Dan and I sat down this week on the podcast to talk about pulling external content into your EE site:
Have you ever had to deal with external sources of content, like an RSS feed, Twitter, Facebook or even an XML document that Bob from IT manually updates each morning? In this episode Dan and Ryan talk about different ways of getting external content into your EE site.
We all know about the problem of comment spam on blogs and sites that accept comments. A lot of barriers have been placed in the way of spambots: CAPTCHAs, spam checking services like Akismet and vigilant moderation of comments.
But spammers are getting smarter and have moved their scum-of-the-earth practices to other places, like ExpressionEngine member profiles.
On EE Insider I’ve seen spammers create accounts with legitimate email addresses, activate by email and then log in and edit their profiles using the default member templates. In the member bios they add their spammy links in the hopes that the default member templates will be indexed by Google and other search engines.
Up until now I’ve been managing this problem by manually finding the spammers and zapping their accounts. Apparently, I’m not the only one having this problem. Purple Dogfish recently posted a blog entry about their problems with member profile spammers:
Reading the ExpressionEngine forums I note we’re not the only people getting hit with numerous spam registrations and loads of irrelevant linkspam. So it’s time to share what we’re doing and give Member Utilities a little plug now it’s been upgraded.
My previous entry about spammers seemed to strike a chord – in fact Member Utilities is being used to tackle spam effectively by a lot of people in the EE community (we love you all) but the behaviour of the spammers has changed so we’ve adapted Member Utilities to close the loop.
The new and improved version of Member Utilities (which I’ve purchased and installed on EE Insider) now notifies you every time someone updates their profile. This makes it easier to weed out the scumbag spammers who are trying to use your site to peddle their scams.
So here we are, our first entry on this new journey we’re calling “Ask the Pro”. For those of you that don’t know me I’m Fred Boyle, the Digital Chef at nGen Works in Jacksonville, FL. I take care of all things EE among other geeky tasks.
Don’t forget to email askthepro@eeinsider.com to ask your question. But what you’ve really come here for are the answers to the questions, so let’s get on with the show!
Max Lazar of WiseUp Studio has released another add-on. This time it’s MX QR Code, which allows you to easily create QR codes right in your EE templates. What is a QR code?
A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. Moreover, most current Japanese mobile phones can read this code with their camera.
MX QR code is free and available for both EE 1.6 and EE 2.
It’s gorgeous and it runs EE 2. ejaeDesign recently relaunched JuliaUsher.com:
Julia Usher is a renowned pastry chef, author, and speaker, and we just completely rebuilt the site using ExpressionEngine 2.0. This new platform not only makes content update and management up to 70% faster, it sets her site up for some exciting additions and enhancements for years to come.
In last week’s EE Podcast, I wondered aloud whether someone had created a Markdown add-on for ExpressionEngine. It turns out someone had and, well, it was a long time ago (it was none other than my esteemed colleague at Happy Cog, Mark Huot).
SmartDown is more than a Markdown plugin. It is “a single-plugin replacement for the Markypants, Markdown, and SmartyPants plugins.” Three birds, one stone.
These are my views and I encourage you to dispute them.
FF History
Not everyone has been in the loop on this issue, so a recap is in order. First, back when Brandon was developing add-ons as a hobby he released several add-ons for free. One of these was the very popular FieldFrame extension, which allows you to easily create and install custom fieldtypes for ExpressionEngine. FieldFrame was released with a Creative Commons license. Along with this, Brandon began bundling FF Matrix, which is a fieldtype that allows you to create a, well, matrix of data.
Fast forward to 2010 and Brandon is in the early days of running his own business; he is earning all of his income only from the EE add-ons he builds.
At the end of February Brandon re-launched as Pixel and Tonic. One part of this launch was the “parting of ways” of FieldFrame and FF Matrix. Brandon noted the reason for this was because FF Matrix took up a lot of his time for support and, well, you can’t really earn a living spending your time supporting something that is free. Economics, math and all that.
This license allows one to share the code (“to copy, distribute and transmit…”) or to adapt it (“remix”). You are required to give attribution as specified by the original licensor (Brandon Kelly) and if you share your version of the work, you have to use a “similar or compatible license.”
This license is clearly stated at the top of the FF Matrix fieldtype file (ft.ff_matrix.php), so the intent is obviously there.
EE Matrix
So today, EE Matrix popped up. It is a re-release of the free version of FF Matrix (Brandon pulled public access to FF Matrix when he launched his new company). Alex Gordon is the person behind the re-release or “fork” of FF Matrix and stated in an announcement post on his blog his motivation:
Now the new version of FF Matrix is commercial, which is really sad.
So I’ve decided to improve the situation. The distribution of FF Matrix with Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licenses up to the version 1.3.5 ensures the right of distributing this version respecting license rules. You can always download the original version 1.3.5 from here. Besides, I’ve decided to create the fork with the same license and support and develop it for free.
So, Alex is offering FF Matrix as a free download to anyone who wants it. He made no indication that he planned to charge for it, which would be a violation of the Creative Commons license.
From my read of the Creative Commons license and what Alex did, it seems he is legally on solid ground (as legal as you can be using Creative Commons. I couldn’t find an actual test of the license in a US court).
But is Alex Gordon keeping within the spirit of the license that Brandon set for FF Matrix? That’s where it gets tricky.
Creative Commons Revisited
Each CC license has a set of understandings. You can look at these like the fine print of an agreement. One of the understandings is that the license would not affect the “author’s moral rights.” In the full legalese copy of the license it states:
You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author’s honor or reputation.
I don’t think this is being violated here. If the add-on was renamed something derogatory or somehow impacted Brandon’s other products, then, yeah, I could see it being an issue.
So, technically, Alex Gordon is in the clear. But this isn’t really about that, is it?
Let’s go back to Alex’s original statement:
This whole extension used to be free… till the end of February.
Now the new version of FF Matrix is commercial, which is really sad.
Although he later claims that he plans to continue developing the add-on for free, the spirit of his decision to re-release FF Matrix appears to be to keep it free, not to improve it. He seems to be upset that Brandon slapped a $35 price sticker on FF Matrix.
To me, this violates the spirit of the license. But even more importantly, it violates the spirit of the community.
Community, Community
It sounds like a cliche front-loaded with bullshit, but one of the greatest things about ExpressionEngine is the community.
The people who use ExpressionEngine have a lot of professional respect for each other. This is fostered by EllisLab, who shows a lot of respect and support to all of the EE professionals (myself included).
The EE forums are full of people helping each other. It’s where we all cut our teeth when we first started using the software. We all know how important the community was when we were getting started. This remains true each and every day as the community slowly grows.
Beyond that there is also a solid embrace of the “EE economy.” Unlike other CMS communities where everyone wants (or demands) everything built for the CMS to be free, we actively support and grow the EE economy with our money.
We’ve seen this with several add-on developers earning significant revenue from their add-ons. We’ve also seen this with education and training materials, like books, screencasts, classroom training and even our very own conference.
By investing in our own community, we help ourselves build better sites, get bigger clients and serve Filet Mignon on Fridays instead of frozen pizza.
When Alex Gordon took FF Matrix and made it free again, he may not have violated any licenses or laws but he certainly violated the trust of a community that puts a lot of value in supporting the people that build the stuff that makes EE so much better than other content management systems.
And with that I have a real problem.
What We Learned
Today was a nice exhibit of community support for Brandon, Pixel and Tonic and the work he does. It was a loud “thank you” for all of the free stuff Brandon built that we all benefited from (and still do with FieldFrame). The most outspoken members of the community came to Brandon’s defense and offered their opinion of what Alex Gordon did by re-releasing FF Matrix.
We also learned that you have to be careful about what license you use when you release your software. Right now you may have no intention of ever selling your add-on commercially, but slapping a free-for-all license on it may come back and bite you. So, be careful.
Finally, Brandon shouldn’t worry about this. He’s successful because he puts a lot of work and care into his add-ons—even the free stuff. People that do excellent work will find the support of—and be rewarded by—the community.
Add-on developers that create the most useful, user-friendly software will almost always win out. Anyone who values their own time (not to mention that of their clients) would rather shell out $50 for the well-designed add-on than use a free version that has a horrible user experience.
It’s been a while, but Dan and I have released a new episode of the EE Podcast. We’re working on getting these published on a more regular schedule. Thank you for listening to the podcast and please let us know what you think!
This time we talk about different ways of entering content in EE: what works, what’s best and what we do.
In this episode of the podcast Dan and Ryan catch up on some news and happenings and then talk about the different ways of allowing clients to publish rich content through ExpressionEngine. Do you install a WYSIWYG editor, teach them HTML, give them specific HTML to use for certain situations? The choices are many.
We discuss the popular WYSIWYG editors for EE and other ways of making it as easy as possible for clients to enter rich content into their site.
Purveyor of popular ExpressionEngine add-ons, Solspace is back atcha with yet another offering: Shortcut module, which gives you homegrown short URLs.
Shortcut is a simple addon that allows you to create and edit short URL’s to access your specified URL’s, similar to the services offered by sites like http://tinyurl.com and http://bit.ly. It also allows you to create custom keys in the event you want to have more readable URL’s. And lastly, Shortcut offers simple tracking for each click on a shortcut URL.
The printed copies of my ExpressionEngine book started arriving this past week for those who ordered early. To celebrate the final publication of the book, I want to run a couple of giveaways.
Own the book, win a shirt
If you own a paper copy of the book, you can win a free EE Code t-shirt. The syntactically correct t-shirts blast your nerd beacon to the outside world.
I’m having fun learning ExpressionEngine with http://eequickstartguide.com http://sample.com/myphoto.jpg #eequickstartguide
Both the image (use a service like Twitpic or post the image elsewhere and link to it) and URL are required to win a free t-shirt. The hash tag (#eequickstartguide) isn’t required but will make it easier for me to find your submission!
I will pick the best and most creative photos but plan to award as many t-shirt as possible. However, this giveaway will be limited because I don’t have an unlimited supply of shirts. Also, available shirt sizes are also limited. If chosen, I’ll contact you via Twitter and request your mailing information.
Let’s see your photos!
Win a Free Copy of EE Quick-Start Guide & T-shirt
I also want to give away a copy of my book along with a free EE Code T-shirt. Entering to win is simple: submit your name and email address into this form to sign up for email updates about EE Insider and related information (books, screencasts, training classes, meetups, free stuff). That’s it!
On April 2nd I will randomly choose on person from the email list and they win a free print copy of the EE Quick-Start Guide! Good luck!
Tonight is the weekly EE Help Chat where 15-20 of us gather, talk about ExpressionEngine and help each other with problems we’re facing. The chat lasts one hour and starts at 9PM EST. It’s free, fun and informative! See you there?
On the topic of the help chat. Last week I posted an announcement for a few volunteers to moderate a European EE Help Chat. I have two people that are able to help out but I was hoping to have at least 4 to help ease any scheduling conflicts. If you’re interested in moderating a European EE Help Chat, please send me an email using the information in the original announcement.
In the forums, user “lockwesmonster” released a new extension for EE 1.6.x that allows you to easily sort entries on the Edit screen by clicking on the column headers.
Edit Table Plus also lets you choose to hide some of the default data (like comments, trackbacks, status, date, etc). A very handy way to make your Edit screen cleaner and more user-friendly.
The extension is currently free and only works in EE 1.6.x. Read the forum post for more information and to download the add-on.
(Above screengrab taken from the original forum post.)
Gas appliance manufacturer Rinnai recently launched a new US site and it is built with ExpressionEngine. Matthew Krivanek was kind enough to post to the EE forums with some details.
One thing I’d like to highlight on our implementation is how we used Brandon Kelly’s Playa extension. All throughout the site there are callouts (ex: http://www.rinnai.us/tankless-water-heater/ on the right side). We created a weblog called ‘Callouts’ and stored each of the callouts used there. Then, on our Static Pages weblog, we created a relationship to the Callouts weblog using Playa. This enabled us to dynamically assign callouts on a page specific basis.
Matthew goes on to explain how they created collections of callouts so the “administrator could setup a set of callouts to be reused throughout the site.”
Add-ons by Leevi Graham and Brandon Kelly dominate the list of those used. Read the entire forum post for all of the details.
Over at his personal blog, Kenny narrates through the events leading up to and during our SXSW panel on ExpressionEngine.
Our panel was at 12:30 and we were supposed to be in SXSW’s green room by 11:30 AM. I arrived early, running through my slides and outline, making sure I had it all together. Slowly my fellow panelists trickled in. Mark and Jenn arrived first, and Ryan Irelan shortly after. Finally, Brian Warren arrived last. We sat there and joked around a bit, some more nervous than others. A nice young hip-looking man came to pick us up and take us down to the conference room. “He must be here for music,” I thought.
I’ve only launched two sites so far on ExpressionEngine 2. The first was a very small site for my ExpressionEngine book. The second was part of a larger effort at Happy Cog to build and launch a site for the second annual Cogaoke karaoke competition at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas.
Using EE 2 for both sites was a positive experience. But that’s me. What about you?
Are you using EE 2 for production sites yet? Why or why not?
Next week, March 30th, is the first online conference on ExpressionEngine: Engine Summit. If you’re considering attending the online conference, you might want to use the coupon code EEIRELANR to receive 10% off the regular price.
The conference features speakers John Henry Donovan, Chad Crowell, Fred Boyle, Mark Huot, Leslie Flinger and myself. Each of the sessions will last 45 minutes with a break at midday for lunch.
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So here we are, our first entry on this new journey we’re calling “Ask the Pro”. For those of you that don’t know me I’m Fred Boyle, the Digital Chef at 
It’s been a while, but Dan and I have released a 
If you own a paper copy of the book, you can win a 
I’ve only launched two sites so far on