Over a series of 8 videos, watch and learn as Ryan builds an entire ExpressionEngine website from beginning to end. Get started now.
Today, the fellas at Devot:ee added a new Add-on Quick Store, which is a single page listing of every add-on they currently have for sale. 282 add-ons at the time I’m writing this.
A quick ⌘f in your browser to search for what you need and then add it to the cart.
Very nice!
Posted on May 16, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
It all started (again) on Saturday when Marcus Neto tweeted:
Just had an awesome talk with @caseylee about the template/theme market and #eecms. I hope this is the year it takes off.
— Marcus Neto (@marcusneto) May 12, 2012
Marcus may be a little biased. He did previously run EE Templates, which at one time had both paid and free themes.
A few people responded on Twitter and took issue with the idea that ExpressionEngine (and EllisLab) should ever embrace themes. They won’t work, right? WooThemes tried and it didn’t work out for them. They’re a group of smart people who have had a lot of success selling themes. A betting person would guess the reason is because there just weren’t enough potential customers. That betting person would probably be richer than someone trying to sell ExpressionEngine themes.
The other sentiment from those opposing more prominence in the theming world seemed to be rooted in either the desire to keep things as they are, (not “ruin” EE with themes) or some other curmudegeonly-driven reasoning. “Get off my lawn” is a valid reason, I suppose, but hardly one that should be taken seriously.
There are three reasons why ExpressionEngine themes haven’t worked.
First, the focus of the community using EE has been on developing custom websites. WordPress, as one example, has a long history of being themed. Many developers alter a base theme and use that to start their sites. ExpressionEngine developers typically (always?) start with a blank slate and implement custom static HTML templates.
Second, ExpressionEngine isn’t free, so people looking for cheaper themed sites might not pay for commercial software. Free software and free themes (or $50 themes) are tough to pass up if you don’t have a budget. And, let’s be honest, the majority of people needing websites don’t have a real budget. I don’t see anyone paying $200 for a license and then using a $50 theme. But, hey, maybe someone would.
The third reason, albeit much less of a factor, is that the ExpressionEngine user base isn’t big enough for EE to take off in a way where people theme it like crazy. Theme-focused WordPress and Drupal dominate usage statistics of the top 10,000 websites (with WordPress owning more than half). ExpressionEngine has an important place but at less than 10% (even if you remove vBulletin, primarily forum software, from consideration) it’s not big enough to attract the masses of people who build sites with themes.
EllisLab’s CEO Leslie Camacho has clearly stated his thoughts about some of those numbers and how it is no secret that an open source CMS would dominate the market while a commercial CMS would have less of a stronghold.
In terms of selling EE vs. open source, its true that open source’s reach is way beyond EE. It always has been. However, I want to point out that EE is the #1 commercial CMS and 3rd party tools like Built-with back up this claim. This is especially true in the top 10,000 websites. Note that they count vBulletin in there, but its a forum system first.
Should EllisLab focus on themes and making them easier to use and more popular? Yes. What would it take to make that happen?
Why should they? Because why wouldn’t you want to reach as many people as possible who may enjoy using your product?
Posted on May 15, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Today I looked at #expressionengine just coz some guys I know are using it and need help tweaking.I didn’trealize how easy it is to tweak
— John Kamuchau (@johnkevin) May 14, 2012
I believe the proper term is tweakalicious.
Isn’t that why you use ExpressionEngine? Because of its extensibility and relative ease of use when developing add-ons?
Posted on May 14, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
I don’t post about many job openings, but sometimes I just have to share because of the opportunity. This is one of those times.
Today Matt Weinberg announced on Twitter that Vector Media Group is hiring a full time web developer to work in their New York City office.
The team at Vector Media Group is already 10 people strong and they work with great clients and, yes, ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter.
A week in this role will require many skills: on Monday you might be turning PSDs into HTML, while on Tuesday you might be setting up templates and fields in a project’s CMS.
Our office is in the Union Square area of Manhattan. You’d be working in our office 5 days a week but we’re flexible with hours. The important thing is getting your work done and having some fun.
They offer benefits, including free lunch every day. And knowing Matt I bet the lunches are damn good.
Does this sound like a good fit for you? Read the entire job posting and get in touch with them.
Posted on May 10, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Posted on May 10, 2012 by Ryan Masuga
Along with the EE 2.5 release, EllisLab also released a new first party module to help EE developers make their websites compliant with the EU cookie legislation.
The Cookie Consent Module gives developers the option of disabling all cookies unless the site visitor specifically opted into them. Without the Cookie Consent Module disabling all cookies was not possible.
Without consent for cookies, visitors are unable to register for a member account or log in to their account.
Visitors can grant consent to cookies in two ways (from the docs):
The module makes two means of granting consent available: a direct link that can be used anywhere and form field that can be included on login and registration pages. Removing permission to set cookies is also provided for via a link.
You can find code samples and the available variables in the Cookie Consent Module documentation.
No. It is a free download from the ExpressionEngine Add-on Repository.
Posted on May 08, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Follow along in this silent video as a test out the new rich text editor in ExpressionEngine 2.5. I’ve only played with the basics so but it seems like a nice, simple editor that outputs good HTML.
Posted on May 07, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Update: I reported this as a EE 2.5 feature but it was actually introduced in EE 2.4. My search of the change log led me to believe it was new but I searched the wrong part. Apologies! Still, a nice addition. Thanks to Andy Gaunt for pointing that out to me.
A small but nice update to EE 2.4 is the simple link to create a new entry after publishing one and ending up on the (in my mind, nearly useless) View Entry screen.
Added link to publish another entry after publishing an entry.
Not a big addition but certainly one that makes a difference when you need to add multiple entries to the same channel.
Posted on May 07, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Today EllisLab released ExpressionEngine 2.5. After delaying the original release date of March, the 2.5 version that contains the new rich text editor is now available for download and purchase.
From the blog post announcing the release:
ExpressionEngine 2.5.0 is a feature and security release. It features a new Rich Text Editor field type, a Rich Text Editor Module to allow use of the editor on the front end, and a Cookie Consent Module designed to help European Union (EU) users comply with privacy laws impacting cookie use. In addition to a number of new features, this release improves XSS filtering and redirect behavior. For developers there are a number of new hooks and improvements, and everyone will benefit from the stability improvements provided by over 50 bug fixes.
For developers there are some new hooks available and support for compliance with the EU cookie laws through the Cookie Consent Module.
Read all about it in the blog post or read the 2.5.0 changelog for all the details.
Posted on May 07, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Posted on May 03, 2012 by Ryan Masuga
John Rogerson, Director of Web at Sewanee: The University of the South, joins the podcast again to share his tips for efficient EE development using DRY techniques.
John details his two-fold DRY approach in EE, starting with MVC approach of separating your data controllers (i.e. template tags, channel queries, etc.) from your views (i.e. html). John then discusses the DRY goal of using one embed per template with an add-on, like Stash, that maps your data output to your views. John even put together a DRY template example on GitHub to demonstrate this DRY method.
Posted on May 03, 2012 by EE Podcast
This month we added a new advertiser to the site. He needs no introduction. I’m sure most of you are already using at least one of his add-ons. I’m talking about Low Schutte and his Go to Low add-on site.
This month Low wants you to know about the update to Low Reorder, which makes it easy to reorder entries through the control panel. If you’ve used previous versions of Low Reorder you will pleased to know that you can now reorder entries across channels.
Thanks to Low for supporting EE Insider this month. And thank you to our other great advertisers for their ongoing support.
Do you have a product or service that you want to share with the smart, savvy, good looking, and moderately athletic EE Insider readership? Get in touch.
Posted on May 03, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Speaking of comparison charts, Exp:resso put together a comparison chart of e-commerce options on ExpressionEngine.
The apps covered in the chart are: their own Exp:resso Store, Cartthrob, and BrilliantRetail. It is a comprehensive chart and even includes Buy Now links at the bottom for each add-on.
Awesome.
Posted on Apr 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
I don’t know when this was created, but via Twitter I found out about a EE search comparison chart on the Solspace Super Search product page.
The feature comparison puts side-by-side the built-in ExpressionEngine search, Low Search, and Solspace Super Search.
Very handy if you’re researching which search module is the best one for your site.
Posted on Apr 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
“We’ve always modeled content.”
That was the first thing I said to myself after reading the A List Apart article Content Modelling: A Master Skill by Rachel Lovinger.
Rachel details the idea and work behind breaking website content and pages into different data buckets (in our case this would be Channel Custom Fields and Channels). Content modelling is important because we need make sure the people managing the website have the control they need over the content. Does that sidebar paragraph about the site need to be edited on occasion? Make sure you store it in a way that the website team can update it.
As people who develop with and on ExpressionEngine, content modelling seems obvious to us. This is what we’ve always done. It is an important part of being a competent web developer. It is not something that we should just leave to someone else to do.
To demonstrate this, read through this article by Justin Reynolds on content modelling with ExpressionEngine.
If you’re going to model content effectively you need a content management system that makes it as painless as possible to organise information into well defined data containers. I thought I’d take a moment to outline why I think ExpressionEngine by EllisLabs (sic) does this so well. It’s the primary reason I use it as my standard content management solution for larger websites. The system was designed from the ground up with flexible content modelling in mind: it makes it very straightforward to define ‘channels’ of infomation built of any type of data that can be displayed on a website: single lines of text, body copy, images, multimedia files, PDFs and other downloadable files, dates, categories - and so on. I’ll stress from the outset that I’m sure there are other systems that also handle content modelling well - it’s just that I like the way ExpressionEngine does it.
Posted on Apr 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Hacking EE core is OK. The CMS isn’t perfect. Just document your changes and carry on. #eecms
— Ryan Masuga (@masuga) April 29, 2012
Whether it was a homegrown hack or one we found somewhere to work around a limitation or bug in ExpressionEngine, we’ve all done it at some point. The thing with hacking the EE core files is this: if you hack it, you own it.
You own the responsibility for letting those that come after you know about the hack. If it’s your site or one you will always maintain (unlikely), then you own the responsibility to always re-patch the core files with your hack when upgrading to a newer version of ExpressionEngine.
Rob Sanchez had a good response and technique for making upgrading site with hacks a little easier (this is only applicable to people who use Git or other version control system):
@masuga do EE as submodule w/ a hack branch, then you can merge newer EE versions back in later. plus your diff is your document of changes.
— Rob Sanchez (@_rsan) April 29, 2012
If you hack the core EE files, where do you document those changes so developers that come after you can know about them?
Posted on Apr 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Posted on Apr 26, 2012 by Ryan Masuga
I’ve been working with the new add-on HelpDesk from Krea and I want to share my experiences so far.
This review is based on my own effort to create an integrated, single location for supporting my own ExpressionEngine add-ons. I’ve considered using a number of other existing packages, most of which do not have any integration with ExpressionEngine, as well as the possibility to build my own support add-on. I also considered building a support section on top of an existing tool such as my ProForm module. I even considered building something from scratch using ExpressionEngine’s core capabilities. While I do think that these other options could certainly do the job, HelpDesk has given be a huge head start on the job and because of it I’m nearly finished with this new section of the site after only a few days of concentrated work with HelpDesk.
If you’re looking for my one line recommendation, it is this: buy a copy of HelpDesk.
Now let’s get into some specifics.
Posted on Apr 25, 2012 by Isaac Raway
Last week I teased the new Minimalist override for the ExpressionEngine Control Panel. This week it is available to purchase and install on your EE site.
Minimalist is a completely overhauled look and feel for the ExpressionEngine control panel. Everything has been stripped down to it’s bare essentials, designed to help optimize the experience of managing and creating content.
Check out the screenshots and description at Devot:ee. The add-on costs $25.
Posted on Apr 24, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
If you have a product or service that you want to get in front of the smart, funny and passionate ExpressionEngine community, EE Insider has a premium ad spot available for the month of May.
Interested? Get in touch.
Posted on Apr 24, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
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