A new EE website has launched and it showcases “ExpressionEngine websites from all over the web.” Show-ee highlights some websites along with an interview while others contain basic information about how the site was a built.
This is a great way to get familiar with some of the sites built on ExpressionEngine and maybe even use them to show clients that EE sites can look however they want (unlike some other CMSes).
Right now the collection is small but you can add your sites to Show-ee using the handy submission form.
Tonight (21:00 CEST / 20:00 BST) is the first European EE Help Chat. The chat will be similar to the regular EE Help Chat that has been going on since September 2008. A group of EE users (experts and newbies alike) gather for one hour of conversation and questions about ExpressionEngine.
Up until now the chat has been in the wee hours of the morning for all of Europe. This new European EE Help Chat is at a much more convenient time.
To attend the chat, simply go to the special European EE Help Chat URL and you will be forwarded to the chat.
The chat will be moderated by Adam Khan, who has generously volunteered his time to get us started. Other moderators will attend as they are available and schedules allow.
Every so often I come across a project where part of the spec involves a private area of content accessible via a password. ExpressionEngine gives us a number of ways to protect content out of the box.
One of the basic approaches is to restrict content to member groups thus requiring a member account for each person. If your content is not member-specific another approach is to create a generic user account and supply each individual with the username and password with which to log in.
Each approach would work in numerous scenarios. However, today I want to look at how we can utilize weblogs on a very basic level to manage password protected content very easily. Our goal is to result in a process that uses default EE functionality and that the “average client” can manage with little difficulty or confusion.
We will be using a single weblog to manage the password-protected content. The type of content is irrelevant at this point so let’s focus on how we can achieve this.
Solspace released this late on Friday so I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. Their much anticipated Calendar module is now available.
The Calendar module offers up both power and simplicity, giving you all kinds of options to satisfy your calendar needs. Need a simple display of daily activities? It’s easy with Calendar. How about a monthly calendar? No sweat. And what if you want to fully control every table, div, and class that makes up the HTML that will become your calendar? The Calendar module can do that, too.
The Calendar module utilizes the power of EE’s native Weblog/Channel module. Every calendar and every event you create can therefore feature as many custom fields and categories as you like. If you can do it to an entry in EE, you can do it to a calendar or event.
The Calendar module is $69.95 and available now for EE 1.6. Be sure to check out their site for the additional requirements.
Today Pixel and Tonic released Playa 3, which (drumroll, please!) now supports ExpressionEngine 2! This is an add-on that a lot of people have been waiting for before they make the jump to EE 2. Well, it’s here, so what are you waiting for?
Until the next release of the EE 2 public beta is out there is a minor code adjustment needed to get Playa 3 to work on EE 2 but that will go away with the impending release of EE 2.02.
As I occasionally do in this space, I want to take a moment to thank the advertisers that help keep EE Insider running and publishing regularly.
Over the last couple of weeks EE Insider has started publishing weekly how-to articles from guest authors. The revenue earned from advertising placed on this site helps modestly compensate those authors for their time and generosity of contributing their ideas to the community.
This Tuesday we have another great article coming. Stay tuned for that.
Many thanks go to:
Hambo Development - Partner with a professional ExpressionEngine team who will bring your site designs to life.
A little birdie let me know that an update to EE 2 public beta (2.0.2) is coming soon. I am told that it contains more than 100 bug fixes and changes. I don’t know what has specifically changed but hopefully this inches us closer to a final EE release.
So, how can you win a free license for Cartthrob? Well, it’s easy.
To enter, just fill out the form below to sign up for occasional informational emails from EE Insider (these could include future giveaways and special promotions, like discounts on add-ons). I will randomly choose two people from the list as winners.
If you’ve already signed up for the email list (like for our last giveaway, which is now over), you are automatically entered.
You still have time to save $50 on your EECI 2010 conference pass. Until tomorrow (Friday April 9th) use the code “eeci2010deal” when you register.
EECI 2010 takes place in San Francisco from May 31st to June 2nd at the Fort Mason Center. It features a line up of speakers covering an array of topics on ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter. Additionally, the staff of EllisLab will be in attendance, so it’s great time to get some face time them, ask your questions, relay your concerns or just find out what a cool bunch they are.
I’ll be there and I look forward to meeting everyone!
As of today Cartthrob, the latest venture in e-commerce for ExpressionEngine, is released and available for purchase. Cartthrob was developed to be as flexible as possible while still allowing you to control your inventory and e-commerce site with ExpressionEngine.
I exchanged a few emails with Chris Newton of Cartthrob and asked for his take on the new release.
Let’s first talk about the flexibility. Chris says:
CartThrob forces very little on the developer, there are very few strict rules on how things have to be built. For EE people this will be a godsend… we’re already used to getting it our own way with EE, and that is the spirit of our development efforts with CartThrob.
Rather than the typical feature-benefit focused cart approach: “your product must have a title, price, this option set, two pictures, and a shipping weight, ” CartThrob lets you create your store however you’d like. You can store data in weblogs in whatever format suits you, repurpose existing weblogs, or just hardcode product data in the templates. Most carts assume a structure and flow for a customer’s business, CartThrob doesn’t.
You can get an idea of what Cartthrob can do by reviewing the example uses they posted in the documentation. Donation site, simple t-shirt sales interface, integration with third party shipper are all things you can do with Cartthrob.
Another nice feature is that CartThrob, once configured is not something your client even need be aware of. Once set up, all of the Items, Orders, and Purchased Item data can be stored in weblogs. It’s not some custom interface that the client will have to learn.
Mapping custom fields to Cartthrob
If your preferred payment gateway isn’t supported, you can create your own to interface with Cartthrob. The documentation has an example gateway that you can use as a guide when building your own.
Cartthrob is currently only available for ExpressionEngine 1.6 but they are going to start working on the EE 2 version soon.
He created it quickly for a project and is offering it free for everyone.
I’m currently working on a project that involves a lot of EE development, so I took a couple hours last night to tweak the default Control Panel theme. I’ve only tested it in Safari… so your milage may vary… but feel free to give it a try.
The new theme features a darker header and dark gray tabs. If you desire to give the EE CP a different look, check out the theme. To install it unzip the downloaded file and upload it to themes/cp_themes and then toggle to it in the Control Panel.
SL Freshview Subscribe has been connecting ExpressionEngine with Campaign Monitor since 2008. It’s now reached version 2.0, and been given a brand new name: Campaigner.
Campaigner has been completely rewritten from the ground up, with a bevy of new features, and a revamped user interface.
Campaigner is a paid add-on and costs $15 per site license. It is currently only available for ExpressionEngine 1.6.
Say you’re building a site for a small business with the following sections: Home, News, About Us and Contact. Each of these sections contains its own static content, blog or a combination of both. But each section also contains so-called “aside” content, with things like quotes, testimonials, call to actions and so on. Aside content is so ubiquitous nowadays, HTML5 has even given it its own HTML tag!
But how do you manage aside content in ExpressionEngine? Here’s one way of doing it using categories and the Low Seg2Cat extension.
There are two camps: those that use some really complicated, difficult to remember system folder name (e.g. /dhw793hdu2738/) and those that like to keep it simpler (e.g. /controlpanel/). Either way, it’s security through obscurity and there are way better ways to secure your EE site. But I want to ask the readers of EE Insider:
Do you name your system directory something simple or complicated?
Let us know in the comments!
(Pssst…if you use a certain directory name, you might not want to divulge it in the comments!)
As an additional step you can name the member area of the site something random and nearly impossible to guess. These tips along with Purple Dogfish’s Member Utilities add-on should have you on your way to more easily controlling member profile spam.
I’m not sold on the cutesy name but the offering looks promising.
Membrr is a new (still in private beta) service that allows you to offer subscription payments on your ExpressionEngine website. To connect to the Membrr service with ExpressionEngine, you need to install their EE module (available for EE 1.6 and EE 2) and choose from one of the supported payment gateways.
E-commerce and EE has always been a tough nut to crack. There are several companies trying (or have tried) to make this work. It’s nice to see Membrr not trying to be the “everything to everyone” solution but instead focusing on a often needed piece of e-commerce: recurring subscriptions.
As I mentioned, the Membrr service is still in private beta. If you would like to apply to join (I just did,
My desktop during the recording of the latest EE Podcast. Click on the image for larger sizes.
For those that like to nerd out about gear:
I use Backpack to plan the podcast topics, Sound Studio to record (and ProTools to edit) my own audio and we use Skype to hear each other.
My mic is a Shure SM7B mounted on a Heil boom arm, which is attached to the wall next to my desk. It is routed through a Joe Meek ThreeQ and fed into my computer using an M-Audio USB box.
A new EE website has launched and it showcases “ExpressionEngine websites from all over the web.” Show-ee highlights some websites along with an interview while others contain basic information about how the site was a built. 
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There are two camps: those that use some really complicated, difficult to remember system folder name (e.g. 
