Blog Entry
Did you make any resolutions for the new year? Perhaps you resolved to help more people, or maybe you resolved to be better about asking for help when you need it. Did you resolve to not make any resolutions, but rather to have fun and spend time hanging out with people like you? Well in any of these cases, the EE Help Chats are a perfect solution.
European EE Help Chat
Our European EE Help Chat takes place at 19:00 GMT. If you follow @eeinsider on Twitter, you’ll find a reminder tweet about 15 minutes before. Visit this URL at the time of the chat to gain access to the room: http://mijingo.com/europe-chat
EE Help Chat
The original chat still takes place at the regular time of 9 PM Eastern at http://mijingo.com/go-chat. As with the other chat, we typically post a reminder on Twitter about 15 minutes before.
See you there!
Blog Entry
Josh Lockhart at HiFi posted a great article about their optimal ExpressionEngine installation. He talks about why they chose ExpressionEngine for certain types of sites, how they set it up, and what add-ons they use. He even gets into security, optimizing performance and deployment. It’s a really nice well-rounded article that covers a lot of ground.
It’s pretty neat to see a post like this from a company that built its own hosted CMS:
When our clients need a self-hosted content management solution, we rely on ExpressionEngine. As people who obviously have strong opinions on content management, we respect the way EE works and the ideas behind it.
Very cool! It’s a great read, I highly recommend checking it out. What do you think? Does this article teach you anything or fly in the face of your surefire best practices? Let us know in the comments.
Blog Entry
I saw a tweet from Michael Roling where he gives a sneak peek at what he’s using his EE2 freelancer license that he got with his Fusion Ads Holiday Bundle. That got me thinking… I wonder what other people are using it for?
So, if you happened to jump on that great deal from Fusion Ads for the holidays, what are you using your new EE2 license for?
Blog Entry
Oh heck, why not another installment of “What They’re Saying About EE”, an on-going series of entries where we highlight EE experiences. This one’s another shoot-out style post, where we hand pick a couple different experiences people seem to be having.
Holy knights in shining armor, ExpressionEngine. You may be impressive in a number of ways, but you have effed-up CMS interface ideas.
Jared Marcotte via Twitter
And in the other corner…
The more I use it, the more find, ExpressionEngine is astoundingly good.
John Lynch via Twitter
Both of those strike a truthful tone to me, but I suppose it’s all based on personal experience.
Blog Entry
Last week, Solspace announced that they ported three more of their add-ons to EE2: Template Morsels, Static Page Caching, and Preparse. These are straight ports, not feature upgrades:
Just to make it very clear, no new features have been added to these add-ons yet. ... [O]ur focus right now is to finish up converting all of our remaining add-ons for EE 2.x compatibility, while making regular bug fix updates to our converted add-ons. Once that’s all done, we can get back to adding new features and improving our add-ons. Thanks for being so patient with us in the meantime.
It’s always a welcome sight to see add-ons that were once just 1.x-only now making their debut for EE2.
Blog Entry
Ryan Battles from Jovia Web Studio wrote up a great tutorial that, well, the title speaks for itself: Using Ajax with Solspace’s Favorites Module for ExpressionEngine. It comes complete with great explanations and code to get you rolling.
I distinctly remember a project years ago where a simple tutorial like this would have worked wonders for me and my sleep schedule at the time. I was pretty new to javascript at the time and needed something like this to point me in the right direction. Bravo Ryan for saving lots of people some sleepless nights!
Blog Entry
Jason Ferell shared a sneak peek on Flickr of Champagne for EE2. The new version is looking very slick.
To refresh your memory, Champagne is an EE add-on to integrates your EE site with CampaignMonitor:
In a few clicks, you can generate both the HTML and text versions of an email campaign, schedule delivery and even select lists and segments for sending to! Champagne also streamlines the content publishing experience, using a single interface to both publish content to the web and create email campaigns…
You can find out more information about Champagne version 1.0 here and keep your eyes peeled for when version 2.0 is coming out.
Blog Entry
Bjørn Børresen is at it again. This time he’s built a Greasemonkey script to make the ExpressionEngine change log items link to their corresponding bugs in the bug tracker. I installed this in Google Chrome as a user script, and it worked great.
I can imagine, if you spend a lot of time going back and forth between the change log and bug tracker, this thing is going to be like a magical late Christmas present. (Today is the 10th day of Christmas, so this is better than ten drummers drumming, am I right?)
Here is his forum post about the script and you can install the script here from userscripts.org.
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
#EEInsider censors tweets negative to #eecms. Not a good sign for the official news source. Good for business tho, I guess.
Randy Brown via Twitter
We sure do! Just look at recent posts we’ve made like this one or maybe this one, perhaps this one here but definitely don’t forget about this one.
Blog Entry
This week is the final Weekly Devot:ee for 2010. What a year for ExpressionEngine add-ons! Thanks to all the developers for their hard work. We hope 2011 is much like 2010 in terms of new add-ons being made available all the time. It’s a wonder to behold.
Per a user suggestion, this week we implement a little something new: if an add-on is commercial, you’ll see a dollar sign symbol ‘$’ just before the EE1/EE2 info.
We hope you had a safe and enjoyable holiday season, and wish you all the best for 2011. Happy New Year!
- Hon-ee Pot Captcha (for EE2) by Trevor Davis
Honey pot captcha support for Freeform forms and comment forms. Validates to make sure that a field that is moved off of the page is left empty upon form submission.
- MC XML Decode (for EE1) by Michael Cohen (ProImage)
XML Decoding plugin. Converts entities into reserved XML characters. This plugin is the reverse of Rick Ellis’s XML Encoding plugin.
- Edit Tab URLs ($, for EE1) by Laisvunas
This extension forms URLS of entries which will be used in Control Panel’s Edit section. Now clicking on “View” link in Edit section will display that entry rendered as it was intended. No more lame previews! The concept of this extension is similar to that of Entry Crumblink extension which displays a link on Edit page leading to the entry being edited.
- Member Birthdays (for EE2) by Mike Roling
Member birthdays is a simple EE2 only plugin that returns an unordered list of member screen names whose birthday falls on the current day.
- Templates2Files (for EE1) by Vaya Design
Templates2Files takes any templates that do not have the ‘save as file’ option set, creates the corresponding file and updates the database accordingly.
- Stand-Alone Member Register ($, for EE1 & EE2) by IntoEEtive (Yuriy Salimovskiy)
Stand-alone Member Register module lets you display members registration form within your EE templates. Using it, you can give any look to your registration form, give it any URL address and use all power of EE tags.
- Filter By Comments ($, for EE1) by Laisvunas
This extension allows you to filter by comments in Control Panel’s Edit Entries page. You can search for entries having comments or for entries without comments. Pagination and loading results by AJAX are supported.
- Channel Ratings ($, for EE2) by DevDemon
Channel Ratings provides extremely accurate ability to rate and review ExpressionEngine entries. Now you can rate an entry on multiple levels and provide these detailed ratings or overall rating back per review. Channel Ratings finally bring full scale review, ratings, and like (helpful) functionality to ExpressionEngine 2.1+.
- Smugmug (for EE2) by Marc Tanis
Creates embed code for Smugmug galleries to post in your templates.
Blog Entry
I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to say that 2010 was a huge year for ExpressionEngine. It wasn’t necessarily all good, but as a community we should be satisfied about where we are and hopeful to do better next year.
What follows is my take on 2010 in our community and my wishes for the next year.
ExpressionEngine 2 Beta (and beyond)
The year started off with the public beta of ExpressionEngine 2 in full swing after a early December 2009 release. After a long, long (long!) time in development, EE 2 was finally ready for the public. Or was it?
Anytime expectations are high there is bound to be letdown and the public beta of EE 2 was no exception. The software wasn’t as polished and bug-free as some came to expect from EllisLab; it was, after all, a beta. Many were still irritated about the whole thing taking so long. I was writing a book on EE 2 at the time, so I shared that frustration.
The public beta lasted until July of this year and throughout saw small, incremental improvements that added polish and some fine-tuning. The release of EE 2.1 in July was the launch of EE 2 and the first step into moving away from the old EE 1 software.
There has been a lot public handwringing about EE 2: the bugs, the pink control panel and the long delay. I can’t say I disagree with any of this but I do think the public complaining isn’t productive and makes the people whining look like, well, whiners. Do I love the new control panel design? No. Am I happy that EE 2 releases seems to always contain fairly major bugs? No. But I also want to support the company that has helped foster the small ecosystem in which we are able to work. Bitching on Twitter isn’t supporting anything except your own desire to be heard. Let’s use the new year as an opportunity to change this.
ExpressionEnigne 2 Wishlist for 2011
Bitching on your own website is similar, so let me try to be productive and make a wishlist for EE 2. This isn’t a complete list but just some of the more important items.
First, I’d like to see the Control Panel be continually streamlined and revised. Let’s do away with all of the unnecessary jQuery bling in the UI. It feels wrong and makes the Control Panel seems more complicated to use than it really is.
My second wish is for easier theming and that has been mostly addressed in a recent update called “cascading control panel themes” that allows you to only include the code you need in your theme files instead of the entire default theme with your changes.
Third, I’d like a simplification of add-ons. Let’s do away with all the different types and just call them add-ons. This also requires reducing the Control Panel interface to reflect the simplification. Erik Reagan has already made a feature request for this. EllisLab, please consider this!
As a fourth wish, I’d like to finally see enterprise support implemented. When you’re trying to sell a $300 CMS to a client for a project that has a large budget, eyebrows are raised. Price means something and so does the level of support. Posting to a public forum for support simply isn’t acceptable for a lot of people used to working with enterprise software. EllisLab needs to implement a private, ticket-based enterprise support system in 2011.
Finally, and this this is also posted at the top of the Forecast page, is improved QA and testing and, hopefully, the implementation of regression testing.
Some large bugs slipped through into EE 2.1 releases. It’s tough on people who upgrade immediately (tip: never upgrade immediately and never, ever do it on a live site) and each buggy release erodes away the trust we have that the software is stable.
Regression testing is a testing method that makes sure you didn’t introduce new bugs while fixing others or adding new features. I used to do software testing in a past life and I know firsthand that regression testing is time consuming and demanding; but it is also necessary.
Those are my top wishes for 2011. Now onto the rest of the year!
EECI 2010
This year there were two installments of EECI, the conference started last year by Whoooz! Webmedia. The first one of the year took place in San Francisco and the second back in Leiden, The Netherlands. After three conferences—and another one planned in 2011—the EE community now has a regular event to meet in person to share information.
The 2011 conference will take place in Brooklyn, NY. The conference website and final list of speakers will be posted after the new year.
Add-ons Volcano
One of the greatest side-effects of the new EE 2 is that we’ve seen a huge growth in the amount of add-ons that are available. So many of my add-on ideas have been done quicker than I could get to them. It’s a great problem to have! Coupled with coming of age of Devot:ee and their jump into the add-on resale business, it seems easier than ever to find the add-ons you need to get your project done on budget and on schedule.
Devot:ee is arguably the most important EE site on the web. Now, mind you, I say this on my own EE site; but as a person who also tries to serve a community, I know a good thing when I see it. Ryan Masuga and his sidekick Jacob Russell have created a wonderful one-stop add-on shop. The only big add-on developer still sitting on the sidelines is Solspace...I wonder when they will join in and make it easier for customers like me to get their add-ons while buying others.
EllisLab, Our Leaders
In 2010 EllisLab made a big push to include the community and its resources into their operations. At EECI in San Francisco, they announced official community partners, which included this humble news site and a few other resources. This means EE Insider news is streamed to the homepage of the EllisLab site and they work with us to make sure the community is aware of what’s coming and what to expect.
EllisLab also had a small breakthrough in communications this Fall. They were guests on the EE Podcast with me and Lea Alcantara to answer community questions in an attempt to be more transparent. I think that went well.
You can now follow what they’re working on their Forecast page. This will hopefully give everyone in the community a glimpse into the work the EllisLab development team is doing. Adding the Forecast page was a great response the community asking for more transparency.
In the title of this section notice that I referred to EllisLab as “our leaders.” This is true in the sense that EllisLab creates and maintains the product that allows all of us to do at least part (if not all) of our business. Whether you’re an add-on developer working full-time on ExpressionEngine add-ons, an author creating training materials for people looking to learn ExpressionEngine or a web design agency building client sites on ExpressionEngine, we all rely heavily on EllisLab to produce and maintain a stable and great product. Because of this I have a few wishes for EllisLab for 2011.
First, I want to see even more communication between EllisLab and the community. What we’ve seen this Fall is a great start but there are still times when I feel like there’s a weird veil of corporatism being dropped between us. In my mind, this makes EllisLab look timid. There are more people now bravely basing a large part of their business on ExpressionEngine (myself, Brandon Kelly of Pixel & Tonic, Solspace, Ryan Masgua of devot:ee and hundreds of web agencies). I know almost everyone on the team personally and I can’t say that they’re timid people but as a whole the company feels like they’re leaning back instead of into the wind.
Second, EllisLab needs to advertise more (the participation in the Fusion Ads Bundle is a big first step) and get their name out into the same spaces as other similar products. It’s disheartening for me to see every other CMS advertised throughout the web but almost never ExpressionEngine.
This is especially important for businesses that rely on growth of the ExpressionEngine user base to grow their own EE-based products and services. If ExpressionEngine grows by 10,000 users one year, that’s 10,000 potential customers for my training materials or for Solspace’s add-ons. Additionally, the more ExpressionEngine users there are, the more ideas there are for add-ons and the more motivation there is for people to create top-notch add-ons with excellent support.
It’s been a great year to be in the EE community. That’s my review and my wishes for 2011. What are yours?
Blog Entry
EE Insider news will be pretty limited between now and the new year. Ryan and I have agreed to keep an eye on the news, so if anything super-exciting happens over the break, we will most likely write about it. Apart from that, though, we are just going to spend some time with our families, sipping nog, wassailing, and whatnot.
On a personal note, the past three months of running the news desk has been a delight. I appreciate the warm welcome you have offered and wish you many good tidings for the holidays. Thank you all!
Blog Entry
The third-annual Devot:ee AcademEE Awards have been handed out and a huge congrats from all of us at EE Insider to the winners!
Browsing through this list I’m so impressed with the quality of work that is coming out of the ExpressionEngine add-on community. I think back to when I started using EE just four or five years ago, and it feels like an entirely different era now. Sure, there were some great add-ons at the time, but they didn’t hold a candle to the level of stability, polish, and support that you see now. These developers deserve all the accolade they are getting, and I raise my glass to them! (It’s actually a mug of coffee. I’ve been up since 5:30am.) Cheers!
Check out Devot:ee’s AcademEE Awards for 2010 for a full list of the winners, runners up and commentary.
Blog Entry
Tomorrow it will be beer o’clock in the office all day (at least mentally) so we’re giving you this week’s newest add-ons today. Happy Holidays to ExpressionEngine users everywhere from devot:ee!
- Value Trimmer (for EE1) by Laisvunas
This extension trims the values of entry, forum post and comment fields before saving them in the database.
- Edit Comments Link (for EE1) by Laisvunas
This extension displays above edit entry form the link pointing to edit comments form. Just click it to reach entry’s comments!
- JG Breadcrumb (for EE2) by Jeroen Geusebroek
JG Breadcrumb allows adding breadcrumb items for later use in the same or other template (embeds)
- Edit Alarm (for EE2) by Thanh Vuong
Similar to Edit Alert for EE1.x - This extension alerts authors when another author is editing a resource they are accessing.
- EE Picasa Lite (for EE1 & EE2) by IntoEEtive (Yuriy Salimovskiy)
EE-Picasa plugin enables you to integrate Picasa Web Albums within ExpressionEngine website. You can easily embed your complete Picasa gallery, album or certain picture in EE
- Dynamo (for EE2) by Rob Sanchez (Barrett Newton)
Makes Dynamic Parameters play nice with Pagination.
- Category Bunch (for EE1) by Laisvunas
This plugin allows you to output parent and child categories without iterating tagdata.
- Category Group (for EE1) by Laisvunas
This plugin allows you to output categories which belong to a certain category group without iterating tagdata.
Blog Entry
Bjørn Børresen wrote a slick, one-step tutorial on how to get basecamp-style subdomains with ExpressionEngine. This would be handy thing if you wanted people to login using their own URL based on their username.
There is also a great lots and lots of steps tutorial on Nettuts+ about how to do the same with CodeIgniter, but you have to admit Bjørn’s solution is pretty dang elegant.
Blog Entry
The EE Help Chats taking a much-deserved rest until the new year. Imagine the two help chats on holiday vacation together, sipping hot chocolate, throwing snowballs and making ice sculptures together. It’s a beautiful thing.
The EE Help Chats will return, rested and ready for both helping and chatting, in the new year.
Blog Entry
Just five days after 2.1.2 was out, we are now greeted with 2.1.3. It turns out that upgrading to EE 2.1.2 brought some pretty significant issues with the publish form for some people. Lisa posted a brief note about the update on the blog and of course you can consult the change log for details.
The error I saw the most reports of on the forums was about some sort of 500 error showing up on the publish form. If you’re experiencing that, or if you’re just running 2.1.2 at all, I highly recommend updating.
That being said, let me leave you with one public service announcement:
Make sure you back up everything before doing these updates. Using version control of course is one of the best ways, but if you’re crazy enough not to use version control, at least make a full site backup before upgrading. This means the database too! I have my fingers crossed that 2.1.3 is going to fix the issues with 2.1.2, but nobody should ever do an upgrade like this without having a way to roll back to the previous version. Sure, it was EllisLab who dropped the ball in letting some bugs slip through their testing, but even when I’m 100% confident a piece of software has been extensively tested in environments just like mine, I still back up everything before doing upgrades.
Blog Entry
EE Podcast #37 is up and Ryan Irelan is back hosting the show with Lea. They discuss the different methods and add-ons you can use to build navigation for your ExpressionEngine-powered website.
Listen and subscribe: EE Podcast #37: Building Navigation in ExpressionEngine on 5by5
Blog Entry
We have written about dynamic parameters before, but this new add-on from Rob Sanchez called Dynamo really caught our attention. Dynamo solves some problems with dynamic parameters that I’m sure have plagued many over time:
Until now, it was impossible to have your dynamic parameters persist when using pagination. To alleviate this, Dynamo takes your dynamic parameters and stores them in the database, and assigns a search_id, which can be used in to retrieve your filtered results, without having to perform another POST request with your parameters.
Dynamo is free and available at GithHub.
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