Over a series of 8 videos, watch and learn as Ryan builds an entire ExpressionEngine website from beginning to end. Get started now.
It’s a two-fer today.
I love ExpressionEngine. Easy to use and joy to work with.
— davezachry (@davezachry) August 21, 2012
I enjoy EE. That’s all.
— Jesse Schutt (@jesseschutt) August 21, 2012#eecms
Posted on Aug 22, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
It’s week number two of the Weekly Wrap! We’re inching towards the end of August and it feels like things are starting to pick up. As we approach the end of the year things will start to get crazy, projects plentiful and, well, let the fun begin.
Thanks for submitting your news to the site. If you didn’t make it to this week’s Weekly Wrap, please don’t forget to submit your news using the Twitter hashtag #eenews or by emailing me.
Let’s hand it over to Bob for this week’s news. Over to you , Bob.
Via email, Steve at First Pier let me know that they launched two new responsive EE-powered sites recently:
Nice work, First Pier!
A new ProForm release (1.8) is available and it features several fixes and updated. Issac considers this “primarily a maintenance release” and recommends all ProForm users update.
A new feature in this release is the introduction of file attachments for notification emails.
Ben Croker recently released Snaptcha 1.4, which includes support for the User Module and Zoo Visitor.
Snaptcha is a “Simple Non-obtrusive Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” and helps you protect your forms from spam.
Thumber isn’t a way to get ride on Interstate 40 in the middle of the desert. It makes it possible to generate PDF thumbnails in ExpressionEngine.
So a few months ago we had the idea of creating an ExpressionEngine plugin that generated nice resized thumbnails from PDF files after a client found out that EE didn’t do this natively (their old CMS did).
I think I might be able to use this on a current project!
A small Forms release that included some new features and bug fixes.
They also release the ExpressionEngine Updater module that I wrote about earlier.
A new version of his blog powered by EE. Boom.
Answering customer support through email clients is messy & error prone. HelpSpot makes it organized and easy. Learn why companies like EngineHosting, BrilliantRetail, and Focus Lab use HelpSpot to manage their support.
Check out all of the ExpressionEngine jobs listed on Authentic Jobs.
Chosen by me, shared with you.
On the lookout for new
— Joel Bradbury (@joelbradbury) August 16, 2012#eecms projects. Need something custom? Or just a hand? Drop me a line.
Joel is one of the smart ones. Give him a ring if you need work done.
And that’s a wrap on the week. Have a great weekend and get cranking on your next project!
Posted on Aug 17, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Opening up the first day of the developers track at EECI in October is the Developers Roundtable. The topic will be “the future of EE add-on development.”
The roundtable will be hosted by me and will feature Ryan Masuga, Low Schutte, Brandon Kelly and some more developers that will be announced.
Don’t have a conference ticket yet? Get yours now.
Posted on Aug 17, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Smashing Magazine lists out some great legal documents for web designers and developers from the Docracy.com collection of free legal documents.
Contracts are a source of anxiety and dismay in creative work, but they exist for a good reason. A good contract ensures that you and your client have the same expectations, and protects you in case things go south. Ideally, your contract should be a combination of industry standards, legal protection and personal preferences. To help you get started, here’s a set of 10 basic agreements for a variety of common business situations that creative professionals face.
As far as I can tell this document list is only good for people doing business USA (but maybe someone can verify that for me).
Posted on Aug 17, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Vim Interactive posted a quick run-down of some really simple things you can do to keep your EE-powered site running as zippy as possible. Some of these are techniques you should use for any site, no matter the CMS.
Companies and organizations frequently come to us with page load issues. After further investigation, we find inefficient code resulting in a terribly slow load speeds that turn away visitors by the day. Below are 5 ways to increase load speeds across your ExpressionEngine site today:
Read the article to get all 5 tips.
Posted on Aug 17, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
When I first saw the Updater by DevDemon a couple of weeks ago I was not surprised that someone created one. I was surprised that they had already addressed and implemented everything I would want to see in an add-on updater.
Allowing a piece of software to update your site automatically is a scary proposition at first. The requirements checks that Updater does, plus the information it shows you during the process makes it easier to press that Start button.
There is detailed information about what is being updated and a complete backup of both database and files for easier rollback if something goes wrong. It also includes the ability to update add-ons, too.
An add-on that automates something as critical as ExpressionEngine system updates has to make you rest easy. Updater does.
Here’s walk-thru of the add-on by DevDemon’s Brad Parscale:
DevDemon’s Updater costs $15 for a single site or $150 for a developer license with unlimited sites.
Posted on Aug 17, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Posted on Aug 16, 2012 by Ryan Masuga
The weekly–and now almost four-year-old–EE Help Chats take place today. There are two chats strategically scheduled so everyone across the world should be able to participate without losing sleep.
The weekly help chats are sponsored by Mijingo and EngineHosting.
Join us in the chat!
Posted on Aug 15, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
On Twitter, Jeremy Congdon asks about how you handle keeping client sites up-to-date with new releases.
Hey
— Jeremy Congdon (@ImmergeDev) August 14, 2012#eecms devs How do you do EE Upgrades for your clients? Service Agreements? Upgrades with feature upgrades?
What’s your take?
Posted on Aug 15, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Yesterday, the EECI developer track speakers were announced. The remaining talks are scheduled to be posted today.
The speakers will be:
As I’m writing this one developer track talk was posted. It is Ben Croker’s talk called: With Great Power Come Great Responsibility. Ben will talk about how “we have a responsibility to write good code that will not compromise the security and integrity of the CMS and that will not conflict with or break other add-ons.”
The developer track will take place each of the two days starting after lunch for a total of 6 hours of sessions.
Tickets are still on sale for EECI. See you there?
Posted on Aug 15, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
EE Insider is the new home of the weekly news round-up. We’re calling it the Weekly Wrap. I’d like you to think I spent hours coming up with that but I just thought of it as I started typing this.
So, welcome to the Weekly Wrap.
The cooks have been in the kitchen making great stuff with, for, and around ExpressionEngine. I’ve been tracking and saving everything throughout the week. Thank you for making this first installment of the Weekly Wrap a great one.
Let’s get started!
Web Together launched a new EE-powered website and it’s all decked out with a responsive layout.
John Henry Donovan shared his technique for implementing infinite scroll in EE. It’s a combination of Channel Entries tags, some pagination and a jQuery plugin. John Henry provided all of the code and even a complete example you can use to get started.
This coming Monday, the ChicagoEE group will meet at Fado Irish Pub at 7PM to discuss setting up a default EE installation to jump start your projects. Also, bring your favorite sites for a little show ‘n’ tell.
If you’re not in Chicago, maybe you’re in Glasgow? The first EE meetup in Glasgow takes place on Friday August 31st. Mark you calendar and sign up to attend.
A reminder from a previous post that Vim Interactive is hiring a senior developer to work in PHP and CodeIgniter.
At the DCEEr’s one-day conference a couple of weeks ago, Eric Lamb got a good add-on idea from a fellow attendee. That idea? Expiring passwords. He shared a screenshot of the work-in-progress. Looks great!
Stephen Lewis posted his own round-up of sorts. He shared a smattering of updates and information on his add-ons. Campaigners, Crumbly, OmniLog, SmartDown, MailChimp Subscribe, Author Info and Simple Commerce Developer.
Ben Croker of Venveo wrote up a short list of important websites that run ExpressionEngine. You probably know every single site on the list. That’s pretty cool. It’s also cool that I helped build one of them.
The EECI conference coming up in October is selling tickets and you can get yours. At only $250 for the two-day conference, you can’t go wrong. See you there!
Answering customer support through email clients is messy & error prone. HelpSpot makes it organized and easy. Learn why companies like EngineHosting, BrilliantRetail, and Focus Lab use HelpSpot to manage their support.
Are you looking for work? EE Insider wants to help you find some. Here are a few job listings from this week over at Authentic Jobs:
Check out all of the ExpressionEngine jobs listed on Authentic Jobs.
Chosen by me, for your enjoyment.
dynamic=”noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo”
— Philip Meissner (@pmeissner) August 9, 2012#eecms#facepalm
But check your spelling, there.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for sending your news and sharing your ideas with everyone. If you want to get your news posted in the Weekly Wrap, just email us or post your news to Twitter using the #eenews hashtag.
Posted on Aug 10, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Everyone’s favorite… Let’s start again.
Stephen Lewis drops some knowledge with a primer on the ACTion ID in ExpressionEngine.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a quick blog post to announce that Testee 2.2 now lets you run your tests via an ACTion ID.
Whilst writing said blog post, I spent a few minutes scouring the ExpressionEngine documentation for a succinct ACTion ID overview that I could link to. I wasn’t expecting much, just an explanation of what an ACTion ID is and does, for the completely uninitiated.
If you’re familiar with how add-ons are built then you’ve already come across the action ID. If not, Stephen’s primer will get you the information you need to hang with developers at your EE meetup.
Posted on Aug 10, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
John Henry Donovan has been on a bit of roll lately and this time he’s sharing the code behind the member export tool he set up for a client.
A couple of years back a client asked me for some functionality in ExpressionEngine that would enable them to export their member details into a CSV for use internally. I had already built them some extra tools into templates that gave them a simple control panel with mostly read only information. I wanted to include the tool here but also wanted to add a bit of extra functionality to allow them choose a range of members to download.
Need something familiar? Read John Henry’s tutorial for all of the details and code you’ll need.
Posted on Aug 10, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Be careful advertising content strategy with
— Nick Benson (@NickBenson) August 8, 2012#eecms; you’ll only attract savvy, forward-thinking clients with decent budgets.
Hmmmm.
All day designing and I thought back to the days when I had to keep CMS restrictions in mind. Not anymore thanks to
— Doug E (@dougeli) August 9, 2012@ellislab’s#eecms
Indeed.
Posted on Aug 10, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Leevi Graham of Newism and EE Garage joins the podcast to discuss site themes for ExpressionEngine – it may not be what you think! We talk about traditional EE development, some pain points, and the challenge (and possible solutions) with training new developers on EE. If you’re considering how to make your sites more portable, faster to develop, and easier for newbies to work with, tune in now!
Posted on Aug 09, 2012 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
Slow week. But hey, it’s still summertime, right?
Posted on Aug 09, 2012 by Ryan Masuga
The late edition of the EE Help Chat takes place tonight at 9 PM EDT. The chat is free and open to everyone. To join just go to this URL: http://mijingo.com/go-chat and enter your name. That’s it!
The chat officially lasts one hour but typically runs a couple of hours or until the last person leaves. We welcome ExpressionEngine experts and newbies alike. It’s a place to chat about EE and get some help. Won’t you join us?
Tonight, 9 PM EDT, go here: http://mijingo.com/go-chat
See you in the chat.
Posted on Aug 08, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
EE Insider if officially taking over the weekly roundup of news (previously called the #FRUP). I don’t have a clever name for it yet but I do want to share the news you have.
You can send your news to me on Twitter using the #eenews hashtag (the #frup hashtag is still good, too) or by emailing me directly.
Send your news and see it here on the site!
Posted on Aug 08, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
In response to EE add-on developer Eric Lamb buying his first Mac and asking for software suggestions, Erik Reagan started a list of Mac web developer apps and a handful of people chimed in with their favorites.
Lots of great stuff listed there, including a few utilities you might not have used before.
(Hey, Windows-using-EE-developers, do you have a list you want to share? Post it somewhere and send me a link.)
Posted on Aug 08, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Lowell Kitchen is presenting a talk at EECI in October and he wants your help. He posted to Twitter about a simple survey on your experience hacking the ExpressionEngine core files.
Do you have something Lowell can include in his talk? Fill out the survey and let him know!
Posted on Aug 08, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
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