Blog Entry
- Control Panel Inject JS/CSS (for EE1) by Nathan Pitman (Nine Four Ltd)
Allows you to inject custom CSS and/or JavaScript into the ExpressionEngine 1 control panel. As an example you could use this extension to inject the relevant JavaScript and CSS into the edit category screen to replace text areas with a Wygwam field.
- ‘Plates ($, for EE2) by iain
This fieldtype for ExpressionEngine 2 is a drop in replacement for the native Pages Module or Structure Module ‘Template’ field.
- ItFigures (for EE1) by Aaron Gustafson
An ExpressionEngine plugin to convert images into microformatted figures.
- Gist (for EE1) by Aaron Gustafson
Embeds a Github Gist into the page.
- :nth (for EE1) by Booyant
:nth allows you to dynamically generate a class name at specified intervals on ExpressionEngine elements.
- SP Title Filler (for EE2) by Jamie Rumbelow
SP Title Filler is a simple fieldtype that automatically fills in your title field with the channel name and an incrementing integer, allowing you to safely hide the title field from your clients without fearing validation concerns. Because, frankly, sometimes you just *don’t need a title*.
- Access Post Variable (for EE2) by w3care
This plugin allows you to access global post variables within a EE Template.
- SP Table Select (for EE2) by Jamie Rumbelow
SP Table Select from Sparkplugs allows you to setup a dropdown that pulls its values and labels from arbitrary columns in an arbitrary database table.
- Domain Checker (for EE2) by Belong Software
No need to go off to another website to perform a whois search on your domain name. This accessory will pull the details for you and present them in the control panel footer.
Blog Entry
Back in the Fall, Andy Johnson wrote up some instructions on creating a Tumblr-like site with EE. It’s a clear and thorough write-up of how to get it done.
Lee Reamsnyder, a technical writer and web designer for IBM in North Carolina, changed it up a bit with his own write-up.
I’ve always been a fan of the experience of Tumblr; as soon as tried it, I knew that I wanted to do something like it for my own site running ExpressionEngine 2.
This very good article by Andy Johnson from a few months ago covers a lot of the basic ideas. I have some additional thoughts based on my experiences trying to doing very close to the same thing.
For experienced EE developers, a lot of this will be nothing groundbreaking, but if you’re relatively new to EE you might find this interesting.
Lee walks you through step-by-step with Control Panel instructions and code samples. A great tutorial you might want to check out if you’re looking to emulate the Tumblr style of blogging.
Read Lee’s entire tutorial: How I built a Tumblr-style blog with ExpressionEngine
Blog Entry
During the Train-ee Raising ExpressionEngine class, there is aPhoenix ExpressionEngine Meetup scheduled at the SunUp Brewing Company. If you’re in the area, join the group and talk shop with fellow EE users, like Mike Boyink and Erik Reagan.
Get all of the information you need at the Meetup page for this event.
Blog Entry
The original client guide was released in September 2009 and Headspace Design just updated it to be compatible with ExpressionEngine 2.
In our original post about it we described it as “beautiful” and “information dense.” Those same things are true for the EE 2 version of the guide. Just like with the original version, it comes in PDF format but there is also an InDesign file available so you can customize the guide to fit the brand of your company.
Everyone would should check this out…even if it you only use it get ideas for your own client guide. Nice work, Headspace!
Blog Entry
Yesterday, on the company blog developer Christy Collins announced a new program at Solspace for donating software to non-profits. After her own experience of running a non-profit to support research for a rare genetic disorder, Christy was inspired by other tech companies.
I have been delighted to find generous support in the tech world for non-profits such as ours. Salesforce, for example, offers qualifying non-profits a free ten user license for their enterprise level product with customizations specifically for non-profits. TechSoup serves as a clearinghouse for technology donations. Our organization’s power and reach will be greatly enhanced by the availability of these services.
Solspace will be donating up to $500 of software each month to a non-profit in need of software to get their EE site up and running. In order to be considered, you have to apply by filling out the donation form, including information about your non-profit and the software you need.
The next software donation is decided on March 28th, so apply before then to be considered.
Blog Entry
Every day I go through feeds, Google searches, Twitter searches, Delicious searches and more to find the best stuff to post to EE Insider. I can’t find it all on my own, so I often rely on people emailing me links to useful information (whether it’s their own or someone else’s).
As I posted on Twitter over the weekend, if you have an event (meetup, etc) scheduled, let us know. We will post about it and we might even chip in somehow to support the event (giveaway, a round of drinks). If you have recently posted a how-to or article on ExpressionEngine, send me the link. Heck, even if you recently launched a site on ExpressionEngine, shoot me an email.
This is a community site, so I want to make sure it reflects the news and events of the community.
Blog Entry
The recently-launched site Meta Q has an article posted about allaying fears clients might have when working with their new ExpressionEngine site.
So you’ve successfully landed a gig for a shiny new website, and you’re going to build it in ExpressionEngine. Now reality has set in for your client. They realize they’re actually going to have to update this new site of theirs, and they’re panicked it’s going technically way over their heads and will take up all their time.
If you’re a web designer or developer who loves ExpressionEngine you know how simple it is to update content. Allaying your clients’ fears may not be so easy. But facing your clients’ fears in advance will help everyone understand that ExpressionEngine really isn’t so scary.
Each fear includes a description and a helpful tip for you, the EE designer/developer. Great stuff and a must-read.
Read the article: Never Fear Expressionengine Is Here
Blog Entry
In last week’s EE Help Chat, Kevin Thompson raised a question about removing index.php and preventing URLs with index.php from resolving, too. A couple of people in the chat room put their heads together and came up with a solution.
The problem:
At the time of this writing, if you were to visit http://expressionengine.com/index.php/overview/ or http://expressionengine.com/overview/, you’d be presented with the exact same page. Having the same content resolve at two distinct URLs can potentially harm your search engine rankings and disrupt your analytics.
The solution is a beefier set of rewrite rules to prevent URLs with index.php in them from resolving. Read Kevin’s write-up for the code you need (and be sure to check out the comments): Completely Remove index.php From ExpressionEngine URLs
Blog Entry
As is customary every Wednesday, two help chats take place today.
First, is the European EE Help Chat (no EU passport required), which takes place at 20:00 GMT. The second ExpressionEngine Help Chat takes place at 9 PM EST and is also open to everyone who is awake, alert and looking to talk shop about ExpressionEngine.
I usually post a Twitter reminder about 15 minutes before, in case you forget.
See you in the chats!
Blog Entry
Tim Murtaugh put together a computing bag at Bagcheck collecting some of this favorite add-ons:
Each time I set up a new installation of Expression Engine, there are a few plugins that always come along for the ride — and a lucky few that I add when the need suits.
The list contains many of the usual suspects but he’s asking for help identifying any add-ons he’s forgotten. What’s on your list?
Read Tim’s list: Expression Engine 2 Add-ons: a Computing bag by Tim Murtaugh
Blog Entry
EE Insider contributor Noah Stokes along with Phil Coffman and Trent Walton put together a new “extras” site for web designers: Method & Craft. The site features articles, interviews, videos and notes.
We like to think of Method and Craft as the DVD extras of design: the stories behind the work, who made it, how they did it, and the techniques people have developed throughout their professional career. We all use the same tools, but we use them differently. We strive to educate you on more efficient, creative, and engaging ways to create your design. This site will not only be valuable to creative veterans, but also educational to those new to the design field. It’s like looking over the shoulder of your favorite designer.
The site, which is powered by ExpressionEngine, launched with interviews with Naz Hamid andJesse Bennet Chamberlin, an article by Dan Mall and a lot more.
Check it out: Method & Craft
Blog Entry
Are you going to be at SXSW? So are a lot of people from our community. You should join them for the official SXSW ExpressionEngine meetup, which takes place this Friday (March 11th) at 8pm.
You don’t need a SXSW badge to join the group and no RSVP is required. Just show up!
Lear more at the Facebook page: SXSWi ExpressionEngine Meet up
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Publish layouts are by far the most buggy elements in #eecms
Filip Vanderstappen via Twitter
Used to be worse.
Publish Layouts are a killer feature that when refined will make us wonder how we ever managed without them. I’m sure they’ll get some love in future versions of EE2.
Blog Entry
- Date Type for Low Variables (for EE2) by Bjorn Borresen
A basic date type for use with Low Variables.
- Low Link (for EE2) by Lodewijk Schutte (Low)
Searches the given text for Wiki-style links and transforms them to <a>-tags (or any other tag), based on matches found in given channel title or custom field.
- Low Alphabet ($, for EE2) by Lodewijk Schutte (Low)
This add-on for ExpressionEngine lets you create A-Z lists with great ease and flexibility. It also allows you to display channel entries sorted by alphabet and optionally filtered by first character, so you can display only entries starting with a given letter or number.
- Issuu ($, for EE2) by Milan Topalov
Bring your Issuu documents to EE. It’s easy with Issuu custom fieldtype!
- Catchall (for EE2) by Chris Newton (BarrettNewton.com)
Speed up dev by not having to create a bunch of fields in the CP. Handy. The Catchall fieldtype is meant to be used with a SafeCracker Entry Form. It stores any form data you submit to it, flexibly adding fields on the fly. This is useful if you want to capture many fields of data without having to actually create all those custom fields. The Catchall fieldtype does not work without SafeCracker.
- Easy CAPTCHA Challenges (for EE1) by Aaron Gustafson
Alternative CAPTCHA for ExpressionEngine.
- Easy Custom Fields (for EE1) by Aaron Gustafson
ExpressionEngine extension that exposes custom fields via $SESS.
- Wygwam Template Links (for EE1 & EE2) by Pixel & Tonic (Brandon Kelly)
Adds a “Templates” Link Type to Wygwam’s Link dialog.
- AutoMin (for EE2) by Paramore|Redd (Jesse Bunch)
AutoMin automatically combines and compresses your CSS and JavaScript, outputting the result in a single, fully-customizable HTML tag. AutoMin implements an intelligent caching system that automatically detects changes to your tags or files.
- Protected Links ($, for EE2) by IntoEEtive (Yuriy Salimovskiy)
This add-on lets you encrypt/secure download links, restrict access to the files and also display some useful statistics. It consists of module and fieldtype.
- WYGWAM / NavEE Extension (for EE2) by Booyant
NavEE & WYGWAM are friends!
How-to Article
Last year I gave a talk at the EngineSummit 2 on documenting EE projects. I’ve learned a lot the hard way in the past and I want to share the ideas and approaches with you. Hopefully you can avoid the mistakes I made.
While it’s important to supply your clients or content editors with some form of documentation—that’s not the form of documentation we’re talking about right now. We’re talking about documentation for you, the developer. Documentation for other developers who aren’t inside your head 24/7. It’s important (and I’m not the only one that thinks so) and we’ll talk about why.
Read the Article
Blog Entry
I wasn’t going to link to this write-up about EE add-ons because it’s a well-worn path we’ve all been down several times. I do, however, want to highlight a comment by Rob Sanchez on the value of add-ons and the work involved.
The other day, I was thinking about when I first started using EE, B.M. (before Matrix). I was young and idealistic. I remember feeling astonished at the power and flexibility of EE. If you were clever enough, EE would reward you with the capability to build anything you dreamed of. No, we didn’t have Matrix and Playa and Structure and Low Variables, but somehow, we managed. We built awesome sites and web apps and became evangelists for the platform.
Fast forward to today. Now we have the very same system, which is even more extensible and powerful than when we first started. And…for much of what we need, someone has ALREADY DONE THE WORK, for pennies on the dollar! We have forgotten where we came from.
When I hear someone say, “Why do I have to pay extra for X feature?!?!”, I pause, cringe, then think to myself: YOU DON’T HAVE TO. Pretend it’s 2008, or that you are Boyink, and build it yourself. You may learn something. You may become a better developer. You may learn that actually, the addon was worth the price.
I agree with you, the the market has enabled some shady nickel-and-dimers to set up shop. But I can almost guarantee you, no one outside of Brandon Kelly is getting rich from selling addons. It can take dozens of months or even years to recoup the cost of the hundreds of hours spent developing an addon. And if you are someone who chooses to provide hours and hours of excellent support, it makes it even harder to break even.
I think you hit the nail on the head in #10. We, the EE community, are in control of this market. We can exert this control with our buying decisions and our recommendations to our clients and industry colleagues. We should continue to prop up the greatest addons and their developers and not be afraid to call out the lowest denominators.
Blog Entry
The latest episode of the EE Podcast is up on the 5by5 website and this week we talked to Leslie Camacho and Leslie Doherty of EllisLab.
On the podcast they made a few announcements including that they have acquired the SafeCracker add-on from Barrett Newton and that it is freely available for EE2 license holders. While it is now a separate add-on it is likely that it will eventually be part of EE2. Listen to the podcast for the entire story from EllisLab.
This episode of the podcast was sponsored by Pixel & Tonic, makers of fine ExpressionEngine add-ons. They released Playa 4 earlier this month with a new look, a single-select UI with autocomplete and new template tags. Playa 4 is a free upgrade for existing Playa customers. Pick up your copy at PixelAndTonic.com.
Blog Entry
Ryan Masuga clarifies how Devot:ee is handling refund requests for SafeCracker, which is now distributed for free by EllisLab to EE2 license holders.
Our official stance is: if there is a legitimate problem with Safecracker, you’re within your rights to request a refund via devot:ee within your 30 days of purchase, but there are no refunds if the sole purpose of the refund is just “retroactive freeness.”
During the most recent episode of the EE Podcast, someone in the chatroom asked about refunds if you recently (let’s say in the last 7 days) purchased the add-on. I relayed that question to Leslie Camacho and the response was that if there is a refund policy, it’s up to Barrett Newton. There was no claim of refunds being issued. Unfortunately, this was somehow misunderstood by some people. However, I suspect some just heard what they wanted to hear.
Read Ryan’s forum post: What if we just purchased SafeCracker?
Blog Entry
Each month a group of companies in our community help support this site with their advertising. As I do from time to time, I want to thank them here on the blog for their help.
- Pixel & Tonic - It goes without saying that P&T makes some of the best add-ons out there. Playa, Wygwam and Matrix are staples for many site builds. Check out their Dive Bar area, which features several free field types for EE1 & EE 2. Pixel & Tonic also sponsors the full-text RSS feed.
- Structure - Create pages, building navigation with an easy-to-use interface. Get real control over the structure of your EE site. This is definitely a top-shelf add-on you should consider.
- Vector Media Group - They are EE and SEO professionals, so they know how to help you get the best search engine visibility with your EE-powered website. Oh, and they’re great guys, too.
- Hambo Development - ExpressionEngine development for agencies. Look to them if you need a development partner to help get your project out the door.
- BrilliantRetail - Powerful e-commerce for ExpressionEngine built right into your ExpressionEngine control panel. Manage multiple product types, languages, customers and payment types.
- PutYourLightsOn - FireMail and Expresso, two add-ons for EE2. FireMail will help you manage and track your email campaigns. Expresso is a WYSIWYG editor that even offers a developer license so you can use it on as many sites as you want.
Finally, I’d like to thank Nevin, Laurie and the team at EngineHosting. Last year they allowed me to move this site over to their rock-solid hosting service and it’s never been faster. Before EngineHosting I was running my own virtual server and it was up to me to maintain patches, updates and performance. With EngineHosting they’re the experts so I don’t have to worry about that.There’s a reason they’re the go-to company for hosting ExpressionEngine websites.
EE Insider rarely has open ad spots but there are openings for March. If you would like to advertise your company, product or service to a very handsome and lovely group of ExpressionEngine developers, web designers and web developers, get in touch for details.
Blog Entry
Of interest this week is a new quiz module from 4-ee. It’s nice to see an add-on out there to handle quizzes, because previous solutions…well, there weren’t any. I could have used a quiz module on a client project a couple years ago, so it’s nice to know that someone has finally put something out there that tackles this problem. 4-ee is new to the EE community, so we’ll have to see what their support looks like - I hope it can live up to the high standard set by other ExpressionEngine developers.
- 4-eeQuiz ($, for EE1 & EE2) by 4-ee
An LMS for your CMS. From multiple choice to liker scale, weighted to randomized, 4-eeQuiz is a fully integrated solution that passes the test with flying colors. You get fine grain controls and options for every question and quiz; easy integration into your site with simple and powerful templates; plus you can capture, sort, and utilize your data right within the module.
- Control Panel Rebrand (for EE2) by anjstudio
An ExpressionEngine 2 Accessory that completely rebrands your control panel into a black & blue theme. Includes new icons & Structure modifications.
- Search Summary (for EE1 & EE2) by Aaron Gustafson
Creates truncated search summaries that isolate searched keywords, highlighting them as well.
- Numstyle (for EE2) by Pixel & Tonic (Brandon Kelly)
Converts numbers to letters or roman numerals.
- Entry Layout ($, for EE2) by Benjamin David
Lets you link custom fields to any entry of your website. It will let you save a different publish layout for two different entries even if they come from the same channel. Useful for static pages such as contact, about pages, etc… Plus, it supports member groups.
- Structure Channel (for EE2) by Mark Croxton
A replacement for the Channel module for use with Structure.
- Tweet Button (for EE1 & EE2) by Focus Lab, LLC (Erik Reagan)
Easily add Twitter’s official Tweet Button to your EE templates.
- cpb Steak Sauce (for EE2) by Curtis Blackwell
cpb Steak Sauce converts integers to their corresponding letters and vice versa. For example, a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, etc.
- Mini CP ($, for EE2) by Benjamin David
The Mini CP ExpressionEngine Add-On gives a quick and easy access to the control panel, right from your website. It is displayed to all members that have access to the control panel, and has an ajax search build-in feature that will help you find the entry you want to edit, in a snap !
Add Your Comment
Share on Twitter