Both Jacob Russell (@jacobrussell) and I (@masuga) will speak at ExpressionEngine Camp in Denver, Colorado on Friday, October 22. I’ll cover version control and EE using Git (the same subject I’ll be speaking about at EECI in Leiden) and Jacob will talk about EE optimization using built-in methods as well as 3rd-party add-ons. Pixel & Tonic is sponsoring the drinks, so there is absolutely no reason for you not to show up, unless you hate fun.
In this 30-page ebooklet, ExpressionEngine guru Mark Huot details steps you can take to make your installation of ExpressionEngine even more secure. Mark shares his experience from building dozens of high-profile ExpressionEngine-powered websites.
Also included with the ebooklet is a free, 5-minute screencast covering one of techniques Mark covers in his ebooklet. In the short video you’ll watch as we take a standard EE 2 installation and secure it.
I’m thrilled to be able to have Mark has the first author at Mijingo and I hope you find the ebooklet as a indespensible piece in your EE toolbox.
Thank you to Mark for working hard to help bring the book to release and to Luke Dorny for his gorgeous book cover design. You’ll see more of his work in future ebooklets.
In an announcement on his blog yesterday, Technology Architect Derek Allard wrote that he has left his position at EllisLab and is “now seeking new opportunities and the next challenge.”
Derek worked for EllisLab for the last three years and according to his blog post he was “the only developer working full time to bring ExpressionEngine2 to market.” As we all know, Derek was also responsible for EllisLab’s new mini-CMS MojoMotor. We hope MojoMotor continues development in his absence.
EE Insider wishes Derek the best in his new adventures beyond ExpressionEngine and MojoMotor and we thank him for his contributions that make everything we do at this site possible. Bon Voyage!
Debugging is a methodical process of finding the cause of problems, errors or bugs. In this episode, Lea and Ryan talk about some steps to take and tools to use when things start going wrong. We talk about different techniques you can use to when debugging EE templates and our experience of making those problems easier to find and solve.
Do you have your own debugging methods or strategy? Let us know in the comments!
EESuite is a new ExpressionEngine 2 add-on that allows you to “start selling premium digital goods or member subscriptions from your website.” Some of the features listed on the website are:
Memberships
Digital Goods
Order Management
MSM support
From what I could tell from the videos, EESuite only supports PayPal in this initial free version. If you are exploring e-commerce options, you should definitely watch all 4 videos and get an idea of how the add-on works.
Here’s the first video that shows the process of managing products:
Using a combination of a dozen or so lines of PHP, a Channel Entries tag pair and an embed template and variable, Fred was able to make sort by entry_date and use the previous/next pagination. He sort of recreates the basic pagination functionality right in the template. As it was noted in the comments to that article, there are other ways of going about it that don’t involve so much processing.
If you don’t need something like this right now, file it away in your reference file.
Lots of activity from ExpressionEngine developers this week. I’d just like to remind everyone who submits an add-on that as our library grows, accurate and plentiful tags are critical to your add-on being found in devot:ee searches. Here are this week’s listings:
Iain wins Add-on Title of the Week for “The Selectatron”, which sounds like something I’d want to install just because.
Client: “How is the site coming?” Me: “Keep your pants on, hoss. I installed The Selectatron.”
My friend Matt Weinberg finally joins the ranks of ExpressionEngine developers who have an add-on listed on devot:ee with the submission of his new Antenna plugin (EE1). Antenna generates:
...the exact, most up-to-date YouTube embed code available. It also gives you access to the video’s title, its author, the author’s YouTube URL, and a thumbnail. All you have to do is pass it a single URL.”
Nice work, Matt. I know Matt has some really good PHP chops so I’m sure the whole community would benefit from seeing more of his work.
In this two part tutorial we’re going to walk you through building an accessory. The first part will cover creating a very simple HTML-based accessory with your contact information. The second part will build on the first using ExpressionEngine’s native code to create a fully functional contact form. Part I assumes you understand HTML, while part II will assume you know some PHP.
First, we’re coming up on the second anniversary of the free, weekly EE Help Chat. Aside from a couple of short breaks each year, the chat has been been running every week since September 2008.
Usually the EE Help Chat takes a short hiatus in July or August and then again around the Christmas holiday. This year the Summer break didn’t happen, so we’ll be taking a couple of weeks off this month and return on 9/21. This is for both the original and European version of the chat.
Don’t forget that the 24/7 chatroom is always open and there are occasionally people popping in and out looking for help or able to help someone.
Starting later this Fall I’ll need to bring in some people to help out with the US chat. If you’re interested in moderating the weekly chat, please get in touch. Ideally, we would have a few people that could rotate week-to-week but the one right person with the dedication to be there every week would also work.
I’ll be laboring on some training preparations through the long Labor Day weekend in the US but I want to take a moment to thank the people and companies that help make EE Insider possible.
Nevin and his team have graciously offered to host this site and keep it running smoothly so I don’t have to deal with server stuff anymore. Being part of EngineHosting, EE Insider is now hosted alongside other EE community sites like Devot:ee, Train-ee and the entire ExpressionEngine family of sites. I’m happy to be among the group and looking forward to smooth sailing on a solid host.
Second, I want to thank the sponsors that help pay the bills to keep EE Insider running. A considerable amount of time and effort go into the site on a monthly basis and the sponsors make it all possible. Soon I’ll have more help keeping the site updated with tips, how-tos and news. It’s the ads you see that make that possible.
On September 21, 2010 a group of EE users in the Washington, DC area (known as the “DCeers”) is having an event to show a screening of some of the videos from EECI 2010 in San Francisco.
If you didn’t make it to the last EE conference in San Francisco, come out for an evening of socializing and learning at one of the regions leading agencies using EE.
Learn more about it at the DCeers meetup page and you can vote for the videos you’d like to see.
The team at Barrett Newton is at it again. First they made working on commerce sites almost fun in ExpressionEngine with CartThrob. Now you might just pass out with joy the next time you have to work with a SAEF when using SafeCracker, which is a replacement and enhancement of ExpressionEngine’s Stand-Alone Entry Form/Stand Alone Edit Form (aka SAEF, which leads me to think they should have named it SAEFCracker and just laughed at anyone who thought it was a typo).
We use a couple huge SAEFs on devot:ee and I’m sure this would have helped shave off a ton of time when developing them. There is a version available for EE 1.6.5+ as well, but you will need to contact BN directly about that version. Get cracking!
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.
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.
Add Your Comment
Share on Twitter
Also included with the ebooklet is a free, 5-minute screencast covering one of techniques Mark covers in his ebooklet. In the short video you’ll watch as we take a standard EE 2 installation and secure it.
