Blog Entry
As promised, EllisLab has updated their blog with a post titled SXSW Panels, UI Sprint, Usage Survey. The entry discusses our proposed panel and also confirms what we already secretly knew:
I know skeptics will ask, justifiably, “will 2.0 be out by SXSW 2010”, the answer is yes. Given our prior, quite humbling, release timeframe mistake, you better believe I wouldn’t post this if I wasn’t 100% certain and then some. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s move onto the actual beta progress update!
So there you have it folks. EE 2.0 will be out sometime in the next 7 months! The remainder of the post is dedicated to a UI discussion, process and more progress towards public beta.
Blog Entry
Git is all the rage these days and Devot:ee has written a very in-depth article about version control with ExpressionEngine and Git. Why version control, Mr. Masuga?
Version control is something I felt I needed a handle on when developing with ExpressionEngine, so I recently starting looking for a solution I could use in my own workflow. Up until very recently, I’ve been working on projects myself (except for the occasional contractor who has helped migrate or enter content into EE while I’ve been working on the template side) but now I’m finding the need to do some collaborative work, and also want to make sure that my work is properly backed up and versioned—so I can roll back changes if something goes awry.
This is the first in a four-part series that, if continuing at its current depth, will be extremely informative and educational for our humble community.
Blog Entry
Nettuts+ has written an extensive article on building Google Maps with ExpressionEngine.
For this example, let’s assume that our company has various locations throughout the US, and we are tasked with creating a Google Map that shows all the locations and is easy to maintain.
Also available is the excellent SL Google Map which, while much simpler, may be just what you need.
Blog Entry
The MX Zip plugin was released today:
MX Zip add you capability to add files into into zip archive direct from ExpressionEngine
This could have some great combinations with FieldFrame and nGen File Field for creating custom zipped media packages on the fly. While untested here at the labs, let us know if you use it and what you think.
Blog Entry
After a long journey developing the site, Jason Santa Maria and a crew of talented individuals launched Typedia this morning.
What’s Typedia? It’s a “shared encyclopedia of Typefaces” which is curated by the community. To participate, you just need to create a user account.
Of course Typedia is running ExpressionEngine and here’s a little info about it from Jason’s blog post on the launch:
After trying to build a custom backend couple of times, we realized we were wasting time rebuilding common site functionality and ended up using ExpressionEngine instead, albeit a seriously customized installation of it.
For now, we’re using Flash for type specimen display. It’s not unlike sIFR, though much more custom-tailored for our needs. We realize Flash isn’t the ideal way to display type, but after trying and evaluating all the solutions we could think of, Flash won out due to copyright concerns, consistent rendering, and flexibility. We hope to grow into a better solution someday.
Blog Entry
Every week we bring you the latest updates to the phenomenal add-on catalog at Devot:ee. This week is no different, here’s your weekly Devot:ee.
Thanks to Ryan Masuga for putting this together.
Instructional Video
In this short screencast we learn how to set up ExpressionEngine to use external editors for publishing content. We cover how to configure the Metaweblog API Module, MarsEdit and ScribeFire.
Get the Video
Blog Entry
Tonight is the weekly EE Help Chat, which takes place at 9PM EDT 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!
Blog Entry
Emily Lewis has written an extensive piece on customizing the RSS template for ExpressionEngine. The in-depth article covers adding the following to EE’s template:
- Links and markup to display properly formatted
- Display blog name
- Display author name
- Link to the category in which the article is published
- Links to the tags with which the article is tagged
- Tracking for links to support analytics
- Two feeds; one for full articles and one for teasers
- A “Continue Reading” link for the teaser feed
Blog Entry
The end of August is upon us which means we must prepare for March! Your gracious hosts here at EE Insider (Myself and Mr. Irelan) want to talk with you about ExpressionEngine 2.0 at South By Southwest. We do not traverse these grounds alone though, as our panel includes many distinguished guests including:
The proposed talk is this: Each one of us will give you a 10 minute concept or way to create something awesome with ExpressionEngine. It will start with introductory-level material and move all the way up to some extension-level development. It’s a taster’s choice of information that will hopefully satisfy newcomers and experienced veterans alike. So please, if you have a moment, vote for our panel.
...and yes, while none of us have an official date or any inside news, we do believe 2.0 will be out by March.
Instructional Video
Even with Strict URLs enabled, EE still only checks for a valid template group and template. However, we want to make sure that it is also displaying the intended content on the page. In this short screencast, we learn how to make better 404 pages using ExpressionEngine’s require_entry parameter and a simple conditional.
Get the Video
Blog Entry
Finally a chance to meet your ExpressionEngine heroes, as Devot:ee is giving away a ticket to the ExpressionEngine Roadshow.
Guests to this fine event include:
* Pay to enter
Seattle is a beautiful city full of nerds like yourself and (formerly) myself. Enjoy the great IPAs, the stunning vistas and the amazing lakes. Then, if you’re lucky, you too can meet up with the best minds in the EE business.
Blog Entry
ExpressionEngine & PHP have long been bedfellows, but the language of PHP is multiplatform: so the question to you my dear trusted friends, is this:
What platform do you use to build EE sites on? (Windows, Mac OS X, etc.)
Please use the comments for your answers and then fight to the death over why you think it’s the best platform.
Blog Entry
Trevor Davis has written an article on creating an online newsletter with EE:
I had to create an “online newsletter” that had issues that were made up of multiple articles. I ended up creating two separate weblogs: one for each issue, and one for individual articles. In the issues weblog, there was a Playa custom field which could be used to pick the individual articles to be published in that issue. But, another one of Brandon Kelly’s fabulous extensions, FieldFrame, seems to be a much better choice for creating this functionality.
The blog entry is an excellent example of the flexibility of EE and even comes with a great demo.
Blog Entry
A new FieldFrame FieldType has been released called Copee Pastee. The extension developer, Iain Urquhart, describes it as such:
I’ve put together a quite simple cell type for a FF Matrix, basically it outputs a plain text {whatever-x} within your matrix row, where ‘x’ is the row count, and ‘whatever’ is whatever you want…
To see an example and download the extension, you can head over to the forums. This FieldType looks to solve many-an-issue with blog-writing and handling images. We’ll be testing it in the labs and giving you our results later this week. In the meantime, let us know your results with this FieldType in the comments.
Blog Entry
Brandon Kelly’s FieldFrame has been updated to version 1.3.1. Here’s the changelog:
- simplified conversion of Multi Drop-down List fields to FF Multi-select
- added Size setting to FF Matrix Text and Textarea celltypes
- fixed the double quotes (”“) bug once and for all
- template performance improvements and other enhancements
FieldFrame is one of the best extensions available for ExpressionEngine, and if you haven’t looked into it you can download it at Brandon Kelly’s site.
How-to Article
A few years ago, a client needed to list out all of the years in which there were articles on the site and allow people to click on the years and get a list of all of the articles in that year; the result being an archive of the entries by year. For those of you that have tried, you probably know that ExpressionEngine does not handle this out-of-the-box. But it does help us about half-way.
My solution was very simple. I wanted to create a list of years and make them clickable so I can access a results page with all of the articles from that year.
Read the Article
Blog Entry
Pro Network member Iain posted to the EE Forums about a newly launched site for Northpower, an electricity contracting company in New Zealand.
Iain described the site as “challenging” and described some of the work they had to do to pull it off:
As some areas are 5 levels deep (like here) which were a bit of fun, we decided to use the EE pages Module extensively. We built our own module interface (Pages Improved), and publish page extension to make the whole setup a lot more usable for publishers. Tasks like ordering pages, selecting a page parent and bulk renaming page uris were some features we put in.
Be sure to read Iain’s entire form post for links and information about the other customizations needed for the Northpower website.
Blog Entry
It’s been a long time coming, but the Repartee podcast has finally released its second episode. The episode, which includes an interview with Jack McDade of Smooth Function, an up and coming development house, offers the following:
- Design Hope - We Have A Winner!
- Custom Category URL Structures
- New Plugin: SL MailChimp Subscribe
- EE2.0 hits beta
- EE 1.6.8
- EEcommerce Pro
- Structure 1.3.0s
- Jack McDade
- Kenny Meyers Joins EEInsider
- Redirect301 Plugin
- The EE Roadshow
Head on over to the Repartee site to listen.
Blog Entry
Sloooooowwww news week this week. I hope you’re all building extensions, add-ons and writing articles for next week.
Each week, we get the latest and greatest add-ons added to the fantastic Devot:ee.
Thanks to Mr. Masuga for his work on this.
Add Your Comment
Share on Twitter