engenu Epiphany #2: A hierarchy of Folders becomes a hierachy of Pages becomes a functional web site

by Cheryl Johnson

Real Estate Broker, Investor

Author website

I drafted this article a few days ago, before Greg posted his video demo of engenu.  Coincidentally, I think my post here serves as a pretty good introduction to the engenu functions that are covered in the video.

I like Greg’s description of  engenu’s functionality here.  (About two thirds of the way down in the post, below the photos.)

And once you own the basic, core engenu concept of folders become pages, what Greg is describing is logical,  and actually quite easy to do.

But I think I a simpler, pared down example of folders becoming pages becoming a web site will help everyone get from here to there.

Suppose I want to build a very simple, single property web site.

I want a page with the property description to be the main entry page.  I want three sub-pages.  One with neighborhood information, one with my bio, and a contact me page.

If I was working in WordPress, I’d log into my WordPress Dashboard, create each each page, set the front page display to the property description page, and activate the Pages widget to display a list of pages in the sidebar, or handcode them into sidebar.php.

To build the same site in engenu, the paradigm shifts to setting up the structure offline first.

I have found it is quick and easy to just create folders with my FTP program.

First I’d create an empty folder named “123 Green Street”.  Yes, that folder could also contain PDFs, and images which will automatically become a slideshow,  but hold that thought for the later.

Then I open the empty “123 Green Street” folder, and create three empty sub-folders inside of it:  “Neighborhood Information”, “About Me” and “Contact Me”.

In the FTP program, I move back up a level, and upload the “123 Green Street” folder to my host/server.  Since the other three folders are nested inside of “123 Green Street”, they get uploaded, too, in one quick zap.

Now I go to mysite.com/engenu and process the whole shebang through engenu.  All four folders became pages, with 123 Green Street set as the main entry page, and the three sub-pages listed in the sidebar of the main page.

And yes, I will need to visit each page in the editor, and plug in some content.  If the content I want to add is simply a set of photos for the featured engenu slideshow, I could FTP into my host/server,and upload the set of photos to the “123 Green Street ” folder.  The next time I open engenu and access that folder, I will see a message that  “Added or deleted photos will be re/disinherited upon next “Save.”  I’ll click save, and the slideshow will be activated.

If your web project could benefit from building a structured hierarchy of nested pages offline first, before creating the content, engenu will give you an advantage.

And when you choose to rearrange that hierarchy structure later, engenu will let you rearrange it on the fly, in FTP, by simply moving the folders around on the host/server.

Take another look at Greg’s description of  using engenu here as a “resource site”, a sort of virtual office to keep track of potential homes for a buyer client.

Read Joshua Hanoud’s comment on my previous post here.

Now, go watch the video.

Engenu will probably not replace your existing website or blog.  Even if you never use engenu for any other purpose, even if you never bother to hack the code to customize the skin,  I can see engenu being immensely helpful for building indivdualized “resource sites” in the way Joshua and Greg describe.