I’m sure a lot of us use quick launchers on our computers. Apps like Launchbar, Quicksilver, Alfred or Launchy. Mac or Windows, you can get set up with one of these quickly and for little to no cost. Now, thanks to the fine chaps at devot:ee you can also search for ExpressionEngine add-ons right from your computer.
This won’t work with the standard EE search because it uses POST and doesn’t accept search parameters in the URL. It looks to me like devot:ee is using Super Search from Solspace to power this. Well done, guys.
Today on the EE blog Pascal Kriete posted that the first party Twitter Timeline plugin now supports OAuth. This is great news because tomorrow numerous EE sites around the web using basic authentication Twitter EE add-ons are going break.
If you don’t but need to fix a site that uses another add-on, consider pulling in the RSS feed of the user’s Twitter stream and displaying using the Magpie plugin. It’s not the same and it’s not perfect, but it’s a decent stop gap measure. In fact, with a little PHP you can make it do stuff like link URLs, remove the username the prefixes every tweet and more.
Pop over to the site and check it out. And while you’re there, drop Jesse a note and thank him for the new resource. Keeping sites like that (and this site) running and regularly updated is no small task.
On Twitter, Barrett Newton (the team behind Cartthrob) announced that their new EE add-on SafeCracker will be available Monday. Oh, and the first 20 people to use a special coupon will get $20 off.
SafeCracker is an EE 2 add-on for creating SAEFs:
SafeCracker is a replacement and enhancement of the ExpressionEngine’s Stand-Alone Entry Form. SafeCracker makes it possible to add & edit data to your site without accessing the backend. This will allow you to push the boundaries of ExpressionEngine design and development, create rich web applications, and simplify your development process.
On September 2nd three of the EllisLab team will be in Seattle and they want to hang out! From 7-9pm at the Rock Bottom Brewery, you can join the crew and get all nerdy about EE or ask them when EE 2 is coming out they’re going to buy WordPress and sudo rm -R it.
Or you can just have a beer and enjoy yourself. Either way, if you’re in the Seattle area please consider joining them!
The handy ol’ CSVee plugin for EE1 (used to export data from a query on a template into CSV format) looks like it’s been updated for EE2 in the form of the new AJW Export add-on. Looks dead simple to use and can be very useful for getting information out of your EE database.
When I released my new ExpressionEngine training videos last week, I also included a free installation video that walks through getting up and running with ExpressionEngine 2, including requirements, setting permissions and other considerations.
The video runs about 15 minutes and is just shy of a 40 MB download. New to ExpressionEngine and want a quick primer on installing EE? Download the video now.
Now if you’re already using EE 1.6 and want to upgrade to EE 2, I shared some information in my EECI 2010 (in San Francisco) talk about the upgrade process. The slides are available to everyone to read and learn from.
But if you’re interested in watching me give the talk, last week the talk was posted to the conference website but it’s limited to those who attended or purchased the DVD.
I have 2 invites to complete access to the EECI videos (of nearly every session) and I am going to give them away to two random commenters on this blog entry. In order to win you have to list something you love about EE 2 and something you wish it had. I’ll pick the two winners on Friday morning Eastern Time USA.
Biber Ltd. released a new fieldtype for EE 2: Currency Field. This field enables you to easily have a currency fieldtype in your publish form. It supports dozens of currencies (pretty much everything except Monopoly money) and you can choose whether the currency is user selectable or not.
Using the template tags, you can leverage the Google Calculator to do currency conversions while also showing the original price (see the fieldtype docs for more explanation).
Long-time EE development shop Solspace is looking to expand their team with a new EE developer contract position:
We seek a skilled ExpressionEngine add-on / CI / LAMP stack developer to help with both client jobs and our extensive add-on library. You will be employed on an hourly remote contractor basis with flexible hours, but we expect you to be generally available during regular business hours. Our need is immediate.
What’s the best way to allow a client to position images in the EE backend? Can one dynamically apply a CSS class to the image?
I’ve done everything from creating custom formatting buttons to just using Wygwam. What’s your technique for allowing images to be easily positioned inside of content areas? Let us know in the comments.
This initial list will be shortened, so if you dig the EE Podcast, please vote for us! After you vote they will create a short list and from there the judges will decide the winners.
OK, so there was only one new addition this week. There are still almost 900 more for you to peruse at devot:ee, any time you wish. A random favorite of mine is Publish Tweeks, which removes the “Quick Save” and “Preview” buttons when publishing. The key part for me is that it also cancels the redirect to the preview after saving, keeping the user on the edit screen. This is very handy when you’re making small changes and updates and saving frequently, and it works well if you’re using Live Look.
There has been a lot of activity in the MojoMotor world since the software was released last month. Add-ons, community websites and websites built with MojoMotor have all surfaced.
Here’s a roundup of some of what has been going on.
Fans of Solspace’s Super Search module will be happy to know that the module now supports ExpressionEngine 2. This is great news for me because I have a project coming up where Super Search is needed.
A bit about Super Search:
The architecture of the module borrows from Google’s model of constructing search queries. Anything that you might want to query for, keywords, weblogs, categories, statuses, custom fields, date ranges, custom field numeric ranges, etc. can be loaded into a single URI segment by using the Super Search syntax
In order to run Super Search on EE 2 you also have to install the Solspace Bridge Expansion (which is included with the module).
Mijingo is the new home for my training materials (minus the ExpressionEngine book, which is still available from my awesome publisher) and those of future authors at Mijingo.
Learning ExpressionEngine 2
That’s the title for the new series of screencasts on ExpressionEngine 2. They’re beginner-level screencasts that walk you through, step-by-step, how to build a basic website in ExpressionEngine 2. The sample site we build this time is for Channel University. Is it real? No. But fake schools need websites, too!
This series is 8 episodes and runs more than 4 hours. I went through the first series and distilled it down to only the most vital information needed to get up and running with EE 2.
If you’re looking for more advanced material, don’t worry, all of that will be coming soon!
On October 22, 2010 ExpressionEngine Camp will take place in Denver, Colorado. It is being organized by Q Digital Studio and is a one-day event for EE developers and users.
EE Camp brings hands-on ExpressionEngine presentations, sharing, discussion and ideas to Denver, Colorado. ExpressionEngine is a flexible content management system that designers, developers and clients truly enjoy using to build beautiful and feature-rich sites.
It looks like they’re still working out the details but the date is firm and the venue is the Casselman’s Event Venue in Denver. Registration isn’t open yet so you might want to check the site regularly for more information.
Looking forward to seeing this happen. I hope more camps take place across the world.
I’ll admit that when I first came across this blog post by Jason Morehead on EE pricing that I rolled my eyes and quietly mumbled “Oh here we go again.” But then I realized who wrote it and then actually read it and, well, it was a nice change of pace in the conversation dominated by pricing complainers.
Jason talks through the common complaint that EE + add-ons is too expensive and WordPress is cheaper. We’ve all heard it a million times before and, honestly, I just ignore the topic at this point. I don’t give it publicity here on EE Insider and I don’t spend any time arguing with anyone. Why? Because if someone is approaching EE solely based on cost, they’re already missing the point of why EE is such a great deal.
In Episode 24 of the EE Podcast, we talked a bit about this. The topic was never supposed to be whether EE was too expensive (I say this because I noticed on Twitter that some people didn’t listen to the whole show before shooting off comments), but we did talk about it. One thing I mentioned is that I’ve found ExpressionEngine’s low price (compared to a lot of solutions that some of us regularly bid against) is the real problem. Some clients see that as a liability after years of paying thousands of dollars per year for some CMS that would make your eyes bleed.
Pricing complaints are usually a sign that the pricing is spot on. If EE (and add-ons) were actually *too* expensive, people would stop complaining about it and just move on.
I think that’s the trouble that a lot of people have a hard time seeing. If you NEED those $430 worth of addons to get a website done, that’s a large website and needs to be upcharged accordingly. If you are charging $600 for a website that requires all of that, you might need to rethink your pricing.
If the cost of getting up and running in EE with basic add-ons is only $500, then I think that’s a great deal. If your site budget is less, then EE probably isn’t the solution for you.
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