“{switch=”lcol|mcol|rcol"}

to match the stylesheet. Or the stylesheet should be changed to classes to match the template.

For

“The next step is to create a way relate each news article”

read

“The next step is to create a way to relate each news article”

Second last para: “Click the red ‘Add/Edit Custom Fields’ text next to New Articles”… that should be News Articles

The initial Stylesheet that we are told to load (EngineCityTimes > CSS > screen > core.css) lacks some of the styles that are found in Complete Templates > static_templates > css > core.css. Because of this, when testing the Printe Edition template, the styles for the related entries do not work.

On p127 we are asked to place this code in the print_edition page:

{embed=“includes/document_header”
title=“{exp:channel:entries channel=”print_editions" disable=“pagination|member_data” limit=“1”}
{title} Print Edition
{/exp:channel:entries}"
}

But the Print Editions pages still have the default Engine City Times titles, rather than showing the March 2, 2010 Print Edition etc. The book needs to point out that you also have to alter the embed file for this to work.

In the document_header file, one option is to change

to

and it works.

Paragraph 4 reads: “You can also restrict an upload destination to a one or more member groups.”

Need to remove “a” from “to a one or more…”

Para 5 reads: “If you have image uploaded in the File Man- ager, then let’s get started embedding.”

For “image”, read “images”.

The book reads “From the Field Type list, choose Upload, and then choose Image from the File Type select list.” There is no “Upload” option in the Field Type list, it’s actually called “File” instead.

Paragraph 2 reads: “From the Field Type list, choose Upload”. That should say “choose File”.

The phrase, “navigate to the System Administration
area by using the Admin button at the top,” is confusing because there is a sub-category under “Admin” called System Administration, which does not include “General Configuration.”

I couldn’t get the Save Template as File procedure to work until I checked the Docs, where it points out that, whatever folder you save templates to, that folder needs to have permissions set to 777. This should be mentioned in the book.

Instead of looking for page_cache directory in the system folder, look in
system > expressionengine > cache
(text doesn’t mention the expressionengine directory).

The permalink is missing the closing paragraph tag in the Featured Top Story section code listing.

In paragraph 4, instead of “page; template” read “page template” (remove the semicolon).

On the second last line, for “use a underscored”, read “use an underscored”.

The Create a New Custom Field form now has six additional options after Text Direction — Show Formatting Buttons, Show Smileys, etc. They aren’t mentioned in the discussion or shown in Figure 4.3 on page 50.

“We also have the option of creating new a template for this channel.”

Should probably read:

“We also have the option of creating a new template for this channel.”

With the words “new” and “a” switched.

In the Related Articles code, the parameter “dynamic” is shown, set to “no.” This is not mentioned in the text. It should be included in the discussion of the parameters, and the rationale for using it should be explained. (Disable pagination is also not mentioned. Since that was previously discussed in another context, it may not need to be discussed here, but it should be mentioned.)

The CSS for the Related Articles section does not display the three articles in three columns, as shown in Figure 5.6. If the width of the columns is changed from 220px to 170px (matching the column widths for the Letters to the Editor), the three columns are displayed correctly.

In the discussion of template-category.html, the text says “To the right is a placeholder for a cartoon image.” This placeholder appears to be missing in the template.

The code for the page_title embed variable is incomplete. To make it work, you also need to add the status parameter with the three statuses that have been defined.

In the Disabling Unneeded Queries section, the text says: “If we wanted to disable all six …” — this should be “five.”

“to” has to be added in the sentence: It’s up to us build a simple

With the release of EE 2.1.0, the installer directory is now located at /system/installer instead of “the expressionengine directory in your system directory”.

“The ability to comment on every
news article was enabled when we created the news_articles channel and
set its preferences in Chapter 4, Creating and Configuring the Site, on
page 53.”

We haven’t touched the “Comment Posting Preferences” options, which allows the ability to comment. We only touched “Enabling versioning” and “Setting notification preferences”. The latter was used to have a mail notification send when a comment was entered.

The ability to post comments is ON by default.

This is the first time “dynamic=”no“” is used in a EE tag. The usage should be explained here.

“To the right is a placeholder for a cartoon image.”

There is no placeholder for a cartoon image in the downloadable template-category.html file.

“URI” must be changed to “URL”. Also on pages 104, 106, 149.

Invalid link in footnote: expressionengine.com/templates/source/category/feeds/

“We set the values of the search_in
parameter to “everywhere” to tell […]"

The code snippet on page 115 doesn’t show the search_in parameter. This parameter is used on page 116 for the first time.

Last sentence, where it reads “give the name parameter the value of name and…” the value should actually be “title” instead of “name”, as is demonstrated in the sample code on the following page.

“Above the Article Body textarea is a formatting toolbar […]”

This toolbar is not visible, as we haven’t set the “Show Formatting Buttons” to Yes for the custom field article_body.

“In the downloaded directory of site template files, open letter_form.html,
copy the entire contents […]”

The name of the file should be template-letters-saef.html instead of letter_form.html.

{if:else} should be added to the saef.html code, to avoid the

The link h t t p : / /eequickstartguide.com/downloads/first_timer.zip does not work.

The link h t t p : //eequickstartguide.com/downloads/sample_module.zip does not work

The link h t t p : //eequickstartguide.com/downloads/eeinsider.zip does not work

The list of categories in the feed’s ‘subject’ element always ends with a ‘,’.

Hi,

I had a bit of a head scratching moment when it came to Embedding Reusable Code on page 89 of the PDF, as it doesn’t explain that you need to choose the correct ‘Template Type’ when creating a template to ‘embed’ into another template.

It appears that embedding straightforward mark-up uses the ‘Static’ option, but when embedding tag pairs, ‘Web Page’ is needed.

I was stumped for a while when it came to embedding the category list as the Engine City Times pages were displaying the tag pairs and paramaters.

Best,

Sam

‘includes/masthead’ template needs its type changing in the preferences from ‘Static’ to ‘Web Page’ to display correctly.

“…added the CSS that makes page look nice.”

Should read:

“…added the CSS that makes the page look nice.”

“You also benefit from an easy to way to back up your templates…”

Should read:

“You also benefit from an easy way to back up your templates…”

There is a space between the end quote and the end curly bracket in {current_time format=“%D, %F %d, %Y” }. It will not display correctly unless the space is removed.

’Publish Page Customization" does not have the options:

- Display URL Title Field
- Display Ping Buttons

It does have this:

- Display Rich Formatting Buttons

- Default Entry Title
- URL Title Prefix

So, tutorial can’t be followed here.

The CSS used in chapter 5 for the Engine City Times homepage breaks in IE7 (specifically the core.css from the “Engine City Times” directory). You must use the core.css from the “complete_templates” directory, specifically; complete_templates>static_tempates>css>screen>core.css. Also the IE patches must be copied in from the “patches” directory, the others are empty.

Link to EE templates - 404

Can you please discuss snippets vs. global variables citing specific examples when we should use one as opposed to the other. Thanks!

“….category URL already exists, simply append _politics (as an example) to the category name…” should read “… to the category title” otherwise the display name looks wrong ie: you would get “World_politics” as the display when you actually want “World” as the display with the underlying URL having the value “world_politics”.

The core.css file has a font size of 15px for the right hand column news articles heading instead of 18px like the left hand column headings.

#sec-story-right h4 {
\tfont-size:15px; < change this to 18px
\tfont-weight:normal;
\tmargin:0;
}

The following sentence references a ‘Custom Fields’ option, this is actually ‘Channel Fields’ in ExpressionEngine v2.2.2.

“Click Administration in the breadcrumb trail at the top, and then choose the Custom Fields option under Channel Administration.”

Thanks.

Searchbox code defaults to only open status. There is no mention of this so any keywords that are related to Top Story or Featured Top Story are ignored unless the simple_form parameters, status=“open|Top Story|Featured Top Story”, are set.

On the listing of blog entries in the screenshot, the date is not actually displayed (only the EE tag is shown).