Over a series of 8 videos, watch and learn as Ryan builds an entire ExpressionEngine website from beginning to end. Get started now.
Leevi Graham’s mighty updating extension has been updated for ExpressionEngine 2.0. The design of the extension now allows for a much simpler xml format, making life easier for all developers.
This really is a must have for keeping your install up-to-date or implementing your add-on.
Posted on Dec 03, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
Here are the latest add-ons added to Devot:ee:
Posted on Dec 03, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
ExpressionEngine 2.0 Public Beta is now available for purchase and download!
Posted on Dec 02, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
Following yesterday’s launch snag, ExpressionEngine 2 will be released today. Currently the EE site is down, we’ll keep you posted when it’s back up (hopefully) with ExpressionEngine 2.
Posted on Dec 02, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
For those of you waiting for EE2 to drop, they’ve hit a bit of a snag:
The plan was to launch this evening but during the initial rollout we encountered a few issues. We’re working through them but it may delay the launch. I’ll update later this evening with how things are going.
We’ll keep you posted on how it’s going right here on EE Insider.
Posted on Dec 01, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
Her royal majesty, Stephen Lewis, has written an article on the EE2 Add-on dilemma. He ends it with this note:
Given the way things currently stand, over the next few months I’ll be concentrating on releasing a number of commercial addons for the 1.x branch of ExpressionEngine.
I expect to see more of these across the week, as finally the ExpressionEngine 2 public beta will be released. It’ll be great to finally talk about 2.0 and what it means, what it changes, and what is not there yet.
Posted on Dec 01, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
In October we had our very popular EE 2.0 week during which piles of never before released information about ExpressionEngine 2.0 was shared with the community. At the time EE 2.0 was still almost 5 weeks away from release. Well, the wait is almost over.
Until you’re able to get the software in your paws, you should review the excellent blog posts we did on EE 2.0. Think of it as a way the whet your appetite before the main course arrives.
For your convenience, I’ve put all of the EE 2.0 information in one place: ExpressionEngine 2.0 Guide.
As expected, we’ll cover the 2.0 release in this space. Have questions about EE 2.0? Drop us a line and ask away: tips@eeinsider.com
Posted on Nov 30, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
Editor’s note: Below is a press release prepared by the organizers of EECI 2010. We are excited about the announcement and have agreed to publish it here, on the blog, in full.
As many of you will be aware, the first ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter (EECI) conference took place in beautiful Leiden, Holland in October this year. The event was widely hailed as a success, with renowned presenters delivering two days of EE/CI talks and workshops to almost 200 attendees. The event also saw the official unveiling of EE 2.0 release date and pricing from the folks at EllisLab themselves.
EECI2009 was a real catalyst for discussion and ideas, collaborations and experiments. It was incredibly affirming to see the strength of support for EE, and our community is blossoming more than ever, with EE 2.0 imminent and adoption greater than ever. For a look back at EECI2009, and to view videos and slides, hop on over to http://eeci2009.com/ - after you’ve read this announcement!
It makes sense for this community to seize the moment and build upon these successes with greater interaction, and we want to facilitate that. Off the back of the EECI2009 conference, organisers Whoooz! Webmedia, with support and assistance from Erskine Design, now wish to bring the very same level of care and attention to two forthcoming 2010 events.
So, lets get down to details. With a fanfare of imaginary trumpets, we are delighted to announce two very special EECI conferences for 2010, on either side of the pond.
Keep an eye on http://eeci2010.com and http://twitter.com/eeci2010 for further updates, and note that Early Bird Tickets will be available from 15th December 2009 via the website.
In 2010, we’ll continue to bring only the very best quality presentations, and we’re making every effort to carefully enlist brilliant speakers with real value to bring to the community. You can look forward to fresh presentations from the best EE and CI practitioners, all carefully curated to ensure attendees have maximum value from the conference events.
Thrillingly, we can already confirm the following presenters for EECI2010 in San Francisco:
We’ll be carefully adding to our list of confirmed presenters over the next few weeks, with more to be added by January. Stay tuned!
With regard to format, we’re still ironing out the details, but you can expect a very flexible program aimed at all levels of EE/CI developers and designers. For example, something like:
Full details of the exact format will follow through December and January, once we’re certain everything is joined up, flows nicely, and provides plenty of options for attendees.
So, there you go! We’re hugely excited about this, and hope you are too. Remember to look out for Early Bird Tickets on 15th December via http://eeci2010.com and http://twitter.com/eeci2010
Finally, look out for more details about EECI2010 Europe, which we’ll also announce on 15th December. Above all, we ask that you be excited. Very excited.
Posted on Nov 30, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
Because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.A., there won’t be an EE Help Chat tonight. But don’t worry, I’m going to make it up to you.
Next week’s EE Help Chat will be a 2-hour special chat focusing on EE 2.0. With EE 2.0 released, we’ll be able to gather together, discuss the new software, its features, your concerns and questions. The chat will run from 8 PM - 10 PM Eastern (GMT -5), which is one hour earlier than the normal start time.
With the NDA lifted, all of the developers and beta testers that have been using EE 2.0 for months will be able to share the information they’ve learned and tricks they’ve devised. It’s sure to be an exciting evening of information sharing.
See you next week in the chat!
Posted on Nov 25, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
Pragmatic Programmers, who host our lovely founder’s lovely EE Screencasts are on the final legs of their 40% off sale which ends tomorrow. The details are here.
Books I own:
It’s an exceptional company, and the best place to learn ExpressionEngine.
Posted on Nov 24, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
Taking its cues from Macheist, the eeHeist has begun. It includes a contest for EllisLab licenses as well as the following add-ons for $99 (for all of them).
All-in-all a pretty good deal. The sale ends in around 6 days.
Posted on Nov 24, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
Lucky 8. That’s right, it’s the eighth episode of the EE Podcast where Dan Benjamin and I cover the latest in ExpressionEngine news and tech talk.
This week we skip the news and instead answer emails from our listeners. We talk about the move to EE 2.0, how to create a portable, robust config.php file and the way Dan and I each develop and deploy EE websites.
The show runs about 33 minutes and is available right now in iTunes. We encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed so we can count you as a listener!
Read the show notes, subscribe and listen to the episode: EE Podcast, Episode 8
Posted on Nov 20, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
I don’t know what the boys are drinking over at Devot:ee but this week’s weekly Devot:ee is gigantic! Props to them for compiling this list:
Also, if you read this far, Devot:ee has implemented Solspace’s Super Search which we’ve just looked at today. The results on the site are stellar, but still a little slow while the great big index is built.
Posted on Nov 19, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
Trevor Davis has posted his tutorial on building a form builder.
A form builder is a regular request for some clients when they are looking for a content management system. There aren’t that many CMS that have this kind of functionality built-in, and even if they do, the implementation is usually less than desirable.
If you follow along with what I’ve been up to, you can probably tell that I have been on a big ExpressionEngine kick. I’ve been using it on a ton of projects recently, and I love it for its flexibility. Although it does lack a true form builder, I figured out a simple way to build one.
The article incorporates a great little fieldtype called Freeform data select by Tim Kelty, which you should also look into.
Posted on Nov 19, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
I think we’ve all probably run into the limitation of the built-in EE search at some point. If you’ve wanted something beefier, more flexible and a lot faster, you might be interested in what Solspace has to offer.
Last week, they announced the beta release of Super Search, “a fast and flexible search module.” Super Search lets you use URL parameters to set the search query. This allows you to easily chain together different search parameters to find an exact result.
The architecture of the module borrows from Google’s model of constructing search queries. Anything that you might want to query for, keywords, weblogs, categories, statuses, custom fields, date ranges, custom field numeric ranges, etc. can be loaded into a single URI segment by using the Super Search syntax. This makes pages highly cachable, shareable, flexible and versatile. Values can of course be hardcoded using template parameters. But if you choose, you can also load all of your params into a single query string and provide that as a param. Forms can be created freely by you to submit queries to a results page and Super Search will translate the contents of the POST.
The example they gave in their blog post about the beta release is about searching a classified site for a specific car make, model and price.
We also use the module quite a bit to search for entries where certain custom fields contain exact matches on some keyword. So on the same classified ad site, we might do this:
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/search/results/search&price;-from=100&price;-to=500&exact;-make=Chevy&exact;-model=CamaroThis search would find Chevy Camaros that cost between $100 and $500 dollars.
You can filter on the weblog as well.
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/search/results/search&price;-from=100&price;-to=500&exact;-make=Chevy&exact;-model=Camaro&channel=used_carsThe above search would find used Chevy Camaros selling for $100 - $500 bucks.
The Edit Field tool in Super Search
The description of Super Search has it listed as part of the Solspace Performance Suite. This is because it allows you to finely tune your search in terms of caching and how your MySQL database is structured.
Super Search includes a utility that lets admins alter their custom weblog fields at the MySQL level. This is important since you can improve site performance by changing field types to use only the space you need. Example, if you have a field that always contain either ‘y’ or ‘n’, change it to a ‘char’ field and save tons of space.
Additionally, your users can save their searches and refer to them later. On the search results page you just enter in a name for the search and click Save.
Super Search Saved Searches (say that 10 times fast)
Clicking on those saved searches returns you to that search result. A great way to give users more functionality. It’s also an easy way for sites to build special archive pages of their content.
It’s not enough to just tell you about Super Search. Nope. I decided that I would implement it right here on EE Insider so you can try it out for yourself. I’ve set up a special search page that uses the Super Search module. On this page I’m also displaying content with Super Search instead of with the weblog entries tag pair.
Here’s the code I used to make that happen:
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<ul>
{exp:super_search:results channel="articles" num="10"}
<li>{title}</li>
{/exp:super_search:results}
</ul>
This should look somewhat familiar. I just tell Super Search which channel to use and the number of results. I then output the title of each article in an unordered list.
The current version of Super Search does not support the normal variables available in the Weblog Entries tag pair (like title_permalink or auto_path). If you wanted to link up the results to their view pages you would have to use the url_title variable (which is supported) and link it up manually.
I’ve only touched the surface of what Super Search does and what can be done with it. I encourage you to read the full documentation to get a fuller idea of the capabilities of the module.
Super Search is now in public beta and costs $84.95. If you’ve ever tried to build your own custom search module for EE, you know that $85 won’t even come close to the number of billable hours required to pull it off. In short, it’s a deal.
This module gets a big thumbs up from me. I look forward to using it more and seeing how it develops during the beta phase.
Thanks to Solspace for making the module available for EE Insider to test.
Posted on Nov 19, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
If you have a moment, I hope you’d consider taking a quick survey about the ExpressionEngine Screencasts. I’m seeking your help in shaping the topics I cover in future screencasts. Your input would be invaluable to me.
My goal here is to poll the community and see what issues you’re having with ExpressionEngine and how I can help with that by making future screencasts more targeted to your needs.
The survey will take less time than it took you to read this entry. Thanks very much for taking the time!
Posted on Nov 19, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
Starting now, you can get 40% off my ExpressionEngine training videos from PragProg.com. They have helped a lot of people learn the ins and outs of ExpressionEngine and now you can snag them at a steal of a price. You may even call it a “heist.”
But the sale doesn’t last forever. You can only use the coupon code PRAGTHANKS40 at the PragProg website until November 25, 2009. After that the sale is over.
If you’re having trouble with EE or want to learn a streamlined approach to building ExpressionEngine websites, check out the screencasts.
(You know, the coupon code isn’t good just for my screencasts. You can use it for any PragProg purchase. Books, videos, PDFs, whatever. Just fill up your cart and enter the code!)
Posted on Nov 18, 2009 by Ryan Irelan
The fine folks at EllisLab have written a blog post announcing the release of the Official EE2 FAQ. The FAQ, which covers everything from licensing to releases, features a video by EE diva (and our founder) Ryan Irelan.
What’s interesting is this little tidbit:
On December 1st, 2009 we’ll soft launch the ExpressionEngine 2.0 Release Candidate (RC) for purchase. ExpressionEngine 2.0 is currently in Phase 2 of a private beta program, with over 500 participants.
While we’ve known for some time that EE 2.0 will be a “soft launch” without a major marketing push, the terminology of calling it a release candidate is new. The FAQ then goes on to describe what a RC means for EllisLab:
EllisLab considers a Release Candidate to be a X.0.0 version of a software product. This means the product has been thoroughly beta tested but has little to no real world usage. The purpose of a Release Candidate is to acquire real world usage data and respond rapidly to reported bugs and issues that beta testing isn’t capable of catching.
They’ve opened up a forum page for discussion of the FAQ, and we suggest you add any questions there.
Posted on Nov 18, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
Tonight is the weekly EE Help Chat, which takes place at 9PM EST (GMT -5) and runs about an hour.
People of all experience levels are welcome and both beginner and advanced questions are encouraged. If you’d like to get an idea of how the chat works and what the guidelines are, check out the EE Help Chat page for more information. On that page you’ll also find the link to enter chat at 9PM.
Hope to see you in the chat!
Posted on Nov 18, 2009 by Kenny Meyers
After many months of waiting, the EE Roadshow posts videos of the event. For your pleasure:
Still no word whether my unofficial talk “I’m here missing both this and EECI 2009 and so sad and lonely” will ever be posted.Drawing {exp:lines} in the Sand
by Jenn Lukas, Brian Warren, Mark HuotDeploying and Maintaining EE Using Version Control
by Jason HudnuttPerformance Tuning EE
by Matt PerryDeveloping & Marketing EE Add-Ons
by Fred Boyle , Mark Huot, Brandon Kelly, and Ryan Masuga
Posted on Nov 17, 2009 by Kenny Meyers