Blog Entry
I always recommend everyone install the Low Askimet Combo on their EE-powered sites that allow comments. It’s an absolutely essential tool in fighting off the hordes of spammers attacking blog comments across the Internet.
There’s now another option available in the War on Spam, Low NoSpam, but this time with a few more features.
Like the Akismet Combo, Low NoSpam will check comments to see if they’re considered to be spam by the chosen service, either Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam. It can optionally also check incoming trackbacks, gallery comments, forum posts and wiki articles. Caught (gallery) comments will be set to Closed for further moderation. Caught trackbacks, forum posts and wiki articles will be discarded, since these do not have a native moderating system in EE.
So, with the new combo you can choose between using Akismet (from the makers of WordPress) or TypePad AntiSpam (from Six Apart) and Low has expanded what types of comments are covered in the protection.
Make this a standard module on every EE project you develop.
Blog Entry
If you’re an active EE 2.0 developer and meet the requirements set by EllisLab, you can apply for access to the Developer Preview of EE 2.0 (codename Kaylee) and get a jumpstart on converting your add-ons to be compatible with EE 2.0 and the CodeIgniter framework. This preview isn’t for the regular EE user, but limited to developers:
[Y]ou must have a published ExpressionEngine add-on or provide proof of a private client add-on to be considered for this initial Developer Preview. You must also be experienced with ExpressionEngine and have a solid foundation in PHP and MySQL.
There is limited space, so if you feel that you qualify, go sign up now!
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Just wrapped up an ExpressionEngine implementation. Really pleased with EE. Total design freedom.
Ed Mullen via Twitter.
Blog Entry
EE development shop Solspace has joined forces with former EllisLab team member Paul Burdick ( now of Fiery Tea, Inc.) to develop and release a new module: Static Page Caching.
This module allows you to cache an entire page in ExpressionEngine based on its URI (the part after index.php). The page will be stored as a file on the server and your Site’s .htaccess file will be modified to point any requests for that page to the cached file, bypassing ExpressionEngine entirely. All happens seamlessly: the URL will not change in their browser window as the server loads the cached file behind the scenes. This allows the user to still bookmark or link to your pages as usual.
The time to use this module is when your Site is being hammered by hundreds and thousands of requests every minute, as this creates an incredible strain on MySQL and PHP. When these requests are redirected to an already processed and cached page there will be no load placed on ExpressionEngine or on MySQL and PHP, thus preventing your server from slowing down and possibly crashing.
I have not yet used this module, but I trust add-ons from Solspace and Paul is an old hand at EE. The module costs $34.95 and is available now.
Blog Entry
Tonight is another installment of EE Help Chat. A group of ExpressionEngine developers, users and enthusiasts gather for an hour in an online chatroom to discuss EE and answer any questions people have. The group is comprised of people with different experience using EE, so if you’re new to EE and have a question, don’t be shy!
Learn all about the chat on the EE Help Chat page.
Blog Entry
Another event that EllisLab will be putting on at SXSW Interactive 2009 is the World Domination Summit. They want to hear from business using EE (developers, agencies, freelancers, etc.) and how EllisLab can help them succeed.
We’ve invited Mitchell Kimbrough (Solspace), Ryan Irelan (EEInsider), and Greg Storey (Airbag Industries) to host a community led World Domination Summit. We want to know how we can help your business be more successful. This is a private event limited to 22 people. Preference will be given to Pro Net members and those currently running EE or CI centric businesses.
As someone who has a successful business selling training materials and information about ExpressionEngine, I’m looking forward to sharing my experience, frustrations and ideas to help make the whole community of EE-related businesses thrive. I also want to hear what others are experiencing because I think we’ll be able to help each other.
There is only limited space and they do require an application process, so if you’re in the business of using EE and will be SXSW Interactive, please apply!
Blog Entry
Yesterday, EllisLab announced the company activities planned for SXSW Interactive. As they have the past two years, EllisLab will host a free party at Moonshine Grill from 7PM-9PM. In addition—and in an effort for even more communication with the community— EllisLab will also host small gatherings at specific times (usually meal time) each day the entire conference.
Let’s get food, go for drinks, or grab a coffee, just a few of us at time. If there was a beach in Austin, we’d go for a walk. We’ll talk about anything you like… business, code problems, your add-on, movies, our favorite colors, whatever. You’ll have our undivided attention for about an hour, make the most of it!
You can sign up for your “date” with EllisLab by replying to the appropriate forum thread they’ve set up. There are still plenty of spots available, but if you’re going to be at SXSW Interactive, you might want to secure your spot now, as I’m sure the schedule will fill up. Don’t miss the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation with the people who create the software you use every day!
Blog Entry
Brad Dillon recently moved his very nicely designed personal site from WordPress to ExpressionEngine. He wrote up a blog post about it, ExpressionEngine, My New Hotness:
Expression Engine doesn’t jump through “hoops”. It just does what you want it to do, and it does it like you’d expect it to. It accomplishes this by way of a ridiculously intuitive yet powerful templating language. Yes, it has it’s own language, but it’s going to be ok, I promise. The EE language is made specifically for templating, unlike PHP which is much broader and more generalized. After a couple of hours working with it, EE’s syntax starts to feel like an extension of HTML. If you’re a front-end developer, you’ll feel right at home in no time.
Brad also offers up a few comparisons between WordPress code and ExpressionEngine. Be sure to read through his whole write-up.
Blog Entry
This is a topic that has come up more than once and I’ve written about it before, but I think it’s worth revisiting.
How do you develop your ExpressionEngine-powered websites? Locally or on the server?
Blog Entry
A recent post on Daring Fireball reminded of an app I’ve been using regularly for the last few months: Sequel Pro, a free MySQL management application for Mac OS X. I’ve previously used CocoaMySQL—which has been abandoned and turned into Sequel Pro—and before that YourSQL. YourSQL stopped working for me on Leopard, so I ditched it. Sequel Pro is a nice step forward.
If you’ve read my article on developing ExpressionEngine websites locally you might find this tip handy for using Sequel Pro with MAMP.
- Create a new favorite called “MAMP.”
- Set “Host” to “localhost” and fill in your MySQL username and password (by default MAMP uses “root” for both).
- Set “Socket” to
/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock
Now when you connect, you’ll be using the MySQL server from MAMP.
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
I’m feeling like I’m gonna use ExpressionEngine for the rest of my life!
Michele Colombrino via Twitter.
Blog Entry
If you’ve been struggling with a problem while building an ExpressionEngine-powered website or are new to EE and have some questions, I invite you to take an hour out of your day to join me and a group of other EE professionals and enthusiasts in the weekly, free EE Help Chat. The chat starts promptly at 9 PM EST (GMT -5) and lasts for one hour.
The EE Help Chat page on the site has all of the information you need, including the URL for getting into the chat. Hope to see you there!
Blog Entry
The finest online resource “for people who make websites,” A List Apart, published an article this morning on things we as web professionals can do to stay afloat during a struggling economy. While this isn’t a repeat of the “dot com bust” (the foundation of our industry is much stronger now, than it was 10 years ago), we should be smart about moving forward.
The worsening economy will adversely affect our industry, at least in the short term. However, our skills and products are suited to ride out hard economic times. Marketers can easily measure return on investment for electronic media. Likewise a web address—such as an online shop—provides a wider audience and lower overhead than a street address, and could therefore be a better investment.
Whether you’re a freelancer, small business owner or a salaried employee, the seven tips described in the article apply to you.
Blog Entry
Office interior design firm Morgan Levell has a beautiful new site that is powered by ExpressionEngine. The site was designed and developed by Pepper Digital. Andy Harris of Pepper Digital posted in the EE Forums about the launch. He had this to say about it:
We especially like the callouts on the left/right and in the footer which all either assigned to each page via Brandon Kelly’s ace Playa extension, are picked randomly from the pool based on the categories assigned to the page or otherwise just picked randomly - it works nicely.
Very nice looking site. Congrats on the launch!
Blog Entry
Ryan Burney at 3 Roads Media design blog has a nice list of useful ExpressionEngine extensions. There just may be a few in there you haven’t heard of before. My personal favorite of the bunch is LG Data Matrix. Be sure to read Brandon Kelly’s EE Insider article that covers one way to use LG Data Matrix.
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Using ExpressionEngine (for content management) for the first time this week. First impressions are good!
Nick Sayre via Twitter.
Blog Entry
EllisLab released a new build (20092011) of ExpressionEngine 1.6.7, which included more than a dozen bug fixes and other tweaks. A few highlights:
* Modified Super Admin group on install to have a value of ‘y’ in the ‘include_in_authorlist’ database column (no functional change).
* Made internal improvements to contact form to help prevent abuse by spammers.
* Removed deprecated tags <u> and <strike> from HTML formatting buttons, adding <del> (does not affect existing button settings on the Publish page)
It’s always a good idea to run the latest build, so if you can, update your sites.
Blog Entry
In my article about using the custom profile data tag, a commenter, Noushad, brought up the issue of how he sees ExpressionEngine’s shortcomings being that you have to pay for it and then pay for some additional add-ons to gain the functionality you need (I was writing about the User Module from Solspace). Noushad brings up an excellent point:
There is no doubt that EE is a very good CMS, especially for designers. Sadly even after you pay for CMS, you need to shell out more money for modules that extend EE (eg. User Module from Solospace). This is the only reason people like me staying away from it, and embracing open source options. (drupal). And best of all, you don’t need to wait for months to know what’s going to happen to your favorite CMS and worry about whether it’s pricing would be affordable to you.
First, there’s nothing wrong with choosing free software or commercial software. You are in a situation, you weigh your options and you make a choice. Noushad asked for my take on this and I was happy to oblige.
There are definite trade-offs when you use commercial software, but I think the advantages are greater: dedicated support staff, dedicated development staff to add new features, fix bugs—and most importantly—keep the software secure. Buying the software keeps those people employed and working full-time on the software. That’s what I want if me and my clients are going to invest in the software. I want to know they have a business model and will be around in 5 years and will continue issuing any needed security updates.
As far as having to buy add-ons to supplement ExpressionEngine’s native functionality, I think it’s actually a good thing. I don’t want a CMS that does _everything_. Sure, EE should probably have better member template management that doesn’t require a $90 module. But it doesn’t and the development community surrounding EE was inventive enough to recognize that missing piece and write the code to fix it. This happens a lot and it’s more of a testament to EE’s flexibility and extensibility than it is to any missing features.
I linked the comment up on Twitter and had some more people chime in. Please take the time to read all of the comments, as they’re quite thoughtful and good. Personally, I think Chad Crowell strikes the right tone:
I am not saying I am right and you are wrong, there are thousands of ways to build a site. Just sharing why EE is usually a no brainer for my business decisions.
What’s your take?
Blog Entry
Another week has come and gone and that means it’s time for another installment of EE Help Chat. A group of ExpressionEngine developers, users and enthusiasts gather for an hour in an online chatroom to discuss EE and answer any questions people have. The group is comprised of people with different experience using EE, so if you’re new to EE and have a question, don’t be shy!
Learn all about the chat on the EE Help Chat page.
How-to Article
If you’ve ever built an ExpressionEngine site with significant membership capabilities, you may have run into the less-than-ideal situation that is the Member Templates. I usually use a third party module to handle membership functionality in the templates. But there is a way to display member data on your site without the need for a third-party module.
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